Echoes of a remote conflict in an encounter between contemporary dance and bharata natyam

In January 2017, the Italian Ministry for Arts and Culture promoted an initiative (“MigrArti–spettacolo”) for projects promoting an “intercultural dialogue”, especially with “second generation” young migrants. Simona Bertozzi, an Italian contemporary dance choreographer, proposed a project involving the Tamil bharata natyam teacher Sharmini Kavithasan and sixteen children of the “Associazione Unione dei Tamil d’Italia”. The project won the 2017 MigrArti-performance award. The 40-minute choreography, a combination of the two teachers’ dance styles, was staged in Bologna and Pistoia in public spaces and in a theatre. After each performance, there was a debate to illustrate the process of creating the performance. Since the migrants involved in the project were Tamils from Sri Lanka, the final performance also included revisited choreographic fragments of their repertoire (both of kuttu and bharata natyam dances) illustrating the civil conflict between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the Sri Lankan government (1983-2009). As a consequence of this choice, the Italian audience encountered a dance technique in which a faraway war was represented and at the same time, the debate following the performance gave Tamils the opportunity to talk about the conflict and its consequences.