March Dance 2025 – A festival of contemporary performance from March 10th – 23rd. 

Welcome to March Dance 2025, a festival of contemporary dance by Basement 21 in partnership with the Goethe Institut Chennai and the Alliance Francaise of Madras. Dedicated to investigating the many ways to define and understand the contemporary, the festival edition this year offers a range of experiences to the city of Chennai, from performances by unique and radical artists to film screenings, choreographic lab, talks and discussions. March Dance 2026 is supported this year jointly by the India Foundation for the Arts, Prakriti Foundation and Narthaki Global Media who have each come forward to support specific shows and programs. 

The events of this edition, listed here below, are shared between two venues, ie, the Alliance Francaise of Madras and the Goethe Institut Chennai. Join us for two weeks of colourful, thought-provoking experiences. 

 

AT ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE OF MADRAS 

March 10th: 6:30pm (auditorium) 

Poetic and Sonic structures (film and discussion) 

A conversation with musician/composer Maarten Visser around interpretation and the sound-image relationship based on a viewing of: 

Turtle Dreams by Meredith Monk 

Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G Major by Saburo Teshigawara 

Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters 

March 12th: 6:30pm (Auditorium) 

Body and History, a dynamic relation: perspectives on Kanhailal’s language of theatre (film and lecture) 

A viewing of excerpts from PEBET, a landmark performance created by Heisnam Kanhailal (Kalakshetra Manipur) and a lecture delivered on 50 years of PEBET by Professor Anuradha Kapur. Session moderated by dramaturg and visual artist, Pravin Kannanur. Film and lecture courtesy Kalakshetra Manipur and Nicky Chandam. 

March 15th: BODY AND SITE: Screening of Dance films (auditorium) 11:00 am – 1 pm 

A Slightly Curving Place (26’40”)  Padmini Chettur and Maarten Visser  

A transplanted archaeological site in Anupu is both the subject and object of this film. Within it, a single body is lost in scale to the vast landscape or filling the frame to propose itself. The lines, textures, and colours of the site come together to form a language that almost draws movement. There is a density of physicality that allows the stillness of the space to remain undisturbed, and yet appear palpably alive. 

SEDIMENT (13’44”) Preethi Athreya and Vijay Boothalingam 

Performer and choreographer Preethi Athreya and filmmaker Vijay Boothalingam come together to explore the salt pans of Marakkanam (Tamil Nadu) and reflect on the materiality of the place and its imprint on the body. In the encounter of earth, water and salt, the body is positioned to challenge its own power and stability, and to think, perhaps, about what we can consider eternal or transitory. 

AROUND THE CORNER (GOA) (35’10”)  Davis Freeman 

Around the corner (Goa) by performance artist Davis Freeman is a reflection on the multiple worlds happening simultaneously across the city of Panjim in Goa. It’s a dance that uses the city as its inspiration but whose abstract narrative is pushed forward by the relationship between two protagonists and their encounters with each other on the streets. With two screens we create the illusion of multiple street corners across the city. This film is an open door to create new connections from the first cries of the crows at sunrise to the crashing of the waves at sundown. Through the two characters, the life of a city exposes itself with its many faces of work, leisure, faith, duty, wonder, chaos and beauty, all at once interrupting each other and occasionally walking hand in hand. 

March 16th: 7pm – 9pm (Performance Double Bill supported by Prakriti Foundation) 

ROOTED, Dayita Nereyeth  

Rooted is an abstract dialogue between two unlikely companions – a bonsai plant and a dancer. The piece disentangles issues relevant to both beings: travelling or remaining local, pruning as aesthetic manipulation, interconnection, and the experience and effects of time. This work moves through questions of agency, power, and balance. Are plant and dancer equal? Can they breathe together? 

UNSAID, Parth Bhardwaj 

Unsaid looks at the presence of incomplete stories in our personal narratives. It locates the unspoken in the body and looks at internalisation as a tool to find an opening. Presented in the form of a movement monologue, it works with acceptance of fragmented, ignored thoughts as a place for surrender & transformation. 

 

AT THE GOETHE INSTITUT, CHENNAI 

March 14th: 7 PM (Performance) 

EMBODIED , Babina Chabungbam and Surjit Nongmeikapam. (Performance supported by Narthaki Global Media). 

Embodied is an exploratory dialogue between a contemporary dancer (Director) and a classical dancer (performer). They collectively delve into the history and techniques of Manipuri dance, a form that both of them embody. Manipuri dance is imbued with religio-cultural sense and sensibilities that are often conflicting at times. Through the medium of lecture-performance, the piece sheds these layers of Manipuri dance to find answers to what the dance form embodies or what the dancer embodies. Does the core of Manipuri dance lie in the content of the dances or in the traditional restraint and subdued eloquence? 

March 15th: 7 PM (Performance) 

LIFE-LESS-LIFE, Purnendra Meshram 

In Life-less-Life, movement artist and dancer, Purnendra Meshram searches within the architecture of the body to find the resonances of home and belonging. Moving between states of tension and expansion, at times questioning the stimulus of things he comes in contact with, Purnendra probes the in-betweenness of the body that is responding to memory as well as its corporeal experience of the present moment. 

March 17th : 6:30 PM (film and discussion) 

A Quest to Humanize, Chandralekha  

Drought and Rain, Ea Sola 

In the early 90’s two of Asia’s most important choreographers met at a women’s festival in Germany. A look at their work and the conversation led by Padmini Chettur. 

March 19th: 6:30 PM (film and discussion)  

I am a Demon, Pichet Klunchun 

Isadora Duncan, Jerome Bel 

How have contemporary choreographers employed dramaturgy to frame narratives of the past? Two seminal works from a Thai and a French choreographer through whom we’ll think about ways in which collaboration and knowledge sharing might shift the nature of practice. 

March 21st : 6:30 PM (film and discussion) DANCE AND DISABILITY 

An introduction into the work of Tanzbar Bremen and the Candoco dance company. 

March 22nd  : 7 PM (performance) 

meet//repeat Tanzbar Bremen in collaboration with Indian artists 

Dance theatre piece about meeting and getting to know each other. Bodies collide. Characters encounter one another. Souls connect. How? Which conventions play a role? Which behaviours repeat themselves? Are there rituals we want to question? Groups from different continents meet for the first time and process these encounters through an artistic journey. 

March 23rd  : 7 PM (film and performance, RAZAN WIRJOSANDJOJO, Indonesia) 

Film/ Sweating Rocks/ 3’21”  

Rock and river are presented as the connection that is intense, inseparable, and natural. The moving body is the catalyst between the two that raises questions about our own constitution as human beings within this world of intense complicity. 

Performance/ Soft Squares/ 30’ 

SOFTSQUARES explores the concept of the “soft square,” derived from the geometry of quadrilaterals, which represents humanity’s efforts to create order. This work reflects the evolution of rigid and visible patterns of order into softer, more subtle structures. Through a series of actions and movements interacting with objects and sounds, the work transitions from the clear-cut order of squares to soft, invisible forms, managing human interactions and decisions subconsciously.