A Rose Arose Arose & Air Born
South Bank Centre, London

Since 1996 I had worked with Swarup Menon, a dedicated Bharata Natyam dancer since the age of three and now aged six years old, and my similarly aged son Ezra on various works including  An Angel called Gravity (Ezra’s title) at the ICA in 1997 in which Swarup danced to a text written and read live by Ezra.

A Rose Arose Arose and Air Born  were two South Bank commissions including Swarup and several more dancers and musicians.  In A Rose Arose Arose  Swarup danced, distributing petals from red roses attached to helium balloons which made them light enough to float into the air whilst he danced on petal covered grass.

In Air Born, the rhythms from the Bharata Natyam drummers intersected with the drones accompanying a whirling dervish dancer twirling with red ribbons attached to his head from many of the poles and balconies around the South Bank. The animated ribbons gave a huge breadth to the event drawing the surrounding architectural space, the river, the bridges and the audience into the whirling centre of the performance.