Day: January 4, 2022

Bow­ing to the Unknown

Before leav­ing, we kissed each oth­er; the rit­u­al of a more or less con­sent­ed farewell. When Mathilde approached Anil, he pre­sent­ed his cheek. She asked, sur­prised: “How do they do that in India?” The dancer clasped his hands on his chest and greet­ed her in response to a ques­tion for­mu­lat­ed in a lan­guage he did not under­stand. The ges­ture sur­prised her; or per­haps it embar­rassed her, see­ing it as a sign of mod­esty and a hes­i­ta­tion in the face of an invi­ta­tion to kiss. Anil had slipped behind a famil­iar ges­ture, a ges­ture inher­it­ed from his thou­sand-year-old India, he per­formed to greet the stranger. Yet, both of them want­ed to be strangers, hang­ing on a ges­ture they could not finish..

Richard Trem­blay, fol­low­ing a res­i­dence at the Cen­tre choré­graphique de Belfort (France, 1998) with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Anil Kumar and Guil­laume Lemas­son. Pho­to: Kalashas.