Joshinder Chaggar is the curator and director of Devi, a dance performance hosted by Studio J Dance and Multicultural Arts Victoria as part of Emerge In Yarra 2018. The show runs 20–22 July 2018.
Devi is an extremely personal show.
I lived in Karachi for ten years, from 2007 to 2017. And I’ve been part of a Sufi group since around 2008. We meditate, chant and have unending conversations about how we live, our petty tyrants, our mirrors; but most of all, about death.
‘Death before you die’ is a phrase I have heard thrown around for years. It’s a Sufi teaching, a reminder to strive to learn what you would be shown at death while you still have time to make use of this knowledge [1]. As Rabia Basri, an 8th century Sufi mystic and saint, wrote [2]:
Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts
of our body is
death.So beautiful appeared my death—knowing who then I would kiss,
I died a thousand times before I died.“Die before you die,” said the Prophet Muhammad.
Have wings that feared ever
touched the Sun?I was born when all I once
feared—I could
love.
And on a superficial level I’d thought yeah, I get what that means. But I didn’t, not really. Not in the way you fully comprehend something in your body, your soul.
In May 2017 I had to leave Karachi, because I could no longer renew my visa. It was an unwilling exit. Karachi was the place where I found myself as a person and as an artist, and leaving felt like a death.
It was the end of a life: one where I had experienced many extreme seasons, and was shocked that it was all over so soon. And I thought, perhaps this is how one feels at the moment of death. And I started thinking about my regrets, my behaviour, what could I have done better. It was very confronting. I realized that I had spent the past ten years at war with myself. And I felt grateful that I got to ‘die’, I got to be ‘re-born’, and do it all again.
I get to re-design a life all over again.
So Devi is a story of constant dying and rebirth. I shed one layer, reveal another. And the process starts again. And yes, after much meditation, many dark moments, a lot of cleaning, with the relentless pursuit of happiness, comes laughter, but only briefly. Because the process starts yet again.
In the show, my character is called Hajra, the traveller. In the first phase of this show’s development, this was originally a 20-minute solo performed in complete silence (except for a monologue) and it was titled ‘She Flies with the Swallows’. Swallows are constantly migrating; they are the bird of freedom. And my show is about an emotional migration, from a place of trauma to freedom.
I have been relentlessly working towards freedom in everything I do since 2014. My dance style itself is very experimental, and the icing on the cake is that I perform it in silence! I did over 30 shows in Karachi, touring schools and universities, and after each performance would discuss the question: What is real freedom?
Now as you can imagine, experimental dance in Karachi—not very popular! Dancing in silence—death! A different kind of death, but death nonetheless.
But I made a very important decision as an artist with this show: since what I am exploring itself is freedom, I must persevere with my vision of artistic expression. And the audience does not have to like it.
The more I embraced it, the crazier my performances became. And with each show it evolves. The more challenging an audience, the longer I hold my pauses. It’s exhilarating.
By the time Devi came into my consciousness, I had personally gone through a lot of transformation. In ‘She Flies with the Swallows’, Hajra is migrating from one place to the next. But as life taught me recently, as soon one layer comes off, you are confronted with another, deeper layer. This led to the second phase of this show, what is now called ‘Devi’, a collaboration with Jaya Karan and Parvyn Kaur (both mesmerising, talented performers in their own right).
Jaya represents Kali, the goddess of death. A beautiful symbol of death, one to be embraced. She represents a portal through which one can ascend to one’s higher self. The higher self, in turn, is symbolised by the Falcon, played by Parvyn.
When the three of us decided to collaborate, we decided to use our own individual styles to portray our different characters. Jaya is trained in Bharatnatyam, which is a perfect tool for death and Kali. Parvyn is a vocalist as well as a dancer, and she plays multiple instruments; her voice calls out to remind us in our darkest moments to not give up hope.
My favourite kind of art is honest art. When people share openly, it is healing in itself. And though the subject matter may be dark, the exploration of it makes it very cathartic. In trying to re-create a brand-new life, I realised how impossible it is to let the old personality die, to unlearn the old self. Even with all the awareness, I found it impossible to break old habits and do things differently. To let go fully, to not be visited by memories, regrets, by trauma…
Devi ends with a Rumi quote I love; a reminder of the beauty of continual effort, of continual flying, continual migrating: Come, come, whoever you are. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
1. From Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman and Robert Frager
2. According to Wikipedia, much of the poetry attributed to Rabia is of unknown origin, so it’s difficult to say for certain whether she wrote this poem.
All images © Studio J Dance/Jaya Karan
About the author
Joshinder has been dancing, choreographing and teaching since 2002. One of the first Bollywood dance instructors in Melbourne, she released a ‘Get Fit with Bollywood Dance’ DVD nationwide in 2006. Joshinder later moved to Pakistan, where she worked for ten years in Karachi and was considered one of the leading choreographers in the country. Since 2009, her Bollywood dance classes were a constant sell-out. Her work evolved when she joined the National Academy of Performing Arts (NAPA) to teach ‘Movement for Actors’. She worked with acting students of all ages, and helped them to connect with their authentic self through the body. As well as working extensively in Theatre, TV and Films, Joshinder has toured and performed at numerous venues and schools in Karachi, as well as internationally in Germany, Malaysia, Dubai, Australia and India.