Kat Austen, CultureLab editor
Elixir, by Sadhana Dance premiered at The Point in Eastleigh, UK, and will tour until late May. Details can be found at sadhanadance.com/elixir
"WATER, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink," lamented the ancient mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem. He was trapped in a microcosm of humanity's struggle with water. We suffer deluges in the form of floods, tsunamis and rising sea levels, while at the same time one in six people on the planet do not have access to safe drinking water.
From the amount of water we use to flush the toilet to the influence of human activity on the melting of the ice caps, the interplay between our behaviour and the amount of water available to us is complex. How is it, for example, that England is famously rainy, yet in the south-east of the country there are water shortages? It is this complexity that choreographer Subathra Subramaniam is exploring with dance, projections, sculpture and sound in her Sadhana Dance company's project Elixir.
I saw a preview at the South East Dance Studios in Hextable, UK. Elixir commences with three women kneeling in the centre of the stage with bowls before them. Each caresses her hair and skin, washing as she would daily to the sound of trickling, splashing and dripping. But as the water levels dwindle, the dancers' movements subtly change. I watched with increasing disquiet as their squabbles descended into a fight over the last remaining droplets. The dance goes on to explore the various ways in which we relate to water - as a utility, a source of play and a necessity.
Subramaniam became aware of the intricacies of our interactions with water while she was artist-in-residence at the Environment Institute of University College London. She has worked on numerous occasions with UCL climate scientist Mark Maslin, who she invited to talk to some of the Elixir team about climate change. Aware that climate change is a controversial topic, Maslin sees value in addressing it through the arts. "I don't believe that issues like climate change are communicated well as science because we're always hedging our bets - talking about needing more research," he says. "The arts provide a visceral, visual way of dealing with the issues."
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