Bardo Beings was first created in 2012 by Ronita Mookerjee and Diya Naidu.

 

We had immersed ourselves in tenets of Tibetan Buddhism and were fascinated with the concept of 'Bardo' - a word that simply means a "transition" or a gap between the completion of one situation and the onset of another. We explored a state of being suspended in between in a world of repetitive cyclical attachment.

 

Today, nine years later we return to this piece simply drawn to its physicality. We see that we as a community and a species are in fact in Bardo. According to the Tibetan book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, "One of the central characteristics of the bardos is that they are periods of deep uncertainty". He goes on to observe, "to live in the modern world is to live in what is clearly a bardo realm; you don't have to die to experience one". As humans we interact and engage in many ways, the reptilian, mammalian and other primal selves are constantly at play, our pasts our interacting with our presents in nebulous ways. We are often torn between seemingly binary forces. All around us the divide between selves and between factions becomes greater.  We take this time to simply physically examine the intense interaction between seemingly separate parts of a whole, separate selves or disparate identities. Of these identities we refuse to be define just by our gender. We are two bodies today. And our gender is a glorious part of that, it is no limitation. In this clash and conflict, there is a kind of training, a preparation for the bardo and its demands.

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Choreographer: Diya Naidu

Performers: Ronita Mookerji, Diya Naidu

Sound Design: Nikhil Nagaraj