Go slow: Kathak dancer Tanveer Alam gets vulnerable in Leher

Dressed in an indigo ikkat kurta and brown pants, Tanveer Alam moves across the room, rehearsing to the melancholic notes of a sarangi (an Indian stringed instrument akin to a violin) and the staccato beats of a tabla. 

Keeping in time with the slow speed known as the vilambit laya of classical Hindustani music, he stretches upwards and across, using his spine and arms to carry him through before gliding diagonally, his feets crossing and stamping. He undulates in a movement called the meend, twisting his torso while unfurling his arms and pivoting on his feet. The movements may seem languorous but you can see the control in Alam's motions, his tapered fingers trembling with the effort.

Alam is practicing for his first full length solo work called Leher (Waves), which stages at the Aki Studio (at the Daniels Spectrum artscape venue) on June 2 and 3 and explores the spine as the foundation of movement, and ideas of slowness. The work is based on the Indian classical dance form of Kathak and deals with how a body arrives at a state of quietude.

As a child learning Kathak, Alam was fast and fervent. Growing up in a Bangladeshi home, surrounded by South Asian arts and culture, Alam had always been captivated by semi-classical music and dance. He started training in the classical dance form when he was 9, as a result of hanging around the French language and South Asian cultural classes organized by his mother at a Montreal community service space. Well-known Kathak dancer Sudeshna Maulik taught Kathak in that space, and noticed Alam watching from the sidelines for several months.

"She said, 'If you're going to be here, you might as well get up and join.' And I was like, 'Yes! No problem.' I loved it," says Alam. 

By the time he was 13, Alam had fallen deeper in love with the dance. He'd watched a peer's performance at Kathak Mahotsav, an annual gathering that used to be organized by veteran Toronto-based dancer Rina Singha. The choreography of that dancer's guru Sandhya Desai mesmerized him, and he told his parents of his desire to learn from Desai. Throughout high school, Alam's life was split between Montreal and Mississauga, where Desai lived.

"The first thing I learned from her was thaat, which is the slowest thing one can learn," says Alam, laughing. Part of the traditional Kathak repertoire, thaat shows the ways in which a dancer can stand or present themselves onstage. "I was one of those dancers who had really fast footwork and lots of chakkars (spins) and could dance everything at 300 [beats per minute]. And she was like, "Beta (son). Calm down. Sthir ho ja. (Keep still). She often said, "Kathak is a river that flows. You need to channel your energy." We started at 60 bpm.

"She really changed something in me, and I really started enjoying vilambit laya."

During high school in Montreal, Alam also enrolled in a dance program and trained in other forms such as Western contemporary dance, tap, flamenco and lots of ballet. After graduating from the Toronto Dance Theatre in 2019, he pursued dance as a career.

At first, Alam had thought he'd need to take a day job and dance on the side. Even when he started to think about being a full-time dancer, Alam mentally prepared himself to work in Western contemporary or other dance forms. Over the last few years, however, the narrative of what can get staged on Canadian stages has shifted, he says.

"My training in Western contemporary dance has offered me a more widespread understanding. To see Kathak in relation to other things — and note that all of these ways of working have their own history, and their own context and lineages. And sometimes they can meet, and then one can make choices," he says. 

Over the years, Alam has sought out opportunities to collaborate with fellow artists working in Indian classical and other dance traditions, as well as training with Kathak luminaries such as Nahid Siddiqui, the late Pandit Birju Maharaj and Kumudini Lakhia. Alam feels particularly drawn to the groundbreaking work by Lakhia, a pioneer who brought about a fundamental change in Kathak's dance vocabulary. 

"I think it was in 2009 — I was about 10 or 11 — that [Lakhia] brought Atah Kim, which was a production she toured in Canada, and brought it to Montreal … It blew my mind. First of all, to see so many Kathak bodies on stage, I'd never seen that before. The kind of clarity, the use of space, the lyrical quality, the strength — that show to me is still very evocative," says Alam. 

He felt similarly moved when saw a piece choreographed by his second teacher Desai, and performed by Toronto Kathak dancers Reshmi Chetram and Parul Gupta. He could see how that lineage of Kathak was being carried on in Canada through Desai, who herself was one of Lakhia's first batch of students.

"My desire is to be able to add to that line of thinking," he says. "I think people forget that there has been an expansive amount of research that's been done within these classical forms, which speak to contemporary expansions." 

Leher is the first one of such contributions, then. It started off as a pandemic project, supported by a residency with Anandam Dance Theatre. The world slowing down and dancers performing on social media platforms got Alam thinking deeply about his own practice, as well dancers working with digital media. 

Given the subtleties of dancing at a slow speed, Alam looked to digital media as a way to amplify his movements. Leher includes projected images of Alam that mirror his motions, highlighting minute details. However, the process has also given Alam pause to consider his relationship with his body.

"It taught me about how I thought about my body being filmed, and what that meant to me. I think I'm somebody who feels very comfortable on stage. I feel very at home. In some ways, I also feel very vulnerable," he says. "I understand that I don't have a body that's typically a dancer's body … [Working on Leher] gave me a bit of grace. Of being like, 'You know what? This is how my body is.'

"I think the last three years — all that time I had alone in the studio — really brought home to me: What does dance do for me? It's a sense of release. A sense of calmness. A sense of settlement. It grounds me."