“Where are we today,” asks Mandala South Asian Performing Arts’ Founding Artistic Director, Pranita Nayar, “and how did we get here?” This question is the impetus behind Homeward: Movement, Memory, and Moments that Shape History, a work that abstracts the experience of diasporic migration broadly but with a focus specifically on reflections on landmark U.S. legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Choreographed by Nayar and collaborator, Kevin Iega Jeff, dancers from Mandala are joined by guest artists from across the dance landscape and combine in a blend of South Asian dance with other styles—modern, jazz and African—to tell the universally-felt story of feeling like a stranger in a strange land.
Homeward tells the story of the peoples who have packed up their belongings and moved (or have been moved) to a foreign land, compressing the history of generations into minutes. The story begins with a community at work, people fluttering across the ground while pursuing their specific labor. They form an undulating but unbreakable chain that stretches across continents. Invisible walls close in and squish them into a clump that bobs and floats, like survivors clinging to flotsam, as a projected video of waves swirl and churn on a screen high above. The juxtaposition of styles works well, with Bharatanatyam’s attention to detail reflecting the feelings of each individual, in their eyes, lips, eyebrows, hands, and torsos, while African and contemporary postures evokes in their movements an Earth-centered aplomb.
The work transitions from abstract storytelling to a real lived experience. From behind a camouflage of bodies emerges Shanta Nurullah, a Chicago based multi-instrumentalist, storyteller, and educator, to talk about the time, as a young, Black woman from Chicago, she left for India to study abroad in the late 1960s. The dancers relax in a circle around Nurullah, each pressing their hands to hers, a sign of welcome, before Nurullah recalls memories of loneliness. Nurrullah remembers being surrounded by people who, even after making her acquaintance, still meet her gaze with goggle-eyes and snickering. A lone dancer in yellow, Ashwaty Chennat, weaves in and out of the circle like navigating the crowd at a busy market. When they are side by side, the story becomes dreamlike as Nurullah’s soft voice, like a warm, western wind, sends ripples through Chennats body, the latter reacting like a leaf being blown by the gusts of another’s memories.
After Nurullah is led away, the stage erupts in a celebration. A solo by Carlito Catalano, a Bahamian dancer in the Odissi style, turns the stage into a drum as his feet beat out syncopated rhythmic patterns. Catalano’s hands produce sharp shapes; meanwhile, his shoulders swirl like two snakes “running” around a small racetrack. When the ensemble comes together, it’s pure bliss, a rousing affirmation of a shared humanity.
The work blows by like a breeze, passing quickly, but the foundation behind it is that of meticulous scholarship. Before the performance, clips from interviews with a panel of scholars informs the work with imagery of other places and other times, pinpoints crucial issues still to be wrestled with but also reveals a smoldering excitement about working to not only prevent the disease of prejudice but also to eradicate the present symptoms. The work stands on its own, but this brief dose of context helps the viewer to overlay more concrete imagery from the imagination over the action on stage.
The message in Homeward is both universal and strikingly close to home. The present has become poisoned by our inability as a collective people to reconcile with our past. Nayar and Jeff, like complimentary colors, combine to create a fabulous new hew, and together paint a bright picture of the future, one where we ford the river of prejudice and emerge on the banks of justice and common understanding.
Homeward: Movement, Memory, and Moments that Shape History was presented by Mandala South Asian Performing Arts at the Reva and David Logan Center, 915 E. 60th st., on Sept. 20 at 4pm.
Homeward also takes place on Fri., Oct. 10 at 4pm and 7pm at Wentz Hall, North Central College, 171 East Chicago Avenue, Naperville. Admission is FREE; reservations are recommended. For more information, visit mandalaarts.org.
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