Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Shorts Online

Each work is preceded by a conversation between Shobana Jeyasingh and dance critic Sanjoy Roy

Shobana Jeyasingh is one of a kind. Born in India, she has been living in the UK for most of her life and has created a choreographic style that draws on India’s bharatanatyam dancing and from contemporary technique, as well as tackling a wide range of topics.

Throughout the lockdown period her Shobana Jeyasingh Dance has been broadcasting a series of her works, under the generic title of SJD Shorts. The series kicked off in late April with Configurations, the piece that launched the company in the late 1980s, with its unique interplay between East and West.

Here's the schedule:

Available until 5 July
Too Mortal
Conceived to be danced in historic churches, Too Mortal has a cast of six women clad in flame red, dancing among the pews. The work is set to James MacMillan's Tenebrae Responsories, remixed by sound artist Cassiel.

Drawing inspiration from the church, 'the choreography engages its setting variously as support, constraint, spur or adversary,' in the words of the critic Sanjoy Roy, who reviewed it for The Guardian and will join Shobana Jeyasingh in conversation to introduce the work.

Monday, 6 July
Outlander/Études
These two short works were each created in response to other works of art: Outlander to Paolo Veronese’s 1563 masterpiece ‘The Wedding at Cana’ and Études to Auguste Rodin’s sculptures of dancers and bodies.

Monday, 20 July
Material Men Redux
This is a dance dialogue between two dancers of South Asian ancestry with two different disciplines – bharatanatyam and hip hop – who otherwise have a a lot in common. Read more here

Monday, 3 August
Staging Schiele
The jagged lines of the Austrian painter's work and his life, cut cruelly short by the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, provided the inspiration for Jeyasingh's intense work. Read Culture Whisper's review here

Monday, 17 August
Contagion
A remarkable work, but difficult to watch for its painful parallels with our current pandemic, Contagion was created for the centenary of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Read Culture Whisper's review here