Dancer, activist and performer Mallika Sarabhai has shaped a career that refuses to fit into a single frame; it is always expanding, always in motion. In Hyderabad for an Indo-Italian collaborative performance, she reflects on changing cities, changing memories and the nostalgia. Her troupe’s performance, backed by Telangana Tourism, will be staged at Shilpakala Vedika on November 21.
The performance, she says, is called ‘Meanwhile, Elsewhere’. “It is inspired by Italio Calvino’s book Invisible Cities, a favourite book of mine from the time I was 18. The person who has created the show is the artistic director of Darpana called Yadavan Chandran. We have been co-creating for over 25 years, and I have been telling him for years how exciting and relevant this book is; how it can be interpreted in so many ways and inspire. And yet, he never got around to reading it. Then, on November 1, his birthday, he walked into a bookshop in Thiruvananthapuram, and the entire display was Invisible Cities. So here we are,” she says.
