Sandhya Raman and Suma Suresh on the layers of art forms that brought interdisciplinary 'Kintsugi' to life

Starting late 2025 and continuing well into 2026, Lata Pada's Canada-based Sampradaya Dance Creations toured with the production 'Kintsugi' (see my report on the production here). I spoke to aharyam designer Sandhya Raman, who presented the production in Delhi through her Desmania Foundation, to Suma Suresh, the co-choreographer of 'Kintsugi', and to Jasmine Sawant, the executive director of Sampradaya, about the intriguing presentation.  

Sandhya Raman 

 

Sandhya Raman is a Delhi-based, internationally known costume designer, curator and textile activist. For over three decades, she has been not only designing for dance, but also curating fabrics and productions, reviving textiles and contributing to design in various ways. It is only Sandhya who could have given not just words, but also mouths to the costumes. She makes them sing, speak and dance with the wearer; she makes each warp and weft talk to you. The costuming for the event was admirable. 

Q: I want to know your take on the whole production. 

A: My take is that (in modern society), we think of the entire vessel as broken. Can we have a different method, a different perspective of repairing it? Can we question stereotypes? There is always scope to rethink and rebuild. In a fragmented society, how do we see the layers and bring out the beauty within that? How do we put them back together and resurrect them? (We took episodes of unresolved ruptures from the Mahabharata) Each episode was revisited – how do we nurture these relationships again? The rethinking is the kintsugi part of it. The golden cloth was the repair and rethink, and (a symbol) that everything broken can be mended. 

Q: Tell us more about the costume design. 

A: There is shimmer in the cloth and the colours are that of Japanese vessels. There is the influence of Japanese work and the silhouettes are Japanese. Though we are taking stories from the Mahabharata, but the influence is of Japanese culture. You are marrying the art forms through the production. The silhouettes were loose and flowing with layers, and on top of those was the kintsugi work, the lacing between the layers, and from each layer you see the colours that come out and brighten up. 

 

Q: The colours took on different hues as the light changed. 

Ans: That is to show the different personalities and different perspectives that you are going through. There are so many differences and different possibilities, so many variations that we are going through – it cannot all be shown with a monotonous colour scheme. Each layer comes out as if dust is being removed and a pop of colour emerging, showing that there is a spark, a meaning to whatever you do. 

Suma Suresh 

Suma Suresh is a Bharatanatyam and contemporary dancer, and the artistic director of Sampradaya Dance Creations in Mississauga, Canada. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance Choreography from York University and won the 2019 MARTY Award for Dance. 

‘This was a unique and special production, since this was the first time we were venturing into the theatrical space, and we made it interdisciplinary in many ways. It wasn’t easy, but my dancers were also a bag of surprises. They have the skill. We had recently done a smaller work called “The Children of Air India” with the three female dancers (in “Kintsugi”) enacting poetry – bringing poetry to life through spoken word and movement. So we had seen a bit of skill there and we thought, let’s tap into this and create a work that’s not pure dance, go into experimenting with theatre as well. I am a theatre actor myself, so I could contribute. We also called in a voice coach who could help the dancers with voice modulation, intonations and the cadence of speaking.  

‘These are familiar characters and episodes from the Mahabharata, so it was devised together. It was a collaborative process since we had brought the dancers in very early on to workshop movements. In fact, we began the process with a kintsugi workshop in which we broke pottery and mended it with gold. It was like a team-building exercise; everybody – cast and crew – sat together to get the essence of it, and then we moved into the studio and understood what cracks in a body mean, what fractures in movement mean, we built phrases and distilled it all into a whole box of phrases. Not everything made it to the final cut, of course.  

‘And then Lata (Pada) and I worked on the text. Then we had the dancers exercise these, use their voices and deliver their lines, and if something didn’t make sense, if it sounded too lofty or too light, we tweaked it. The text was being refined till just before we left for the tour! But the dancers have all been such sports. 

‘We did not directly use the scriptures, but we used all the research we have done, our readings of the various versions of the Mahabharata, our research online, plus we reimagined the incidents. This is not how they occur in the Mahabharata. It was not Dushala who unravelled her mother’s blindfold, Dronacharya did not have that reaction for Eklavya when he cut his thumb. We were experimenting and were taking a risk because we did not know if it would land well. But here we are – the cities we’ve performed so far, everyone seems to like it.  

‘It was important for us to show healing, hope and the acceptance of where we are. And not everything may be healed fully – healing is also a process, it’s not linear. That is how we ended with a lullaby, because there is nothing more healing than a mother’s voice. That was actually down to our music composer, Praveen D. Rao, who is a genius. In fact, he also came into the process early, so his contributions have also helped navigate our narrative through the hour-long work. We are celebrating collaboration also through this process, from the lighting design to the visual projection, sound, light, acting, dancing – that’s why it’s special for us. It’s not one person sitting there and devising the entire thing – it’s everybody’s contribution, and their talent and skill is on display.’  

Jasmine Sawant, executive director, Sampradaya 

Q: What would you want to say about the show, the entire concept, and its realization? 

A: I have been working with Lata Pada for around 20 years. She said she wanted to use the concept of kintsugi with Bharatnatyam and Kathak. I wasn’t too sure how it would work out. So when she said it would be episodes from the Mahabharata, which show fracture, rupture, relationships breaking apart. And she said that the way we have heard the Mahabharata, it’s left there. Eklavya’s thumb is cut and that’s it, we move on to the next chapter. What if there was a repair, a resolution, a renewal? This is the ‘what if’.  

When all these ideas are being discussed, you don’t know what the choreography is going to look like. You have all these brilliant Bharatanatyam dancers and one brilliant Kathak dancer. They way they worked it in their studio during their rehearsals, blending it to make it look seamless, it’s beautiful. And then it was also the music. We have been working with Praveen D. Rao as long as I can remember. I met him in 2005 when I just started working with Sampradaya. The man is a genius. He just knows what the sound track is to go, the sound design, the vocal track, what is required to bring the whole thing alive. It was his idea to bring in the vocals in the last piece. He said I want people to leave with a feeling of harmony, of being soothed after all the clash and calamity witnessed, a sense of renewal, to feel protected.  

I have been watching it several times – in Toronto we had two performances, that was our home season, then three times in Singapore, and it still doesn’t fail to move me. And I am a theatre artist and I loved that this time, Lata and Suman decided to add spoken text. 

Q: The theatrical part of it was impressive and also the projections on the screen. 

A: This idea of using kintsugi and Mahabharata using Kathak and Bharatanatyam has been sitting with Lata for the past 3-4 years. She has been reading about it. Initially, you just get an idea. You don’t know how you are going to shape it and take it forward creatively. As time passed the text came together, Lata had a big hand in putting the text together. And everyone contributed – as actors, when you are speaking the text, you realize that some of it doesn’t fall into the rhythm of your breath or voice, then you make some changes. 

Pics: Anoop Arora

Portions of this article first appeared on Narthaki.com