Kab Tak: A Hindi Poem Brought to Life

Kab Tak: A Hindi Poem Brought to Life

What kind of language can a poet, a dancer and a sound artist create together? How can they stay true to their specific ways of expressing while creating an artwork that is accessible beyond their respective languages? This is the question that drives Sarita Rao (India), Aaricia Ponnet (Belgium) and Tristan Visser (the Netherlands).

Connecting through a neglected world language

‘Kab Tak’ is a Hindi poem written by Sarita Rao. The poem speaks of the issues of inequity that women still encounter on a daily basis today and thus raises a global issue. Sarita and Aaricia felt connected through this topic and initiated a creative project in which they aim to translate the poem through dance and music. Another important connection between them is their love for the Hindi language, Sarita as a native speaker of Hindi and Aaricia as a fluent L2 speaker.

Speakers of Hindi can be found all over the world, as a majority language in India, as a minority and heritage language in the diaspora, and as a language spoken by a growing population of foreign language learners. Indian dance and music have been highly influential in the western world as well, with, among others, leading dancers in the UK introducing the finesse of the Indian dance language into contemporary stage performances. Academia and the arts are, unfortunately, still influenced by a Eurocentric view on dance and languages. Despite their great influence, Indian languages and Indian arts are often still considered niche subjects. With their artistic translation of the Hindi poem ‘Kab Tak’, the artists want to bring the Hindi language closer to a European audience, who may find that this language is less foreign than they perceive.

Creating beyond boundaries

The process of this project has taken place throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Sarita and Aaricia had planned to travel to Europe and India respectively, and instead found themselves regularly communicating online. Despite not being able to share the same physical space, they were able to express their artistic ideas to each other. Their shared knowledge of Hindi and Indian art forms, as well as their experiences of traveling to each other’s countries before the pandemic, allowed them to explore similarities and differences between their respective cultures. This process became all the more interesting when Tristan Visser joined the team.

By that point Sarita had recorded the poem and Aaricia had created a rough choreography for the poem. They decided to invite the Dutch sound artist Tristan Visser to create a soundscape that could connect the poem with the dance, enhance the atmosphere and set the right tone for the theme. Tristan came into the project with a very open mind. He had experience with film and dance, but had few experience with Indian inspired arts. The conversation that had been in Hindi before, was now held in English, and Aaricia found herself taking on the role of mediator. As a Belgian woman trained in Indian arts and languages, she helped Sarita and Tristan communicate their artistic ideas to each other. In this way they were able to create their own specific arts language drawn from their respective languages, skills and identities.

Art as a universal language

Sarita, Aaricia and Tristan thus played with two elements that are universal and yet very unique to human beings: our capacity to communicate through language and express through the arts. With the support of Creative Multilingualism, the artists decided to create a video teaser of their project.

A portion of the poem ‘Kab Tak’ was selected to try out some first ideas and strategies to create an audio-visual translation of the Hindi poem. Whereas the dance plays with the theme of the poem and the meaning of the words, the music has focused on the sound of the language and the feelings this can create. The sentence ‘Kab Tak’, for example, has a rhythm of its own. For the costume, Aaricia deliberately chose not to use a dress typical for Indian dance. She decided to take coaching from a Belgian costume designer, Mariken Dumortier. The costume in the video, made by Mariken, connects to traditional European ways of dressing women in a hooded cape – which also hints to the veil that women in India and in many other countries wea

The creation of the video teaser was a co-creative process: based on the previous work by Sarita and Aaricia and their online meetings, Tristan created a soundscape. Aaricia reworked her choreography with the rough soundscape and gave some suggestions on how to create space for her to express the meaning of the poem. Sarita gave feedback and ideas about what kind of mood to use, what kind of instruments in the layering, where to put space in the music, and so on. The power and meaning of each element was carefully discussed and finalised with mutual agreement.

Further steps

This teaser is a first exploration towards making the poem understood by viewers from different language backgrounds. With ‘Kab

Tak’, the artists want to challenge their audience to use their linguistic skills and cultural knowledge to connect to the words, the visuals as well as the sound. The teaser will be a great way to test with our audience what comes across and what doesn’t, and will help the artists to explore which further steps they can take with the translation of the poem. Furthermore, the teaser will be used to apply for further funding to support the ‘Kab Tak’ project. Many thanks to Creative Multilingualism for creating this opportunity and helping us make our creative project come to life!

Watch the ‘Kab Tak’ video

Concept: Sarita Rao and Aaricia Ponnet

Poetry and voice: Sarita Rao

Choreography and dance: Aaricia Ponnet

Sound design: Tristan Visser

Instruments: Dwani Gowda (tabla) and Wim Ricour (percussion)

Costume: Mariken Dumortier

Camera: Shalan Alhamwy

Video editing: Aaricia Ponnet

We want to thank Creative Multilingualism (especially Professor Katrin Kohl and Professor Rajinder Dudrah) for their support, and Leietheater Deinze for letting us film at their premises. Special thanks to Danshuis De Ingang for supporting us with studio space.

Find out more about the Creative Multilingualism project here.