return

An entire year has gone by since the premiere of 'rehab' and we have performed it for two other festivals, extended it to 20 minutes and will be performing it at the end of this month for the Georgetown Festival. Rathi and I are beyond grateful for such blessings and never imagined any of this during our creative process. 'rehab' was really about healing ourselves and giving us an outlet to pour our emotions into and give us the therapy that we much needed through dance. Both of us were at very interesting cross roads not knowing where we were going to end up.

One year has gone by and so many things have changed, for the better. Rathi has a full time job as a dance teacher at Fairview International School, the only school I studied in from the age of 4 to 16. I have been fortunate to facilitate workshops, attend workshops, dance with different people, perform in different places and keeping sane.

One year has gone by and Rathi and I have created a new work. It was a challenge no doubt, the process was long and there were many times where we had absolutely no idea where the piece was going and what we wanted it to look like. But we started a few months ago, with small ideas like the colour of the piece, the mood, the ambience, the basic structure and feel of the work. We knew we wanted text to be spoken but we didn't know what to say. We knew what we wanted to say but we didn't know how to say it. All we knew was that if there was text the only person to say it was Sukania Venugopal.

We also knew that we did not want this piece to look like 'rehab'. 'rehab' being light, white, internal, peaceful. The next work needed to be the complete opposite. It needed to be dark, it needed to look like we have progressed and it needed to look like we were stronger. So then it came to naming the work. Naming a work that hasn't even been made yet and I came across the word 'return'. And I came across several definitions of the word 'return'. I ran it by Rathi and we felt that it seemed apt.

We wanted to say thank you. We wanted to show our gratitude. We wanted to say that we are ok now.

'return' has finally been completed and we are beyond excited to share it with you. It premieres next week on the 4th of September as part of Program B in Tepak Tari. I really hope you will be able to catch it.