Biography

Anwesha Ahmed is a trained Manipuri dancer and her current work draws inspiration from Manipuri (Indian Classical Dance) and release based contemporary dance. Her current dance work is her personalised technique, which she has developed through her imagination, training and experience in both of these disciplines. Anwesha was born in Bangladesh and comes from a culture that does not encourage creative dancing as a respected passion for women. Her initial dance was inspired by television where she imitated dance movements as much as she could. Her parents encouraged her to learn Bangladeshi folk dance, Rabindra Nritya and Kathak-a classical Indian dance style when she was six years old, with her first teacher Shi Radha Pada Adhikari.

By the age of twelve she was a regular performer in the district and had won numerous dance awards. After completing High School, she was determined to attain higher training in dance, which was not available in Bangladesh. Therefore, she went to India for training in Indian classical dance forms. She obtained her first Bachelor's Degree in Music/Dance from the renowned Visva Bharati University in Santiniketan, India. This famous university was established by the Noble Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. This vigorous degree course was for four years. She received 'Best Dancer Award' at the under graduate level from this University. There, she specialised mainly in two classical dance forms. The first form is called Kathakali, which is popular from the southern part of India - the state of Kerala. Drama is the main element in this kind of classical dance where the performers use colourful masks to portray the characters in traditional drama form. It is physically a very vigorous form of dance.

The second type of classical dance that she specialised in was Manipuri, which is a product of the north-eastern state of India with major influence of Thai and Indonesian dance forms. Unlike Kathakali, the Manipuri dance style is known for the subtlety of its movements and its lyrical grace. Its strictly governed movements and the technique of isolating elements of the body - a forearm, an eye, to draw out its full expression even as the whole body is incorporated into the dance, fascinated her. She was astonished by the variety that Manipuri dance contained particularly the different 'feminine' movements (Lasya) and the 'masculine' (Tandava) dance forms. She chose to explore more of this dance form as her career path above all other dance forms.

In India, dance forms are practised differently among different dance families ('Gharanas'). Her desire to learn Manipuri of all other 'Gharanas' brought her from Santiniketan, (under Guru Amubi Singh Gharana, oldest style of Manipuri) by the guru Yikhum Hemanta Kumer and Professor Jitendra Singh to Kolkata, to join under Guru Bipin Singha Gharana (modern style of Manipuri). Ultimately, she further specialised in an advanced Honours course in Manipuri Dance at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata (Calcutta) and an Honours course, Manipuri Dance at Bhakt khande Sangit Vidyapith, Lucknow, and an Honours course, Rabindra Nritya at Bengal Music College, Kolkata.

After eight years of formal training in Universities and intensive training from Gurukul, she moved on to a renowned performing artist 'Padma Shri Awardee, Darshna Jhaveri' in Mumbai and National Sangit Natok Academy Awad holder Kalavati Devi in Kolkata to develop and consolidate her previous knowledge. Keeping her Muslim background hidden she travelled to Manipur and mastered the core of various Manipuri components, in an orthodox Hindu set-up. There she participated in intensive training at Manipur Gurukul and learnt 'Poung cholom' (Manipuri male style with animal movements), 'Poung Playing' (Manipuri percussion instrument) by the guru Toiba Singh and 'Thangta' (Manipuri martial art) by the guru Ranjit chingtham. Spending ten years in India she had the great opportunity to perform with these gurus on stage as a part of a professional dance troop and as an individual at various prestigious dance venues like The Khajuraho Festival, Madhya Pradesh, 2004, Konark Festival, Orissa, 2004, Swarn Nritya Pratibha - a festival of young dancers, Sangeet Natak Academy, New Delhi 2004, a duet with Professor Jitendra Singh (Dean of Sangit Bhavan, Visva, Bharati University, 2004), Nisha Gandhi Festival, Thiruvananthapuram, 2003, Kanchanjunga Festival, Sikkim, 2003, Festival of Manipur, Kolkata, 2003, Bombay Kirtan Kendra, Mumbai, 2002, Bangalore Engineering Institute, Bangalore, 2002, Bangalore Aravinda Ashram, Bangalore, 2002, Mysore Management Engineering Institute, Mysore, 2002, Mysore Engineering College, 2002, Katwa (West Bengal), a Manipuri Dance Program, shown on National Television in India.(2003).

She joined the Sri Sri R..K.Sangit Maha Vidyalaya, a dance school which was aided by the Govt. of West Bengal,P.O-Bolpur,Dist-Birbhum (W.B.) as a professional classical Manipuri dance teacher in March 1999 and remained there until June 2004. For the first two years she taught dance to young dancers and in the next three years she was a specialist teacher of classical Indian Manipuri dance as well as a choreographer.

Studying classical dance in India, involves copying from and learning the techniques of the teacher; mirroring them in an artisan-apprentice relationship often passed dynastically through the family line. In the future, perhaps, the student might be considered proficient as a teacher in his or her own right, continuing the learned traditions, and until then a dancer's career path would be restricted within an established dance company.

But her curious mind desired to learn more and was not satisfied with just learning a particular dance form. Her desire to venture into a creative level where she could establish her self eventually as a modern Choreographer brought her to the UK. She received the Regional Award Scholarship at Middlesex University, London which made it easier for her to pursue her dance studies. Going there opened a whole new horizon for her. With the modern and liberal outlook of the culture, as well as learning techniques of contemporary western dance, she started to discover importantly, how to use her own imagination in dance. Breaking free of the strict honouring of the movements passed on by her Indian teacher, she grasped 'freedom of expression' for her future path in dance and discovered within her the imagination to improvise traditional and new techniques in her choreography.

During her Choreographic course she also learnt different kinds of modern western dance like Humphrey, Martha Graham, Cunningham and Skinner Release Technique with undergraduate students at Middlesex University. She has also had advanced training in Skinner Release Technique 'ongoing level' classes and workshops at Morley College and 'falling wide' (Joe Moran). Skinner Release technique appealed to her the most as it showed her the path to develop her imagination, which she has used in her choreography and to develop Manipuri movements.

Her new work 'A Minds Journey in Search of Destiny' (55 minutes) contains three dancers, recorded music, dialogue and film (which has been recorded in the London Underground), two projectors and two screens. It involves new physical languages and new movements, which originate from Manipuri classical dance and also her own imagination.

She has used two contemporary dancers and herself. All the movements have been extracted from the above concept and some are extracted from the dancers bodies. This production describes Anwesha's journey as an artist. Both her tradition and past history as well as her newfound freedom are personified on the stage. The story builds with conflict between the tradition and freedom, and deepen finally to find a resolution. This piece is supported by music from Nic Saunders.

This work has received wonderful responses from audiences of all backgrounds and age groups. It has been described by the audiences as: -
" Riveting, can't keep my eye of it",
"Thought provoking",
"Really explosive, full of energy",
"Very beautiful dancing and very expressive - I loved it",
"Very clear and very assessable",
"Movement was really strong and really fluid",
"I really enjoyed the ideas of visual art with a live stage and the strong interaction between them".

Plasmas - Blue Elephant Theatre and Resolution at The Place, 2006-2007.

Her first experimental production Plasmas performed at and in collaboration with the Blue Elephant Theatre to a very good response. A review in London Fringe claimed, "Anwesha Ahmed Choreography tosses the performers through aggression, playfulness and contemplation. Anwesha Ahmed steals the show with her seemingly effortless, delicately controlled movement - demonstrating how expressive and graceful her dance form can be. Perhaps the most appealing aspect of Plasmas is the lack of separation between dance and music."

Plasmas tells a story which is inspired by the social position of human, interwoven in a system of rules, boundaries and principles. It projects different characters existing in the Bangladeshi society and highlight their feelings and struggle through two female characters. They found themselves in a social environment, which is unsupportive because of its traditional values, and their fate finally ends in death. Plasmas highlight the reaction of the society and their desire to break the tradition. Music is 'Live Music', played in western style, but inspired by Indian influences. We have used violin, Conga, Sarangi, Tabla and Kartal. Music has its own place in Anwesha's choreography and it dissociates and synchronises from dance at different places and times, creating a relation. The rhythm of percussion and metallic instrument are used and shown with voice (Rhythm Chants) and Manipuri footsteps together and separately. Dancers are shown playing instruments and rhythm chanting, which is very peculiar of Manipuri Dance. The free and unbound form created when Manipuri dance is experimented in contemporary framework gives birth to Plasmas. All the dancers and musicians represent Plasmas as they are free and unbound to traditional and social values.

Nari (16 mins): Performed at Lake View Theatre, Middlesex University, April 2006 as a part of MA choreography course. The production had one other Contemporary dancer and live music.

Her first experimental work was 'A Minds Journey in Search of Destiny' (16 mins). This she did as a part of her MA Choreography course. It was performed at Lake View Theatre, Middlesex and Nehru Centre, Indian high Commission London, August 2005. It had two dancers including herself and Shorelle Cole, trained in Cunningham style, along with recorded music.

Anwesha performs and teaches classical Manipuri as well continues her experimentation. She performed classical Manipuri at the Purcell Room, South Bank Centre, September 2005 as part of Daredevas, organised by the Akademi and South Bank Centre. She did a week of classical Manipuri performance at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Leeds and Sheffield which was organised by Manasamitra (Indian organisation in Dewsbury). She has also performed at Oxford House, Camden Town, Brady Centre and Bangladesh High Commission in London as a Solo performer of Manipuri Dance (August 2005-2007). She composed, choreographed and performed a solo dance piece for London Channel "S" (December 2004). She represented Manipuri dance for (CICD) centre of Indian classical dance, Leicester, in a program to promote Indian dance in schools of Leicester and nationally. She has provided workshops for people who have mental health problems organised by Beside, East London, August 2007 and taught dance to young children at Tagore School, London managed by Gairika Gupta, London (2005).