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NRI girl perform hybrid dance of Kuchipudi
and Spanish dance Flamenco.

Oct. 25, 2005
Rajesh Chopra

NRI, (non resident Indian) SIRI SONTY'S parents immigrated from Hyderabad. She is working towards an MD and a Ph.D at the Northwestern University.In 1998, Sonty got interested in flamenco when she visited Spain.

She blended Indian classical dance and Spanish dance form because these dance looks same. Sonty' email impressed to Wendy Clinard, the Chicago´s best-known Director of Clinard Dance Theater

What do you get when you combine Flamenco and Classical Indian dance with music by a famous Flamenco ensemble, and unique visual art? Years of work, study, travel, collaboration, observation, and expression that culminate in the premiere of this groundbreaking hybrid of personal cultures. Wendy Clinard partners with Siri Sonty to present a new work which transcends the traditions of Flamenco and Indian music and dance, incorporates moving visual art, and features a 10-piece ensemble providing live music with guest artists from India and the Americas.



  • Sonty is a Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam Classical Indian dancer who has given over 300 performances, including four nationwide performance tours in the U.S. and in India, has performed for academic, cultural, and religious organizations for over 20 years, the 1994 Parliament of World Religions among them, and has had the honor of performing for the Dalai Lama of Tibet and Sri Chinmoy of India. She is currently an MD-PhD student at Northwestern University Medical School.

  • Wendy Clinard One of Chicago´s best-known and respected contemporary Flamenco performers, and Artistic Director of Clinard Dance Theater, Wendy Clinard has over a decade of study and performance as a Flamenco dancer. She has studied and performed with many well respected masters of Spanish dance: in Spain, at the Amor de Dios Academy and in Sevilla with Torombo, Juana Amaya, Hiniesta Cortez, and in Chicago with master teacher Edo and many visiting artists

Unraveling Rhythms is a work aimed at both transcending and including the musical and dance forms of flamenco and classical Indian. The work is in tryptic format with line-ink paintings documented by a video artist bridging the three sections, as a handing off of the baton of energy is created between 2,3,and 4 dimensions of space and time. All aspects of the work - music, painting, and dance move from the purity of traditions into a hybrid treatment of forms, and culminates with a total departure of traditions. The application of the 3 sections morphs from rigor and foundation into a larger sense of space & energy, into the interior world of the human form in time. Contextually, the work travels from the mythology of our traditions into our mythology's living embodiment through people (the human form on earth) to the expression of these living people in our current times. The third section is treated as a meditation acknowledging the recent tsunami 2004. All contributing disciplines - dance, painting, and music - gradually move from a general sense of "fullness" to "emptiness." The work culminates in the meditative assemblance of 295,000 - the human loss incurred in tsunami 2004 - ink dots slowly amassing. That dense blackness then shatters off the projected screen onto the living dancers, leaving whiteness behind. Our loss is carried by our living wrapped in the emptiness; the silence of our loss we embrace, we sit, we acknowledge.

 

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Wendy Clinard and Siri Sonty performing a hybrid dance of Kuchipudi and Spanish danceform, Flamenco.




Blending Indian, Spanish dance forms




LAS GUITARRAS DE ESPANA (THE GUITARS OF SPAIN) and CLINARD DANCE THEATRE: Unraveling Rhythms