For the past decades, the Sutra Foundation, led by legendary dancer/choreographer Ramli Ibrahim, has been working on familiarising Malaysian audiences with the beauty of Indian dance, especially Odissi and revolutionising it.

Now, Sutra Foundation is focusing its efforts towards promoting contemporary modern dance, using the upcoming Sutra Dance Festival — themed Tarikan! this year — as its main platform.

While the festival will remain a showcase for Odissi, headlining this year’s festival will be Transfigurations, a staging of two contemporary modern works entitled She Ra and Panjara.

She Ra and Panjara are choreographed respectively by Kalpana Raghuraman from the Korzo theatre in The Hague and Rathimalar Govindarajoo, known as Rathi, who has been dancing with the Sutra Dance Theatre since she was a little girl and even trained and toured with the prestigious Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company in London for a number of years.

Both She Ra and Panjara delve into the ideas of archetypes of mythology and how their avatars continue to perpetuate in our lives today through various transfigurations, staying with Tarikan!’s theme of celebrating the continuum of dance, both the modern and traditional.

Kalpana was commissioned by Ramli to choreograph She Ra. After much thought she chose to weave a piece that was based on Indian mythology, born from her own interest in the subject matter. In fact, she even has a Masters in cultural anthropology.

“When I was young I felt a lot of characters from Indian mythology were like superheroes, and that was my source of inspiration. The qualities that they express and embody, and how we can be inspired by that and find that inside of ourselves,” Kalpana says, adding that She Ra was her own personal superhero as a child.

“She was to me like a Western animated version of (the Hindu goddess) Kali or Durga... I also invited the dancers (of the show) to look into what mythological character they resonate with personally”.

Rathi, who choreographs the second bill Panjara (which means “cage” in Sanskrit), is dancing in She Ra. “The show is about a timeline of women evolving to the modern,” explains Rathi, who will also be dancing in Panjara. Through dance, the show explores how women are oppressed, despite their roles in age-old myths, where they are glorified and identified with creation and protection.

Rathi’s Panjara features something non-typical of an Indian dance performance: a large steel cage that acts as a prop. Even the music will be different. “The composer, Edwin Anand, is a very close friend of mine and we decided to use a very Malaysian concept of music as well as how Malaysian women are evolving and connect the two,” says the dancer.

Trained as a dancer, Panjara marks a major milestone for Rathi as a choreographer, given that it is such a substantial production. She’s done some choreography in the past, like Rebel Without a Cause, a duet with Suhaili Micheline that was nominated Best Choreography at the 2009 BOH Cameronian Awards.

“To receive such satisfaction of making something your own and people appreciating it — that is an amazing feeling,” says Rathi on choreographing. For Rathi, Panjara is also a way for her to try to attain a middle ground to connect two worlds together: the Western world of music and the Eastern world of dance.

So in a way, Panjara will be a showcase of not just the evolution of women, but also of music and dance. Transfigurations will be the only contemporary modern dance show in Tarikan!, but is very promising in terms of its content and artistic direction.

Both She Ra and Panjara promise to take the audience on a journey through time and back, exploring mythology and the evolution of women. Additionally, these shows will also be world premieres, and there is a high chance these show will be taken on tour after this - all the more reason to catch them this time around.

This article appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on August 27, 2012.