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Meryl Tankard found ballet restricting, till she discovered the joys of breaking its boundarie
Meryl Tankard is a dancer, choreographer and an independent documentary
film maker from Australia. She is in Bangalore as part of Attakalari’s
Indian Biennial 2013, which is pitted as South Asia’s largest
contemporary dance and digital arts festival. Meryl is one of the
mentors to the participating dancers and choreographers from across the
world.
“I have been given a group of dancers, whose works I see and give them
suggestions to improvise their moves.” “I used to do Indian classical
hand gestures as a child. In fact my fascination for dance and movement
was so much that friends and family insisted that I learn dance
seriously. So I was sent to a school that taught classical ballet at the
age of seven. I was in it till I was 23. It was good to perform ballet.
But then there was this part of me that felt restricted. I could not be
as creative as I wanted to be or express myself as I wanted to,” says
Meryl, who began her career with the Australian Ballet in 1975.
A dancer’s vulnerability
“I have been given a group of dancers, whose works I see and give them
suggestions to improvise their moves.” “I used to do Indian classical
hand gestures as a child. In fact my fascination for dance and movement
was so much that friends and family insisted that I learn dance
seriously. So I was sent to a school that taught classical ballet at the
age of seven. I was in it till I was 23. It was good to perform ballet.
But then there was this part of me that felt restricted. I could not be
as creative as I wanted to be or express myself as I wanted to,” says
Meryl, who began her career with the Australian Ballet in 1975.
“Though I had signed a new contract with a ballet company, during my
travel in Europe, I met Pina Bausch, a well-known name in contemporary
dance, and a ballet director. That was my dream come true. I asked her
if I could dance with her and she had a special audition for me. It was
strange because I was dancing and she looked the least bit interested in
what I was doing. She was reading a paper, when I was auditioning! I
continued and when I finished, she just said ‘You’re good I’ll take
you.’ I almost jumped,” laughs Meryl as she recalls this incident.
“I returned to Australia, waited three months for my contract with the
ballet company to be terminated, and then left for Germany,” adds Meryl,
who went on to work with Pina for six years.
“Working with Pina was very different. She broke boundaries and brought
in the vulnerability of a dancer to the stage. In ballet the dancer
hides the weakness. But not in Pina’s work. She taught me to improvise
and I could create my own character. This way a part of my life would be
presented in an artistic way and it made the dancer and audience relate
to one another,” she says.
“I was homesick and returned to Australia, but continued to go back
often to work with Pina,” she recalls. Back home, Meryl started
collaborating with other classical dancers – Padma Menon – a Kuchipudi
dancer, is one of them. Then she got into making short films. “I studied
filmmaking for a year. It’s a different medium. I loved the ability to
take the audience into a smaller view of everything through the camera.
It was a challenge, which I enjoyed.”
Meryl is also enjoying her role as a mentor at Attakalari and says:
“It’s amazing that Jayachandran has organised this fest, where he has
invited mentors from various parts of the world. It’s unusual. Indian
dancers have a very strong base in classical dance, so they will not be
able to throw away those deep roots. But what I see is that they tend to
use it as a good base to build new movements and dance vocabulary,
which is so beautiful.”
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