Portraits of Care

“Portraits of Care” showcases the journey of co-creators from varied disciplines across different parts of the world as a community dance film experiment. This film shows how we can create a shared, unique, intimate, caring, and safe space through a camera during a pandemic. 

The experiment started as a reflection of a wish, an intense desire, to connect to a broader community of people from different disciplines of writing, cinematography, dance, architecture, and filmmaking. Across these different genres, how is the feeling of care expressed?

Considering the pandemic, the work, connections, and conversations that shaped this project remained virtual. None of us had ever met before; yet, through this work, we found a shared space for weaving personal and collective memories of dealing with the “new normal.” Our conversations were magical—they allowed a virtual space to become our “real” space in an increasingly disillusioned world. Giving ourselves the freedom to care, sharing our experiences with trust, and being vulnerable became a foundation upon which this experiment took shape. As we learn to handle the uncertainties of the everyday, this film voices our thinking, doubts, contemplations, and our intent to care. 

What does it mean to care? The film’s co-creators explore this prompt choreographically with their bodies, the camera, and the immediate environment. Bhargavi Gopalan, a dance educator, probes this question “through the concept of lines and dots, which connect and disconnect at various points. To care means to have these constant interactions, whether with yourself or with others.” For Harshini Boyolla, an architect by profession, “the idea was to capture something that is not scripted at all. That was not meant to be performed but to simply capture moments that are most natural to us, building stories that surround us. The simplest of body movements that exhibit caring.” 

The film, being a space for collaborative care, constantly shuffles between the inward and the outward. It is within this interaction that care exists. We see trust as a form of care—not just by developing a trust with the camera, but also with each other. In this screen space, each of our voices and stories matters as much as everyone else’s. Caring is not in a single moment—it is in the continuous narrative of collective consciousness. Likla, a writer, contemplates the uncertain relationship between her body and her body holding the camera. “I record the sea and the changing hues of sunrise, knowing full well that my body can never match its motions. I record my feet as I struggle for balance. The camera extends from my fingers; each spasm of imbalance shakes me from toes to lens.” Kamakshi Saxena, a dance practitioner, explored the movement with the camera, sharing that “it varied from being tender towards my own body, being supportive and strong, as in caring for someone and how that weighs down on the physical body and a sense of attentiveness to the bodies of nature around me.” Caring, therefore, is a springing up of subtle movements of the hands, the interactions with space in-between us and the camera. 

This space has also carried a lot of acceptance of our limitations. For Rahul Rajoriya, a cinematographer by profession, care means “the idea of self-worth” which is always measured from what we create, not how we create. For this film, he accepted the uncertainty of the product, which made him care for visuals in the present moment. Throughout the film, the idea of collaborative care surfaces as on-screen interactions among the artists using an editing process through Fortuna Lab. The camera allows us to share our way of being with the body. In the film, Sumedha Bhattacharyya shares the journey of her father’s stroke recovery through the healing process of dance: “Holding the camera and also playing the famous thumb fight with my father, as a form of dance, a game, a joint mobilization exercise, and also a shot that can translate this vulnerability and intimacy across with my camera's shake.” We let these subtle uncertainties, family dynamics, intuitions, connections, and imbalances become part of the making process. Because of this pandemic, care becomes an even more important word for collective survival, where our existence becomes more and more precarious. Although we have practiced social distancing, the effort to create our experiment invoked a possibility of “radical care” that would not have been possible to attain in a physical space.

Note: This work has been carried out as part of a community dance experiment initiated by Fortuna Production Escénica (Mexico) and Duet with Camera (India)

Fortuna Production Escénica is a Mexico-based company dedicated to the production of cultural and artistic projects with an interdisciplinary approach (visual poetry, video dance, psychology, music, dance). The company was founded by its current directors, performing artist Melissa Priske and psychologist and artist José Gabriel Rodríguez. (https://fortunalab.wordpress.com/)

Sumedha Bhattacharyya is an interdisciplinary dance artist, researcher, dance filmmaker, and faculty member at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities. Her artistic practice brings a fresh viewership of the camera as an artistic process for caring and contemplation; an enabling space for intergenerational bonding; and a narrative tool for dance pedagogy which challenges the existing formal qualities of “seeing” dance. (www. sumedhabhattacharyya.com) 

Bhargavi Gopalan is a dance scientist and dance educator based in India. She is the founder of Bhargavi Gopalan Dance, a performing arts space dedicated to the development of dance science and community dance practice. (http://www.bhargavigopalan.in/)

Harshini is an architect by profession but is keen on expressing, performing, acting, and discovering a relationship with the camera. 

Likla works with Art1st, a Mumbai-based publication house. She creates books about art for young readers. Her first book Art is a Verb (released in 2019) brings together her love for art, movement, and language.

Rahul Rajoriya is a Mumbai-based cinematographer. He loves to experiment with different kinds of audio-visual mediums and content. He has recently developed an interest in creating video-art installations and working with experimental performing artists.

Kamakshi Saxena is a dance practitioner with several years of dance, performance, and teaching experience. She received her education on ballet and contemporary dance from The Danceworx, New Delhi. She also trained in modern dance at the school of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.