Synopsis:

Two years after he last presented Breaking Boundaries in Mumbai, his experiment in ``exploring space and body,`` as part of his mentoring of street children, Astad Deboo returns with a brand new work.
Created in commemoration of the 150th birth anniversary of poet and Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, titled ``Interpreting Tagore`, Deboo works once again with many of the same street children. But where his earlier work introduced the dancers to basics of focus, balance and the capabilities of the body, this one lifts them to new levels of achievement.
Interpreting Tagore uses world music, movement and alternative theatre forms, like puppets and masks, as well as poetry recitation, to create the quintessential Astad Deboo experience at its multi-faceted best. Today, Astad Deboo`s name is synonymous with Contemporary Indian Dance, a style that he pioneered at a time when innovation in Indian dance was not easily accepted. His stunning signature style is characterised by intense focus, concentration and technical virtuosity, alongwith a distinctively Indian aesthetic of evoking rasa. Even his most abstract dance has a lot of feeling in it and reaches his audience with profound emotional engagement. This multifaceted artist`s accomplished solo, group and collaborative choreography includes his work with the Manipuri thang-ta (martial arts), and pungcholam drum dancers in Rhythm Divine. His humanistic social vision has inspired his creative choreography over the past twenty years with the deaf-first with The Action Players (Dancing Dolphins) in Kolkata, and then with The Clarke School for the Deaf. His choreography entitled ContraPosition with the Clarke School has travelled across India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Australia. The Astad Deboo Foundation, formed in 2002, aims to provide creative training to both the able and the disabled, and to facilitate the artistic development of talented deaf dancers.