Internship with Kolkata Sanved -- 1

My internship with Sanved began this month and it's turning out to be everything I imagined it would be. I've been wanting to work in a larger capacity with Sanved for years now and I am truly grateful to Seagull for giving me the opportunity to do so. For those of you who aren't familiar with the work Sanved does, it's a human rights agency that rehabilitates women who have been trafficked, using dance movement therapy (DMT). My interest in drama therapy had drawn me to Sanved and its director, Sohini Chakraborty, and we had often talked about working together, since there are several points of intersection between dance movement therapy and drama therapy. One of the focal areas of my internship will be developing and conducting sessions with some of the organizations Sanved holds DMT classes for. At the moment I will be developing sessions for Apne Aap Women Worldwide (Topsia) and Parichiti (Dhakuria) and in spite of having just begun my work in this regard, it's already given me a lot to think about.

My sessions are geared towards helping the participants understand and express through movement as well as facial expressions various kinds of emotions. At a surface level, the idea is to help them comprehend what they are feeling and allow their bodies to express these emotions fully. On another level, such an exercise helps individuals understand that it is hard for a feeling to be purely one feeling. For instance, anger can also bring with it pain and hurt and it thus comprises at least two other emotions. Finally, at its deepest level, this exercise helps you express unpleasant emotions you may be feeling and then find ways in which you can tackle these emotions. One of the sessions I will be working on now is aimed at dealing with anger. Expressing it, tackling it, and letting go of it. I have some ideas but I won't know how viable they are until I actually put them into practice.

Seeing how the girls at Apne Aap took to my sessions on emoting was extremely rewarding because I could see how the participants began to open up. In my first class, I asked them to express joy or happiness and it was wonderful to see how imaginatively they expressed these emotions. Sometimes, their expressions would have shades of love and wonder in them and so they'd realize the other feelings that could fall under the larger umbrella of joy. The girls seemed to enjoy the session and later told my co-trainer that they would like more exercises that would facilitate a release of emotions in them.

The sessions with Parichiti served to demonstrate how your class structures will have to adapt to the nature of your participants as well as the space that is available to you. In theory, the women we are working with through Parichiti and the girls we are working with in Apne Aap are similar. They are economically disadvantaged, their living conditions are poor and they are compelled to meet several demands placed on them by their families. But beyond these superficial similarities their needs are very different. For starters, the girls are, to a certain extent, able to leave behind the problems inherent in their daily lives when they come to Apne Aap. They get to take classes there that provide them with a respite of sorts from what they will have to return to. However, the women we are working with through Parichiti are still caught up with their daily work routines even as we work with them. The classes we conduct take place on the Dhakuria Railway Station platform so while they are waiting for their train to come in, we take classes. Needless to say, the needs of the situation are different. Our classes have to take into account the space at our disposal (the busy platform) as well as the fact that the women will have to leave as soon as their train(s) comes in. At present, our classes are incorporating light theatre/dance games that help build a sense of community spirit which accommodate some participants leaving and new participants coming in. It will be challenging to see how far we can go in building a sense of solidarity, trust and mirth through these classes.

That basically sums up my experiences so far. In the weeks ahead I hope to, as I said earlier, work more on emoting exercises and perhaps bring in a bit of Image Theatre. In Image Theatre, a story is created by each participant adding to something one participant started. The final product looks like a picture with every participant having contributed to creating a story. This has scope for emoting as well as telling a story through emotions, so I would like to see how my class at Apne Aap, in particular, takes to it.