Astad Deboo | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Deboo in 2009 | |
| Born | (1947-07-13)13 July 1947 |
| Died | 10 December 2020(2020-12-10) (aged 73) Mumbai, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Career | |
| Dances | Contemporary dance – fusion ofKathak andKathakali |
Astad Deboo (13 July 1947 – 10 December 2020) was an Indiancontemporary dancer and choreographer. He was considered a pioneer of modern dance in India.[1] Through his career he collaborated with artists includingPina Bausch,Alison Becker Chase andPink Floyd, and performed across the world.[2][3][4]
He was awarded theSangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1996 andPadma Shri in 2007, awarded by theGovernment of India.[5]
Deboo was born on 13 July 1947 into aParsi family inNavsari, in the Indian state of Gujarat.[6] He grew up inKolkata till the age of six after which his family shifted toJamshedpur, where his father was employed withTata Steel. His mother was a homemaker, and he had two sisters, Kamal and Gulshan.[6]
At the age of six, he started learning theKathak dance form, from the late Indra Kumar Mohanty and the late Prahlad Das. He studied atLoyola School, Jamshedpur, from where he passed out in 1964,[7] after which he moved to Mumbai and joined abachelor's course in commerce atPodar College,University of Mumbai.[6]
While pursuing his degree in Mumbai (thenBombay), he happened to see the contemporary dance of the American Murray Louis Dance Company, which left him inspired. Shortly afterwards, artist Uttara Asha Coorlawala who was studying dance in New York, visited Bombay, and helped him joinMartha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance in New York.[3] Deboo left Bombay in 1969, on board a cargo boat that set sail from Bombay port, and later hitchhiked his way through Europe to eventually reach New York in 1974.[3]
Over the next decade, he went on to attend theLondon School of Contemporary Dance where he learntMartha Graham'smodern dance technique and thereafter went on to learnJosé Limón's technique in New York.[8] He also trained withPina Bausch in the Wuppertal Dance Company, Germany and withAlison Becker Chase of the Pilobolus Dance Company, and travelled through Europe, Americas, Japan and Indonesia.[8] On his return in 1977, he studiedKathakali, under Guru E. Krishna Panikar, inThiruvalla, Kerala, where he eventually performed at the famousGuruvayur Temple.[8] All these explorations led to the creation of a dance style unique to him, an amalgamation ofIndian classical dance and western group dance techniques.[7][9][10][11]
A turning point in his career came in 1986, whenPierre Cardin commissioned him to choreograph forMaya Plisetskaya, the prima ballerina of theBolshoi Theater ballet company.[3] Over the years he collaborated withPink Floyd at the Chelsea Town Hall in London, theGundecha Brothers, Pina Bausch of the Wuppertal Dance Company, Germany, and theThang-Ta – the martial art andPung cholom dancers ofManipur.[8] He worked for several years with Tim McCarthy atGallaudet University in Washington for the deaf performing arts program, and the production "Road Signs" toured India in 1995, with a troupe drawn from Gallaudet and Deboo's Indian students.[2][12][13][14]
In January 2005, he along with a troupe of 12 young women with hearing impairment, from theClarke School for the Deaf,Chennai, and part of the Deboos Astad Deboo Dance Foundation, performed at the 20th AnnualDeaf Olympics, at Melbourne, Australia.[15] He choreographed the 2004 Hindi film by painterM. F. Husain,Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities.[16] In 2009, he performed his production, 'Breaking Boundaries' with fourteen street children from the NGOSalaam Baalak Trust. These children had trained with his troupe for six months.[10][17] In 2019, he collaborated withHema Rajagopalan,Sikkil Gurucharan andGeorge Brooks to perform "INAI" with the Natya Dance Theatre in Chicago.[18]
He died in Mumbai aged 73 on 10th Dec 2020, a month after being diagnosed withnon-Hodgkins lymphoma.[19][20]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
