ANITA RATNAM, Artistic Director, comments on the collaboration: "I feel that the whole idea of a collaboration is not to be seduced by some fashion or particular trend, just because you want to do something international. The time of flirting with all these things has passed. For me, the joy of DUST is in the fact that two distinct languages have come together to create a third, universal one. It is an intense work, a struggle - a cathartic performance. It is not about beauty or grace. It is about the spirit, the struggle the soul has with the idea of bliss. It is not about being on the edge - it is about falling off the edge without a parachute!"

MARK TAYLOR, Artistic Director seconds her thoughts, "Besides adventure, there is a deep spiritual element in Alexandra David-Neel's work. In my life I have integrated an attitude towards spirituality and that makes it easy to converse with someone like Anita from a spiritual tradition of dance. She is also looking for a chance to contemporise it with relevance to contemporary global economy. She is searching from that direction and I am searching from mine. That was a natural meeting point."

The dancers speak of the constant rediscovery and pushing of one's skills:

ANUSHA: It has been so exciting working with both Mark and Anita and working with a new idiom.

NARENDRA: The learning was difficult but we really prepared and practised...its been great.

GWEN: It was a challenge to 'try to' learn Bharatanatyam which is very expressive and more narrative... I found spirituality woven into the training and performance.

ANDRE: DUST was like bringing different backgrounds in dance together. Gwen and I generated much material on Alexandra Daveid-Neel even before Anita and Mark started to train us. But looking at the piece now, it all seems to blend - our own research and their training. As if it all always belonged together.

A brief look city-wise:

AT HYDERABAD:
DUST might go a long way in building bridges as well as accepting differences, in cultural understanding of the arts.

The dance technique used a combination of the dynamics of Bharatanatyam and contemporary post-modern movement forms.

AT CHENNAI:
A collaboration between traditional Bharatanatyam, post modern movement forms and Japanese Butoh, between the spiritual and the earthy- the quartet told the audience a story without saying a word, just leaping, swirling, falling, rolling and thak-a-thi-thomming - Chinmaya Heritage Mission Hall was packed. Nobody moved or spoke...

A very thought-provoking venture... DUST can be interpreted in many ways...Like abstract art, dance in its myriad forms can be just rhythms - of feet and body... It is a process of learning and letting the spaces in the mind and outside be filled with ideas.

The beautiful Chinmaya Auditorium was filled to capacity with dance enthusiasts. And they were not disappointed. The intense imagery wrapped itself around the audience encasing them in their journey through the sometimes frenzied and expansive motions... Dressed in a poor Tibetian's garb, the dancers performed movements that seemed mostly contemporary and American post modern, but every now and again broke into an interlude of Bharatanatyam 'adavus,' so regularly that it felt like a refrain... The wide stances, the expansive movements of the limbs added a lot of effervescence to the production, and the combined energies on stage remained on a high.

AT NEW DELHI:
Anita Ratnam can easily be called the mother of cross-cultural collaborations in classical dance... DUST was at its most successful when all the four (dancers) danced together. One image when the forusome are in one heap that starts throwing out a plume as in a desert storm, was most evocative... a memorable image.

Dust that single speck of form on which Anita and Mark have built their dreams may not crumble with the shifting sands of time for it is rooted in tradition and culture.

Besides thematic novelty and innovative craft, the other hallmarks of DUST are the music composed by Alice Shields.