Performing Arts Research Grant 20-21

2020

about

This grant aims to create a sustainable knowledge network to promote inquiry into dance, music, sound, movement and theatre practices in South Asia. The grant seeks to support innovative research initiatives by individual researchers that will contribute to the discourse around performing arts in South Asia.

Jury

Navtej Johar and Trina Banerjee 

Grantee

A graduate from the National School of Drama, New Delhi, Gyandev Singh has worked as a lighting designer with many eminent Dancers and Theatre directors like Leela Samson, Aditi Mangaldas, Roysten Abel, Anuradha Kapur, Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, Madhavi Mudgal, Malavika Sarrukai, Kumudini Lakhiya, Lushin Dubey, Ashley lobo, Apsara Arts-Singapore.

His skills in stage lighting design has taken him to various theatre and dance festivals in Europe, North America, South America Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Africa, China, Russia and the Middle East. He has been invited to perform in festivals like The Edinburgh International Festival, The Bon Biennale, Prague Quadrennial, Korzo International Dans Festival, The Internationale Tanzmesse Festival, Dancing the Gods Festival, to name a few.

He has performed in venues like House of the people, China. Esplanade Theatres- Singapore, Nelum Pokuna theatre-Colombo. Susane Dalal Centre- Tel Aviv. Symphony Spaces-Broadway- New York. The Kennedy Centre- Washington DC, Sydney Opera House. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Bismillah Khan Yuva Award by the Sangeet Natak Academy , awarded in Stage Lighting Design.

The proposed project is an attempt to create an apparatus for Stage Scenic design which is spontaneous and interactive. A technology that has a Real time, emergent, responsive behavior and interacts with other elements on stage in that very moment, responding in its uniqueness and tendencies, just like a character in a story. This project empowers the digital, the computed, to find their own spontaneity and intuitiveness and to be accepted as equal and independent co- creators in a creative process.

Through this project Gyandev will try to create a medium which looks at the concept of “liveness” of a dance performance and tries to challenge the prevalent conventional technologies of Stage design. An attempt to create a process which is more inclusive, more participatory. One which holds space even for the “non-human” elements involved in a creative process to come together…and play.

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