Downtime with Aditi Mangaldas

DOWNTIME - interviews with dance artists & arts leaders, talking about dance & the arts

In this episode Lou spent some Downtime with Aditi Mangaldas, a leading dancer and choreographer in the classical Indian dance form of Kathak, based in Delhi, India. Aditi runs her own rep company - Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company – The Drishtikon Dance Foundation. It is here that she experiments with what she calls ‘contemporary danced based on Kathak’. Her productions, for example Inter_rupted and Within, have toured the world to great acclaim.

Lou zoomed into Aditi's life while she was in the countryside outside of Bombay towards the end of June 2020. They had a far-reaching conversation that covered the Covid situation there, the uber-difficult task of supporting artists when the sector itself is not organised , and the digital work she is creating to raise funds to support the artistic community. They also talked about Aditi’s relationship with classical Kathak, what her style of 'contemporary dance based on Kathak' means, what her processes look like and why she turned down the celebrated National Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2013. Quick fire questions were, on this occasion, provided by Aditi and Lou’s mutual friend and collaborator Aakash Odedra.
http://www.aditimangaldasdance.com/index.php