Watching contemporary dancer and choreographer float around on stage, or doing his minimalist thing, it is hard to believe that he would be capable of – well – rage.
A stickler for discipline and completely uncompromising when it comes to his art, there is something guaranteed to enrage him – the misbehaviour of people who come to the theatre to watch a performance.
It has happened in the past, but the most recent instance was during a performance of his latest work – “Interpreting Tagore”, which is making waves everywhere it goes. He was in Hyderabad for one particular show and had asked photographers not to use flashes because he found them disorienting.
Imagine his rage when the flashes went on and on and on. That was when, to the absolute delight of the audience, he strode to the front of the stage and demanded that they just get out! We hear that they “got”.
More recently, and more funnily, he was performing in Delhi at Azad Bhavan, for an IICR sponsored show, doing one of his signature works. The moves are infinitesimal, the concentration total, and Astad was getting into the spirit of the piece, when a woman and her companion came in and fussily talking sotto voce to each other, tried to decide on a seat. Somewhere in front, we might add. And so Astad stopped his dancing and roared “Chup” to the alarm of the woman who meekly ‘chupped’ and settled down.
That was not all. At the end of the performance he read the riot act to a photographer lurking in the shadows at the back of the hall, who had harassed him no end with a flash. The speech, in chaste Hindi, was all about respecting the kalakar and also how the culpritt might consider drowning in a chillbul of water.
Like we said, he was extremely angry.