- Project Bandaloop creates & films ‘Nanda Devi Dances’ in Garhwal

By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 16 Nov: It was the first performance of its type in Nanda Devi area. The members of ‘Project Bandaloop’, a dance company from San Francisco (USA), recently concluded their visit to Uttarakhand to carry out aerial and vertical dance sequences on boulders near the Garson meadows.
Project Bandaloop is regarded as one of the world's top aerial and vertical dance companies. It traveled to the high Himalayas last week to perform and create new site specific dances. The first stop was Woodstock school, artistic director Amelia Rudolph's high school alma mater. The company performed for the inauguration of the Woodstock’s new gym and to celebrate its outdoor programming. The performance was warmly received by the community.
Next, the company traveled to the Nanda Devi region where it spent one week making and filming dances on boulders at Mountain Shepherds’ Sri Ganesh base camp and on Gorson meadows with spectacular views of the snowy high mountains as their majestic setting.
Filmmaker Logan Scheider used a 16 mm camera to capture the dances, while Todd Laby shot high definition video and Atossa Soltani shot stills of the work. The dancers worked tirelessly to build dances in five locations working collaboratively with director Rudolph. The dancers, Heather Baer, Melecio Estrella, Damara Ganley, Rachael Lincoln, Amelia Rudolph and Mark Stuver managed freezing temperatures, uneven terrain and tough cliff dancing with good style and grace. This was helped along by their rigger Stephen Schneider and operations manager Thomas Cavanagh, who woke early and worked in tricky terrain to create safe environments for the dancers.
Along with their own support staff, Bandaloop was helped by the tireless staff of the Mountain Shepherds, an Uttarakhand based ecotourism company specialising in the region around Nanda Devi. Dr Sunil Kainthola, the coordinator of the Mountain Shepherds, along with his staff of eight, took care of housing, tents, logistics, travel and Raja the cook made outstanding meals at 3,500 metres.
The Mountain Shepherds group is unique in several ways. It is actively involved in issues of livelihood security in Uttarakhand. The staff collectively owns the company and they actively employ and train women. The Bandaloop support team included three women.
The visitors found the Uttarakhand Himalayas an amazing location for adventure travel and film locations. The geology, fauna, flora and local community life is, both, beautiful and fascinating.
Project Bandaloop has plans to create a short film with the footage from Nanda Devi that celebrates the power and vulnerability of this unique World Heritage Site. This trip to the Himalayas was somewhat of a "pilgrimage" for the Project Bandaloop, whose name stems from the fictitious tribe in Tom Robbin's novel, Jitterbug Perfume, a semi-immortal, shamanic tribe of playful mystics that is said to have lived in caves in the foothills of the Himalayas and whose longevity was due in part to a dance they performed called the Bandaloop. This is the first time Project Bandaloop has traveled to and performed in the Himalayas, but they hope it is not their last.