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Beats of confidence

At the No Limit Dance Studio in Berlin, 250 pairs of happy and unhappy feet fumble and fall and get up to dance again – to new heights. They are young, from different ethnic backgrounds and modern dance becomes their healing therapy through soc io-economic difficulties. “Rhythm is it!” (2004), the film directed by Thomas Grube and Enrique Sanchez Lansch and produced by Boomtown Media, was screened at the Max Mueller Bhavan.

It was a musical journey of inspiration and hope in helping youngsters get back onto their own two feet. Their choreographer-dancer Royston Maldoom says: “You can change your lives – through dance.”

The youngsters’ initial awkwardness and self-consciousness through the first five weeks of practice is caught on camera and Maldoom untiringly trains them to use dance as an expressive movement of the body and the mind. He can read their discomfited and constrained dance positions – indicative of their inhibited aspirations. And slowly, step by step, through effortless guidance and confidence, Maldoom helps them transcend physical and mental boundaries and scales.

The pain and despair of the exhausted students are observed well in the physical nuances and challenges of training and discipline. And gradually, from jerky unsure moves, the youngsters break barriers to take self-assured, graceful, smooth strides. Dance in a way, becomes the freedom of movement and of expression – and this is thoughtfully compared to a scene when Maldoom walks through an open zoo – where animals are not caged, but left to move around in their spaces.

Equally awe-inspiring and elevating was the use of music that falls in step with the dancers, conducted by Simon Rattle of the Berlin Philharmonic. The harmony and perfect synchronisation that music and dance create in the final performance was stirring. And Rattle makes an important point when he briefs the orchestra about what limitless music can do for the youngsters.

“It is also what it means to people and what it can do for them. Music can teach people what unites them.” It is the Philharmonic’s first educational project and Rattle says: “Music is not a luxury, but a necessity, like the air we breathe and water we drink” – thus pointing out to the boundaries that culture-police have laid down in art and culture, and who can practice it.

What was breathtaking and spectacular was the final result after tears and sweat – an enriching performance to Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s magnificent “Le Sacre du Printemps-1913 (The Rite of Spring)”.

You just celebrated in their outlet of freedom that was expressed brilliantly in such a dazzle of colours, a flurry of movements and pure musical accordance that left you spellbound and rapt through and through.

What was disappointing, however, was the miserable attendance at the screening, as compared to the 2500-strong audience in the film who truly appreciated the performance in a standing ovation at the Arena in Treptow, Berlin in January 2003.

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