Music all the way The American Center, Kolkata, brought good tidings to music lovers with two scintillating performances recently. One was a Jazz programme by the legendary Herbie Hancock and the other, a dance presentation by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company in collaboration with the Ananda Shankar Centre for Performing Arts of the city.

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First, the Jazz night. It was not the first visit by Hancock to the city. He was here earlier in 1996. But the reception to him by Kolkatans, who know a thing or two about music, was equally tumultuous. The grounds of the Dalhousie Institute Club ground overflowed with more than a capacity crowd and late-comers had no option but to keep standing during the whole performance. And was it worth it!
The evening was dedicated to Michael Brecker, the saxophonist, who had died the previous night. Brecker had collaborated with Hancock in the popular album The New Standard. The young musicians of the famous Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz of the US and singer Lisa Henry (her second visit to the city too) set the tone for the evening to welcome Hancock. Hancock immediately livened up the mood with his witty observations as he stepped onto the stage and then he switched on to serious music beginning with the lively Dolphin Dance to enthrall the audience. There was a double reward for the listeners as Wayne Shorter, one of the best contemporary saxophonists today, joined the group with a variation of his Footprints with wildlife preservation (of the tiger) as a theme. Then he went into a duet with Hancock bringing the evening to a crescendo.

From Jazz to dance. The beauty of body language captured all when Margaret Jenkins Dance Company's dancers and four members of the Tanusree Shankar's group presented A Slipping Glimpse at the Science City auditorium. The composition is an exploration of the present with glimpses of the past, bringing into question terms like private and public, inside and outside, at this moment in history "when it's often difficult to tell on which side of the looking glass we are standing, or dancing." The stage design was such that it allowed the free movements of the modern dance as well as the concentrated in static space basic to the structure of Indian dance found easy expression.

Margaret Jenkins, based in San Francisco, is a renowned as a choreographer, teacher and as designer of unique community- based dance projects. In the choreography A Slipping Glimpse, the combination of Indian classical dance and American modern dance, both presented in their own individual styles, works very well. Jenkins freely admitted how much effort went into it -a long period, almost two years. She and the members of the troupe had earlier spent time at the Ananda Shankar Centre interchanging ideas about the two styles of the performing art. Kerala is another place where the American dancers had participated in dance workshops and these influences have been incorporated into the presentation, some reminiscent of Yoga postures, some of the martial art dances like Kalaripattu of Kerala. Yet they do not jar while placed together with the contemporary modern dance movements as stories of this world and the netherworld unfold in seamlessly.

It is to the credit of the virtuosity of Jenkins as well as to the competence of the dancers that the evening was so enthralling. The innovative music by composer Paul Dresher enhanced the performance.