HAVING showcased the state’s Dravidian heritage within the spectacular inaugural rite for the forty fourth Chess Olympiad on Thursday, the Tamil Nadu govt has executed one higher. Leader Minister M Ok Stalin has uploaded a ‘Chess Dance’ video on-line the place the black queen triumphs over the white in a message this is as a lot political as concerning the sport.
The three.48-minute dance video, titled Test Mate, is the brainchild of Pudukottai District Collector Kavitha Ramu, who’s a educated dancer herself.
Chatting with The Sunday Specific, Ramu, who designed and choreographed the dance, mentioned for her, the mission used to be about color, gender and tool, but even so being a tribute to the sport that has made Chennai its house within the nation.
With the DMK govt rolling out the pink carpet for the development, Ramu mentioned: “I meant it to be a Chess Dance, with classical, people and martial arts components, to make it colourful and vibrant.”
Whilst she held the auditions in Pudukottai, the dance used to be shot in Chennai. “As I couldn’t sign up for the dancers in Chennai owing to paintings commitments, the director, Vijey Raj, despatched me video clips and images from the shoot.” Praising his meticulous dedication to the mission, she says she sought after to be sure that the dance caught strictly to chess strikes.
A few of the crucial components used to be getting the song proper, and it used to be composed by way of Narendra Kumar Lakshmipathy.
Pudukottai District Collector Kavitha Ramu
Ramu mentioned given the concept that, the mission used to be conceived across the triumph of the black queen in spite of the white having the first-mover benefit.
The black queen within the dance is portrayed by way of Priyadarshini Rajendran, a Bharatanatyam dancer from Pudukottai, who works within the IT trade in Bengaluru, and performs chess. Guffawing that she all the time prefers black, Rajendran says: “A few of us really feel black has a greater likelihood, perhaps a counter-intuition.”
What makes the finesse of the overall video much more particular is the truth that the workforce did best two days of rehearsals, adopted by way of a shoot that lasted 24 hours, from 6 am sooner or later, to the following morning.
The inventive director, Raj, who has labored as co-director in some Tamil motion pictures, says they to begin with conceived the dance as a song video. “However the plan modified to a visible tale concerning the sport, with extra explicit characters and black as a metaphor. It used to be an immense problem to inform all of the tale in a couple of mins. Most of the artistes had by no means been prior to a digital camera.”
The dance video is the brainchild of Pudukottai Collector Kavitha Ramu
Consistent with Raju, the inventive liberty Ramu gave helped a super extent in projecting a “compelling narrative”.
Rajendran says they had been totally ready by the point they went in for the shoot. “We had been all briefed at the complete tale, from starting to finish. Because the black queen, I had the utmost actions. As a Bharatanatyam dancer, I assumed I’d use the ones steps, however it used to be now not meant that approach. It used to be choreographed in order that the point of interest used to be at the dynamics of collective frame motion.”
So whilst she moved one sq. at a time, just like the queen on a chess board, she used to be surrounded by way of faces painted as in step with the Tamil conventional artwork shape through which people get dressed up as horses.
Publication | Click on to get the day’s perfect explainers to your inbox
Suram Sahana, who has up to now collaborated with Ramu in a large number of dance displays, performed the white queen.
The white king used to be Srinivas, a classical dancer. Manikantan, a freestyle dancer, used to be the black king. Poikkaal kudhirai artistes Muthukuran, Deepan, Baskar and Cheran, Manigandan, Karthigeyan, Manojkumar, Prathapan, Karthick, Lakshmanan, Divakar, Priyadarshan, Nishanthi, Oorvasi, Rithika Jayalakshmi, Narmatha, Krupavathi, Durga and Soundarya, had been additionally a part of the video.
