Taking the form a performance lecture, Hetain Patel’s Ten looks at what it is to be Indian, or indeed of any mixed heritage, in modern Britain. Patel leads his audience through the rudiments of traditional Indian Tabla drumming with its 10 beat structure, the ten of the piece’s title, and the syllable note-names given to each beat. The layers of the performance and its structure all follow the non-pervasive rhythms of Indian classical composition, the piece’s route is that of Hetain’s teaching and relaying the process of learning the Tabla drums set to this ten footed beat.
The striking visual image of the piece is the tray of kanku, the red powder used for the Hindu tilaka - the dot upon the forehead, which is daubed across the performers by the end of the action. The powder becomes a powerful cultural artefact within the discourse and comes to represent distinct elements of Patel’s heritage. As stated by all the performers, who repeat the same lines to give them an eerie resonance that reinforces the ‘imposterhood’, to gain an insight into Indian rhythm is to gain an insight into Indian thought.
He uses this idea to ask the question of whether our culture is in fact the rhythm by which we live and conduct our lives – is this our cultural rhythm to which we choreograph the Self? The show continues to interrogate this with the aid of drummers-cum-dancers Dave "Stickman' Higgins and Mark Evans, their non-dancing background giving the piece a strange feel of authenticity. Patel’s voice, a soft north-eastern burr, guides the audience through the dance, the conflicts of identity which are part and parcel of our multi-cultural society and how something, once hidden, becomes overtime a badge we learn to wear proudly but with an air of ‘imposterhood’ knowing we had kept it obscured. This falsity contrasts with the truthfulness of the movement to the extent that it creates an effect in which the choreography drives forward the discourse over the confusion of the repetitive language sections – the words unimportant when said and performed in the rhythm.
This first showing reveals a piece of dance-theatre which aims to discuss the conflict of identity within communities in Britain and give us an insight into their cultural rhythms. Although at points this becomes buried beneath the stage action, most notably when Patel jogs around the space in the ten pointed rhythm whilst the other two throw the kanku or attempt to join in, Ten goes a long way toward achieving this.
Ten: ****
Image courtesy of Hetain Patel.
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