Staying Alive...

Staying Alive. A dance opera. Where music, dance, voices, words, memories and moments collide and scatter. Where people shatter. And yet where the grand finale is not Death, but Life itself.

Dedicated to all who live
Who wish to live
Who are afraid to live
Who love to live

Conceptualized, Written, Directed & Produced: Shivani Tibrewala

Co-produced:Radiowani Studio, Darpana Academy of Performing Arts Music

Music Composition: Milin Chitnavis & Ameya Naik

Choreograpy: Mallika Sarabhai

Flamenco Choreography: Salomi Roy Kapur

Original Cast: Mrinalini Sarabhai, Mallika Sarabhai, Akshay Patel, Arundhati Singha, Manoj Bagga, Minakshi Baria, Padmakumar, Sonal Solanki

Voices: Tom Alter, Mallika Sarabhai, P P Bajaj, Theron de Sousa, Mona Ambegaonkar, Malaika Shenoy, Shivani Tibrewala, Srimoyee Mitra and Nikita Shah

Musicians: Shyam Raj (saxophone), Al Moreno (violin), Bal Karanjgaokar (percussion), Suhail Shah (flamenco guitar), Milind Chitnavis (synthesizer programming), Ameya Naik (tabla, keyboard)

Choir: Dylan, Jordella,Bernie, Mihir, Colleen, Michael, Ralph, Xianne, Sharon, Anjali, Trini from the Salvation Choir and Samantha Sequira & Faye Monteiro

Music Recording and Mixing: Shakeb Ahmedji

Voice Recording: Vishal Sagwekar (RadioWani) and Annu (Purple Haze Studio)

Studio(courtesy): Radiowani Studio

Lighting Design: Yadavan Chandran, Mallika Sarabhai and Jitu Brahmbhatt Videoscape: Roopesh Maroli and Pinakin Thaker Still Photography: (Late) Mr Mohan Sicka, Yadavan Chandran Videography: Roopesh Maroli, Yadavan Chandran

Synopsis:
A dance drama, with an original soundtrack of recorded monologues and beautifully composed music that gives a contemporary interpretation to a classical base. The theme is the scattered spirit, the individual, the isolated experience of angst, the complete and utter loneliness that visits each and every one of us at some point in our lives – that unnamed emotion that we feel cannot really be expressed in any way other than perhaps the termination of life.

Or can it? What is it that keeps us alive...and what is it that keeps us from staying alive.

Show history:
Premiered in Ahmedabad in December 2005 and was performed at the Habitat Centre, Delhi in January 2005. His Excellency the President of India, Mr Abdul Kalam himself graced the occasion.

Press-speak:
“The three-day Darpana Academy festival at the Habitat offered bewildering variety… The curtain-raiser of Hot Talas Cool Rasas left this writer utterly disappointed.Erasing all the disappointment of the previous evening was the production Staying Alive despite its rather macabre theme of why and how the urge to live gets extinguished in some people who, unable to face the challenges of life, seek a suicidal end. Revolving around archetypes representing different walks of life, each engulfed in searing loneliness and despair, with the setting sun becoming preferable to the effulgence of the rising sun, death appears to be the better option.

It could be the young girl denied the space to be ordinary by proud parents, a young flamenco dancer disillusioned in love, the housewife stifled by daily routine, the young man behind his times finding ‘language is not what I use to describe my world – it is what the world uses to describe me’, every frame captured through quick-moving dance cameos. Shivani Tibrewala’s powerful script provided the starting point…” – The Hindu, Delhi