ArtAsiaPacific: Intersections The Yellow Line Project Film Screenings

In November 2011 five pairs of contemporary dancers and filmmakers came together for a week in New Delhi to take part in an interdisciplinary residency called the Yellow Line Project (YLP). Named after the city’s first ever metro line, the YLP looked to investigate potential sites of interaction between dance, film and the city by workshopping, developing and filming multiple site-specific performances. Between October 19 and 28, the resultant five short collaborative films were screened outdoors in and around New Delhi, in Bengali market, Connaught Place, Khan Market, Nehru Place, Hauz Khas Village, Greater Kailash II market and Alaknanda market.

Swiss filmmaker Frederic Lombard and Indian choreographer Surjit Nongmeikapam took to a leafy quad near Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station to create Underline, whereas photographer and filmmaker Desmond Roberts and dancer Rajyashree Ramamurthi went exploring the built-up, concrete jungle of Nehru Place in In Shadows and Silence. Bangalore-based filmmaker Yashaswini R and Chennai-based dancer Preethi Athreya collaborated in Site Mapping, filmed in a partly-constructed hospital building in Hauz Khas Village. Duo Parimal Phadke and Dhanya Pilo also filmed their collaboration, Dudro, in Hauz Khas Village in an abandoned rickshaw yard. Finally, Attakalari dancer and choreographer Rakesh MPS and multimedia artist Asim Waqif explore, in their work Tarq, the confines of a dilapidated room, overlooking a yellow line metro station.

Although initially conceived as an independent experimental project to nurture the nascent medium of “screen dance” in India, the YLP returned in the lead up to Ignite (October 31 – November 4), a festival by the Gati Dance Forum. The YLP’s dance films that initially took shape in specific locations in the city engaged with the city’s wider architecture and introduce a larger audience to the world of contemporary performance.

Intersections: The Yellow Line Project Film Screenings was supported by the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Ministry of Culture, Japan Foundation, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, The British Council, South East Dance, Bharat Forge and Meeto Memorial Award.

The first site for the screenings is Nehru Place, a commercial IT market named after India’s first Prime Minister. The YLP Film Screening team sets up near Satyam Cinema and immediately a crowd gathers.

The screenings begin with Asim Waqif and Rakesh MPS’s film Tarq, which shows a young man grasping at the walls of a rectangular room covered in construction debris and wires. As the camera pans back we realize the broken-down room overlooks an open road and an above-ground metro line.

An image of a bicycle wheel from Desmond Roberts and Rajyashree Ramamurthi’s film In Silence and Shadows. This image is followed by shots of refuse and dogs in the morning, the bustling market during the day and the empty streets at the end of the night—all filmed in Nehru Place.

A still from the film Underline by Frederic Lombard and Surjit Nongmeikapam. A solitary male figure moves gracefully then begins to manically cartwheel across a concrete quad, strewn with dead leaves and detritus. Sounds from nearby Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station can be heard in the background and the screen zooms in on moving freight trains.

Another screening location, Hauz Khaz Village (HKZ), is an area which boasts kooky boutiques and artistic outlets. Here is one of HKV’s inner lanes.

Yashaswini R and Preethi Athreya’s Site Mapping, which was shot on a construction site for a hospital also in HKZ, screens above a shop front in the area. The film shows a woman wearing a yellow t-shirt moving her body across a dusty floor in a white-tiled room.

Khan Market is New Delhi’s most expensive retail location.

A crowd begins to form in an alleyway in Khan Market as a YLP screening is about to take place.

Trailers for the contemporary dance festival Ignite screened in between YLP’s short films. Here is one projected on the side of a public urinal in Khan Market, showing a line of dancers from the Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and Chitrasena Dance Company during their collaborative performance Samhara.

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