A strong smell of incense fills the room. The lights dim and the piece begins. Six visibly distressed performers walk out of the shadows to the rhythmic beat of Simone Giacomini’s musical composition. They wander around cautiously, taking small, uncertain steps as they explore this strange, new environment. Despite their different backgrounds, they appear unusually uniform in their neutral grey clothing. Though their brief, awkward glances at each other suggest they are unacquainted.
“Do we dare to trust in a world of mistrust?” That was the question on Kalpana Raghuraman’s mind when she created Trust. Raghuraman has been the artistic director and choreographer of the Hague-based contemporary dance company Kalpanarts since 2015. With the company, she merges Indian traditional dance styles with urban influences to address contemporary social issues. The result? An intricately choreographed wake-up call about the dynamics of our ever-diversifying society.
The cast of Trust consists of five dancers who are guided by the entrancing voice of Spanish singer Paloma Lazaro Arteaga. The whole production reminded me of a form of ceremonial dance with Arteaga’s chanting adding to the ritualistic atmosphere. The dancers performed sacred gestures (mudras), facial expressions (bhava), and rhythmic footwork in a highly stylised piece that often imitated the movement of animals and elements of nature. Throughout the piece, the dancers broke out into a series of duets illustrating how trust can be established, broken, and rebuilt, reflecting how we form relationships in the modern world.
A particular moment that stood out to me was when the six performers sat together facing the audience and began to distort their faces into extremely unsettling expressions of fear, sorrow, anger, horror, and ambivalence. These powerful emotions are typically related to the experience of moving to a new place and adapting to its traditions and customs.
Trust embodies the essence of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s assertion that “each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.” Through artistic expression, Trust invites us to reflect on our shared humanity in order to culturally coexist in our increasingly multicultural society. Eva Lakeman at Korzo Theatre in The Hague on 13th October 2024
Kalpanarts’ Trust continues on tour until 18th January 2025
