Asia Dance Channel

Black on Black
7 – 8 January 2010
Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac)

By Choy Su-Ling

Is black really beautiful? Black on Black got us thinking.

Lakshman Balakrishnan, or Lex as he is fondly known, made a brave attempt to put up his very first independent production. He is of course, no stranger to choreography. Now pursuing his Bachelor's Degree in Dance at ASWARA, he has choreographed a few works for the academy and participated in various local productions.

Black on Black is a contemporary dance showcase about the Malaysian Indians, a topic close to his heart. Lex attempts to deliver his thoughts and observations through different aspects of the everyday Malaysian Indian through a collection of old and new works.

Ababil Aswad was introductory in nature. A rather short piece that introduces the choreographer’s style more than anything, we see a group of dancers wearing black masks and walking Bharatanatyam-style, appearing only too briefly.

Lex combines dance and drama in Black Body to convey discriminatory situations at work and commercial suggestions that ‘white’ is beautiful. It was a rather dark outlook at colour discrimination. As the dancers tried to wipe off the soot or the ‘blackness’ from their skin, it was obvious that any human would succumb to social pressures.

Black Draft was perhaps the stage version of National Geographic’s Dirty Jobs. Lex implied that the Indian community, more often than not, get drafted into less than desirable jobs such as road cleaners, construction workers and so forth. Without exploring deeper into this topic, the scene quickly changed into acts of demolishing homes. The two different scenes showed some kind of economic disadvantage but Lex had just only scratched the surface of this rather grim issue.

Black Board was my personal favourite. The colourful alphabet chart that served as the backdrop together with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that played in the background harmonized well to capture childhood innocence. The mood changed when propaganda speeches were read and people walked in throw academic notes into the air. The character that tied the whole story together was the school boy who, transitioned from merry skipping to moody sweeps, ruffling the papers that had fallen onto the floor, showed hope and then despair. With opportunities denied, the boy throws away his school tie, picks up a cigarette, and gives up trying. The school boy solo was most commendable delivering all the right movements and emotions for this piece.

If social issues were the order of the day, then Black File lacks clarity in terms of the message it was trying to convey. Although the dancers displayed comical antics and looked cute in their caterer and chef outfits, the piece on the whole, seemed to me an extract of Stomp with un-rhythmic hacking and whacking of kitchen cooking wares.

It was a scene of tragedy albeit a short one. Death reports were narrated and we see on stage three bodies covered in white cloth. When we hear the news report of blood-smeared bodies and the tragic end, we start to ask ‘why?’, ‘how?’ ‘when?’ Plainly and rightly so ? leaves us to answer these questions for ourselves.

The evening concluded with Black Knight. This piece featured more classical Bharatanatyam movements and rather unusual footwork to western tempo, and choice of Indian music that was rather modern. To me, this pure dance item, or a kind of ‘Moksha’ if you please, which reflects the contemporary Malaysian Indian, is an apt choice to end the program in true classical Indian dance fashion.

Overall, the young choreographer’s artistic direction is still in the rough. I would challenge him to look deeper into social issues and to work harder at discovering alternatives to literal descriptions of situations depicted in the various works. There are evident traces of “ASWARA-style” in the performance, which are outputs of mass grooming. While this is fine at academy-level, he needs to develop and discover a personal style that will distinguish him from the other graduates, and to succeed at a professional level. ASAWARA recognizes this and have been doing a good job by encouraging their students to put up productions outside the comforts of the academy. However, Lex is off to a good start at the conceptual level. All good dances begin at the thought level and he’s given us a clear idea that he’s doing just that.