In June 1999, Anita Ratnam visited the USA along with two senior members of the Arangham Dance
Theatre Group, Aarti Bodani and L.Narendra Kumar. A ten day workshop was arranged at
Pittsburgh, through the initiative and planning of Bill Bissell, Administrative Director, and Mark
Taylor, Artistic Director, Dance Alloy, Pittsburgh.
During this session, they learnt "phrases" of modern dance and combined it with Bharatanatyam
"adavus" (etudes). The upshot was a delightful vignette of urban friendship between a boy and a
girl. "Ta-ki-ta-tease" covers the gamut of emotions experienced when boy-meets-girl for the first
time, with its flamboyance, self consciousness, little tugs of jealousy and generosity and the
chronic desire to impress!
The music is the distinctive work of the Afro-European women's group "Zap-Mamma".
The work was premiered in July 1999 at Houston. It was premiered to an overwhelmingly
enthusiastic response at Chennai in March 2000 during "eX-Tradition", a showcase of Arangham's
work at Alliance Francaise.
