Kiran Kumar is a Singapore-based independent interdisciplinary artist whose practice is dance-centric. About a decade ago, Kiran took an audio-guided walk around Little India conceived by spell#7, a Singapore performance company whose site-specific, environmental audio works weave history, culture and politics into everyday life. Titled Desire Paths, a voice from an earpiece guided Kiran through the landmarks, streets and people of the historic neighbourhood. The experience of simultaneously being both audience and performer has stayed with him since.

In 2016, Kiran responds to the audio archives of spell #7’s Desire Paths in an investigation of the performer’s and audience’s positions in dance. In this instalment of The Vault, in conjunction with the Dance Nucleus ELEMENT residency programme, Kiran seeks to challenge the convention of “spectators watching dancers perform” through four configurations of movement, text and image: an essay-performance, an audio-installation, an exhibition and a workshop. Together, the four configurations may be seen as a curatorial experiment in presenting dance beyond the frame of performance.

Essay Performance

This process of actively seeking subtlety has thrown open some fundamental, critical questions on pedagogy, aesthetics and philosophy in dance. This essay-performance takes the form of a reading of an open letter addressed to Kelucharan Mahapatra, the late Odissi guru and a pioneer of the dance’s reconstruction, with the intention of relating the aesthetic and the critical dimensions of my journey.

- Kiran Kumar

Kiran performed Dear Dead Dancer on 2 July at the Centre 42 Black Box and 4 July at the Dance Nucleus Studio. The Centre 42 performance was video-recorded. The video recording is accompanied by documentation of the projection slides, text, and images of the performance.

Interdisciplinary artist Kiran Kumar performed Dear Dead Dancer on 2 July 2016 at the Centre 42 Black Box. This video recording is accompanied by documentation of the projection slides, text, and images of the performance. Dear Dead Dancer is one element of the multi-part presentation.

Documentation of the Essay Performance, Dear Dead Dancer

Audio Installation

Yet, the notion of ‘presenting subtle dancing’ inheres a delicate contradiction. This audio installation addresses such a contradiction. It is situated in a theatre black box and it engages a structural set-up for a performance. But there is no dance. There are a few audio recordings, placed on fewer seats; each different from the other, yet all pointing to a common absence.

- Kiran Kumar

The audio installation There is no dance was presented in the Centre 42 Black Box from 2-6 July 2016. Members of the public were free to listen to any of the MP3 devices laid out in the space.

“Please close your eyes I” Deepika Mallya's Album

You may listen to the MP3 tracks in the player below.

2-6 July 2016

Photographs of the Audio Installation, "There is no dance"

The audio installation "There is no dance" was presented in the Centre 42 Black Box from 2-6 July 2016.

Photograph of the audio installation for The Vault: Distilling The Dance.

Exhibition

Expanded Writing

Through this journey I have attempted to unpack the aesthetics of subtle dancing through a practice of ‘expanded writing’. Reading is also fundamental to a writing practice. So this exhibition serves as a library of reading and writing materials that are structured into five strands. These strands may seem to rest as static references on the book shelf, but transform through continuous, dynamic intersections on the reading table. Each visitor may have a unique access point in to materials in this library.

- Kiran Kumar

The exhibition Expanded Writing was held in the Centre 42 Library from 2-6 July 2016.

2-6 July 2016

Photographs of the Exhibition, "Expanded Writing"

The exhibition "Expanded Writing" was held in the Centre 42 Library from 2-6 July 2016.

Photograph of the exhibition for The Vault: Distilling The Dance.

Resources

Reading Materials

#1: A BRIEF HISTORY OF SPELL#7

#2: DESIRE PATHS & OTHER SPELL#7 AUDIO WORKS

#3: KIRAN KUMAR

Programme Handout

The programme handout for The Vault: Distilling the Dance

Reflections

Programme Framework

I appreciated the flexibility of the programme to adapt to my concurrent research residency, although The Vault itself is not conceived as a residency.
Despite admittedly being a little conceptually dense, I also appreciated the effort made through repeated dialogue to understand and articulate the terms of my response to the Spell #7 text.
I have since also been in dialogue with the other two Vault artists, Lee Mun Wai and Shantini Manokara on their ideas and processes for this programme. For me this has allowed a comparative understanding of each of our angles of ‘response to text’.

[Aside] In light of these dialogues (2 & 3 above), I share my present reflection/analysis on the notion of ‘text’.
This has helped me better understand my own instinctive way of response within my artistic practice,
as well as draw a relation to other ways of thinking. This has also been instrumental in shaping my
future project methodology.

On Text/s
The metaphor is that of a book.
The core is its ‘text’, the primary text.
The book also carries secondary text, that is equally manifest as the primary, yet peripheral to the
core. This is the ‘para-text’: the blurb, synopsis, list of contents, preface, foreword, and other textual
material supplied by editors, printers, publishers of the ecosystem.
Tertiary text tends towards being more subtle in its manifestation than primary and secondary texts.
These are ‘con-text’ and ‘sub-text’ that are more implied than stated; that are manifest between a
collective readership and the primary and secondary texts.
There is considerable reason to posit the existence of further quaternary text, that is increasingly
more subtle than tertiary text due to subjective variances between individual readers. This may well
be her/his personal ‘pre-text’.
The reader’s access to the book is rendered complex through an engagement with any or all of these
textual layers in isolation or simultaneity.
The reader’s response to the book may equally range in subtlety of manifestation, from pensive
pause to proud protest.

Presentation

I appreciated the open-ness to varied presentation formats, as well as to utilise and integrate multiple spaces of the centre towards the presentation.
The willingness to co-operate with Dance Nucleus on the presentation was also great.

The Artists

Kiran Kumar
As an artist, Kiran’s interest is in the making of reflexive spaces for people to inhabit. These are spaces for meditation as much as they are spaces for thought; these are spaces for action as much as for observation. His intention is for these spaces to be inviting, insightful and somehow infinite. Such spaces are activated through his experience of dance, of music, of poetry and of light. With a desire to make such or similar spaces accessible to others, he often makes configurations of images, objects, actions and text, which are open to visitors.

Part of the craft of making reflexive spaces, has been a practice of ‘expanded writing’. The present focus of his writing practice is with two forms: the ‘axiom’ and the ‘anecdote’. While they are each terse and economical in their own right, between the axiomatic and the anecdotal, there is a range of fictionalization to work with.

See more of Kiran’s work here.

Dance Nucleus
Dance Nucleus is an independent dance house, directed and managed by industry practitioners for artists, a home for artists to develop their artistic practice and craft. Dance Nucleus aims to inspire artists, allowing them to initiate ideas, projects and conversations, by providing them with the space and time to incubate these ideas and projects in fruition. ELEMENT is Dance Nucleus’ artist-in-residence programme focusing on movement and choreographic research practice. It supports rigorous discourse, research and wide-ranging experimentation in all movement-based forms, so as to nurture new movement and choreographic expression. Kiran Kumar is the first artist-in-residence under this programme (January – June 2016).

Find out more about the ELEMENT residency programme here.

Profiles

Kiran Kumar

Performer

artefacts

Kiran Kumar: Exploring Text as Extensions of Dance

Born in Bangalore and based in Singapore, Kiran Kumar is an artist, researcher and writer who specialises in dance-centric projects. He first graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 2006 and began his career as an information technology analyst, but he was lured into the world of dance and movement through his practices of Odissi, a traditional Indian dance form, and Hatha Yoga. Now armed with postgraduate degrees in Solo Dance Authorship from the University of Arts Berli

Daniel Teo, Gwen Pew

Published: 24 June 2016

A Brief History of spell#7

spell#7 was founded in 1997 by husband-and-wife team, Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan. The couple met at the University of Bristol in England when they were studying drama. For the first two years of spell#7, Rae and Tan managed all aspects of their performances themselves, from writing and acting, to design and marketing. They even rehearsed in their own living room. In 1999, they became the first group to be taken on by TheatreWorks as part of its resident-artist scheme. They were given administrative support

Gwen Pew, Daniel Teo

Published: 9 June 2016

“Desire Paths” & Other spell#7 Audio Works

After moving into their new home at 65 Kerbau Road in Little India in 2002, theatre company spell#7 wanted to introduce their audience to their neighbourhood. Their initial plan was for performers to bring groups of up to six people on a guided tour. Titled Kinda Hot, it was schedule to happen in July that year. It was ultimately cancelled, however, as it was refused a public entertainment license because it breached a rule stating that performers are not allowed to be “mingling” with the audience for

“Desire Paths” & Other spell#7 Audio Works

Published: 16 June 2016