People have an immense capacity to absorb what is uncomfortable: Mandeep Raikhy

Remember — 'Queen Size' was first performed before Section 377 was repealed in 2018. You were invited to enter the bedroom of two men and witness their intimacy. The dancers played out lovemaking for 2.5 hours while audiences were free to enter or leave the space, even move around. It was staged at different locations — from bedrooms of people, a church (in Belgium), a law chamber, a school in South India, private auditoriums to the conventional stage. Latecomers at people's residences could see it from the back or peep through the window — lending it a sense of voyeurism and raising the question of censorship.

Even as he started his new project 'Secular India Project' during the peak of the Pandemic, and has been travelling across the country in an old car for two years now with two banners in English and Hindi asserting 'Secular India'; 'Queen Size' continues to get invited, not just in the metros but also towns like Lucknow, during the recently concluded Mahindra Sanatkada Festival helmed by Madhavi Kuckreja and Askari Naqvi.

With more than 100 shows across 30 Indian cities and other places in the world, Raikhy says that while it began as a challenge to Section 377, he was quite certain that people would be open to receiving it. "We must not forget that people have an immense capacity to absorb what is uncomfortable," he tells IANS.

The production, which reminded people of their own intimacies (or lack of), asserted that homosexual love is not very different from heterosexual one, the Managing Director of Gati Dance Forum remembers that during many productions, people walked out during moments they felt extremely uncomfortable. "Some of them came back after some time, some — never. I have maintained a journal of all kinds of responses, an archive…"

For this Dance Theatre pass out from Trinity Laban (UK), who has since 2010 created several dance works including 'Inhabited Geometry' (2010), A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae (2013) and 'Anatomy of Belief' (2019), it was important that 'Queen Size' travelled to smaller cities across the country. "It was paramount that this conversation did not sit only in the theatre. It had to cut across all exclusions — social and cultural. I am glad it is reaching across the urban and rural divide and economic strata. This production has also enabled us to create a network of cultural spaces," says the artist who currently teaches at Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD) at its Masters in Performance Practice (Dance).

Adding that it takes him two-three years to arrive at new work and multiple factors come into play, he says, "What are my concerns, what is my body saying? But most of all, is there some discomfort? If yes, then I must go ahead."

His upcoming work explores how artefacts need not be frozen in time but can be evolving. Looking at the 'Tribhanga' and observing if it can be experienced anew, he says, "What can we bring to the image now? For example, can we queer it?" (AS/IANS)

Keywords: (Mandeep Raikhy, Section 377, homosexual, Secular India Project)