• Choreography: Aditi Mangaldas
• Trio on recorded music
• Troupe: 3 dancers/ 2 tech- light & sound/ 1 manager
• Projected images: Siegward Sprotte – Alles fliesst 1 – Panta rhei 1, 1997
  (with the collaboration of Falkenstern Fine Arts, Germany)
• Music Composition: Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan
• Duration: 1 Hour
• Premiere: India, 2009

A simultaneous dialogue between the three art forms of painting, music, and dance that explores the timeless present and is built around the central question: Can one live creatively, live in the ‘Now’? The present carries within it burdens of the past as well as the fantasies of the future. Can these links be broken, so that a timeless moment is born? The philosopher J. Krishnamurti held out an invitation ‘of living in time, timelessly, without the past and the future mingling on the moment.’ Now is explores the theme, “In the NOW is all time, and to understand the now is to be free of time.”

Choreography: “How does one dance- "In the NOW is all time"? Think of the dance as a Koan. So, the understanding or answer is not gained through analysis but through intuition- It must just occur. I have tried not to transform/ interpret anything- just attempted to realise it, in that moment. Like the Chinese saying goes, Use the body like a flute, lift it up to the wind, it plays itself.”

Visuals: Siegward Sprotte has always tried to affirm the completeness of the now. His paintings are improvisation and spontaneity, a dialogue with the immediacy of the present, for the artist the only true eternity we are capable of experiencing.

Music: In creating the soundtrack for Now Is, we have in a sense let our musical sensibilities remain as they are - rooted in tradition, but also eager to experiment, and move away from sounds, forms and aural textures that we are familiar with.

“It seemed as if the energy of the dancers was transmitted to the painting which was being created and vice versa, till finally the deep shades of green and blue started to flow and got transformed into the concentrated – reduced painting of Siegward Sprotte.” Astrid Priebs-Tröger, Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, 2013, Germany. [Translated from German]

“The premier of “ now is”…was a resounding success….Aditi has shared the improvisation and spontaneity of kathak with that of the paintings and the music, with perfectly superb synchronization….The most important constituents of the production are the imposing images of Sprotte’s paintings that keep changing instantly along with the music, creating the vibrant background for the dance.” Manjari Sinha, The statesman, 2009, Delhi

“A seamless merging of the classical and the contemporary language of dance. Which is which? Difficult to say..A painting is sung, an alaap is danced, a song is painted, brushstrokes embody the vibrations The infinite finite moments of breakage of memory, of belonging, of severance A river, colour, texture, silence, sound, motion, stillness, waves. The dancers and the dance are one Now Is.” Sanjukta Wagh, www.mumbaitheatreguide.com, 2012, Mumbai