Ainesh Madan is a choreographer and performer, currently based in Bangalore. Madan attended Bard College (USA) on a full-tuition scholarship, attaining a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Economics.
Madan premiered his first evening-length solo, titled Phantasies, as part of the University Settlement Guest Artist Series programme in New York City for which he received the Emergency Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. He is a recipient of the Work Up Residency at Gibney Dance Center (NYC), the BAX (NYC) Upstart Residency, and the DanceWEB Scholarship (2016).
Madan recently premiered Impressions (Four Solos), and Sketches, as part of The Platform festival, and The Shoonya Ticket, respectively.
After numerous months spent learning German from my computer, finally being in residence at Weltkunstzimmer was a dream come true. Not only was the residency everything I had hope for in terms of resources and opportunities, I also found myself developing fond relationships that I hope to cherish for the rest of my career as a dance-maker.
The Second Dance Song (Part 3) was arranged and staged at Weltkunstzimmer after some amount of preparatory rehearsals in my living room. The proximity of my bedroom and the dance studio proved to be ideal. I was able to spend my mornings working, which left the afternoons free for me to explore the city of Düsseldorf and its cultural offerings. The fact that there was another dancer in residence with me made the whole process all the more exciting.
The generous production grant also allowed me to have fruitful collaborations with my peers back in Bangalore. Each of us created material in our specific disciplines independently. It was exciting for me to work with projections for the first time, and to collaborate with a musician without being didactic in my approach. The infrastructure at Weltkunstzimmer was sufficient in helping stage the work in a seamless fashion.
When I look back at the five weeks I spent in Düsseldorf (and the surrounding regions), I am filled with joy and excitement. I am deeply grateful to the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, and the people who supported my adventure. Thank you for helping manifest five weeks of learning, creating, teaching, and sharing for a young artist. It really helped deepen my connection to dance and dance-making. Vielen vielen Dank!
Part 3 of The Second Dance Song, also called Zarathustra’s roundelay, is a poem that breaks out of the prose structure, and is the inspiration for a solo that I created during my bangaloREsidency-Expanded at Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf. The movement does not attempt translation, but embodies the essence of the text, to motivate the viewer to engage further with Nietzsche’s writing.
