The Gaze Within: The Camera as a Reflective and Transformative Tool in Bharat Sharma’s Andretta Trilogy

Abstract

This paper is structured from a conversation with choreographer and dancer Bharat Sharma. The observations here reflect his Andretta Trilogy (2011–2015), a series of experimental dance-films created at the Norah Centre for the Arts in Himachal Pradesh. Presented in the form of an extended commentary, the paper weaves Sharma’s responses with theoretical frameworks from the study of screen-dance history, foregrounding the camera as a tool of reflection and transformation. Sharma’s voice highlights the improvisational origins of the trilogy, the negotiation of roles as choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker, and the unique affordances the screen offers in contrast to the stage. The paper here positions the Andretta Trilogy as an example of screen dance practice in India that departs from documentation and spectacle, instead functioning as a reflective practice of memory, ecology, and corporeal transformation. Sharma’s close engagement with editing, landscape, and improvisation exemplifies how screen dance may emerge not from conceptual grand designs but from embodied responses to circumstances, space, and technology. While respectful of Sharma’s artistic voice, this paper also critically situates his films within larger discourses of screendance, suggesting their relevance to debates on authorship, the archival body, and geo-choreography. Ultimately, arguing that Sharma’s work demonstrates how the camera can serve as a partner in times of creative lull, reanimating the choreographic imagination and offering a lasting archive of ephemeral movement.

Keywords: Indian dance, screendance, choreography, authorship, memory, archive, ecology

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