SOUNDING ZAMEEN
Sounding Zameen is an electroacoustic composition that features short excerpts from each movement of the one hour original score for ZAMEEN, composed by Leah Barclay
“Mysterious, beautiful and utterly captivating ZAMEEN is a contemporary dance and multimedia work that pulls you into the heart of a remote Indian community fighting for their way of life.
Within this world, two dancers from one of India’s leading contemporary dance companies, the much lauded Attakkalari – perform an intense, controlled and intricate dance score, inspired by the stories and movement of the community.
An immersive audiovisual environment – built entirely out of recordings done on site with the community itself – sustains the show, pitching you from the very start in the midst of their song and struggle to secure land in the face of large scale damn development.
Both politically provocative and deeply emotional, ZAMEEN simultaneously depicts both the success of this incredible social movement and the ongoing sacrifices made to preserve it.
ZAMEEN is a partnership between CuriousWorks in Sydney, Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts in India, producer Jehan Kanga, composer Leah Barclay and director S. Shakthidharan. It is the first major outcome from The DAM(N) Project, a venture which began in 2011 when a group of artists from Australia and India journeyed deep into India’s Narmada Valley. They met and lived with communities that are gradually being submerged due to large scale dam development in their region. To date over 30 million people have been internally displaced, and the resulting Indigenous activist movement – the Narmada Bachao Andolan – has become one of the most successful and sophisticated in contemporary history.”
This soundscape was composed and produced by Leah Barclay using only field recordings and interviews from the Narmada Valley.