KDC featured in Coll!de Festival May 2016
May 8, 2016Kamala Devam Company’s apprentice dancer, Kamila Lewandowska, will be joining the company on a permanent basis in August 2016. Lewandowska, performed an excerpt of the solo Babushka vs. Renaissance Man, this past May at Stratford Circus as part of the university’s Coll!de Festival 2016. Creating this piece was a unique challenge for Devam, as she worked with a dancer whose dance language she is not trained in and entered unfamiliar territory devising a solo on a body that was not her own. The solo turned out to be a fascinating investigation into the meeting points between the movement cultures of popping and Kalaripayattu, a South Indian martial art. Kinaesthetically and culturally, they each have their own relationship to “the battle”. Inside this, the piece marks the struggle and liberation in the performative psyche of a dancer. Bonnie-Lee Hale another placement with Kamala Devam Company, aided Devam as Choreographic Assistant during weekly rehearsals, while the third placement, Marketing Assistant Bethan Rainforth, recorded the creation process to share with the world over social media. Ben Henry Edwards, notable London multi-instrumentalist and composer, created an original score for the piece. Devam is proud to add Lewandowska to the company come August 2016 in one of her first dance jobs out of university. They will expand Babushka vs. Renaissance Man into a 10 minute piece for inclusion in KDC’s Rich Mix evening Ankusha and Other Mysteries on Sept 3rd, 2016.
