Kolkata: Two hundred students of Mahadevi Birla World Academy, Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, Responsible Charity and Ektara cheered loudly as they watched the first-ever performance of Denmark’s Aarhus-based Don Gnu group’s walk-man act at GD Birla Sabhaghar on Friday morning. Muscular physicality, jaw-dropping stunts, awe-inspiring body balance acts garnished by a bit of choreography done to a Bollywood number, the ‘Dilbar’ song from the Sushmita Sen film, marked the show by four Danish artists that left the youngsters mesmerized.
Once the show presented by Pickle Factory Dance Foundation and Sanskriti Sagar got over, many of the students hurled a volley of questions at the four artists — Jeppe Kaas Vad, Kasper Jonas Buus, Jesper Holm and Petras Lisauskas. They are part of Don Gnu — a dance company founded in 2010 by choreographers Jannik Elkær and Kristoffer Louis Andrup Pedersen. Dana Roy, the creative producer and co-founder Pickle Factory Dance Foundation, said, “At the practitioners’ workshop, Jeppe said Don Gnu’s work can be summed up in three words — comedy, movement and poetry. The company took its name from the paradox embedded in the name Don Gnu. While Don represents an individual, Gnu refers to a herd animal. The synergy of both the individual and the collective creates the dynamism, experimentation and development-basis for the ideas that are the hallmark of the company’s productions.”
This particular show is set at a crossroad and features what happens when four ordinary men take a walk through a city. They readily follow norms of social etiquette until one of them suddenly decides to rebel. The result of this rebellion is a captivating performance inspired by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin where the idea is to find the funny in a not-so-funny situation.
Seated in the audience was Bente Wolff, the country manager of Danish Cultural Institute’s India department, who enjoyed the organic reactions of the children to the show. “I really hope this show is the first stepping stone towards fostering greater cultural ties between India and Denmark,” Wolff said.