Around 60 people are chatting and laughing together in a community hall in Belgrave, Leicester. Then Bollywood music begins to play and everyone turns their focus to instructors Jayna Patel and Laura Bryan, who lead from the stage. With bodies swaying, arms fluttering, the group loosen up in readiness for an hour of joyful dancing rooted in storytelling.
For the project Mehek Live, local dance organisations Aakash Odedra Company and Moving Together are collaborating to run events with 450 older people from residential care homes, community groups and health settings. Workshops like this one give participants an opportunity to talk about their experiences of life and love, combining dance with personal stories. These will then influence Mehek, a new work by contemporary Kathak dancers Aakash Odedra and Aditi Mangaldas.
For Odedra, 39, dance lends itself to storytelling. “As far as my conscious memories span, dance has been an equal kind of language for me. I felt like what couldn’t be described in a sentence could be felt in one gesture and one kind of movement,” he says. His grandmother, who raised him, would transfix him each night with tales of her life, leading to Odedra’s lifelong fascination with stories from older people.
“I think it’s really important to exchange experiences, and through that create a living embodiment of them,” he says. The workshops are about “allowing people the time and the space to acknowledge people and say, ‘Your lives, your experiences are important.’”
At the workshop, Bryan reads the poem Main Tenu Phir Milangi by Amrita Pritam, translated by Akhil Katyal. One woman says it reminds her of a dear friend, while another says it makes her think of her husband, who died five years ago, with its line: “I do not know how or where but I will meet you again.” Bryan and Patel then lead a dance to this poem – a hand on the heart signifying meeting again, arms wide for the rays of the sun.
Chris Sergeant started dancing with Moving Together 11 years ago, and has taken part in the workshops since they began in September. She first got involved with dance for exercise, but soon realised it meant much more. “It evolved into something amazing that I never thought I would be doing at my age,” she says, smiling. “If people say, ‘Oh, you’re retired now, what do you do?’ I say that I dance. And being able to share with the group has created a closer bond.”
Another participant, Jasu Mistry, says: “This is something different for us. I love dance, and it’s helped with my mental health.” She has found using poetry and dance together is a way to express herself. “Everybody loved it today,” she says.
Sergeant and Mistry are part of a group of around 35 people who are developing a separate piece which draws on the workshops and will be performed at Sadler’s Wells’ Elixir festival in April. “We’re part of the creative process, and our emotions, our feelings and our experiences are valued,” says Sergeant.
The main Mehek performance centres on the relationship between a mature woman and a younger man. Odedra was interested in the taboos around this, and how dance can reflect a complex, intimate bond. An image came to him of clouds sending a message to the earth via rain, which he developed into a metaphor for the love between opposing elements. The use of mirrors on stage creates an effect of the earth and sky joining in union.
“People normally say a dancer’s life is over by 35, and here you have Aditi Mangaldas [who will be 64 when Mehek premieres] defying the odds,” says Odedra. “I have to prepare myself when I work with her; she wiped the floor with me. It’s not just her physicality but also her experience, her presence when she moves on stage.” Mehek will be Mangaldas’s first duet in her 50-year career, making it all the more powerful.
Odedra is conscious of the power and vulnerability of lived experience – he talks of the importance of holding space for people, of appreciating the honesty and emotion. “Stories have stayed with me, they’ve always been part of my palette,” he says. “It’s not just the stories of people in Mehek Live, but every experience of elder people I have come across, and weaving them together to create something that becomes universal.”
• Mehek is at Peepul Centre, Leicester, 4-7 April. Then touring.
