Where’s The Apple Joshinder?
2014
Karachi Arts Council
Where’s the Apple, Joshinder? was a 43-minute movement-based performance conceived and choreographed by Amin that was presented for three consecutive nights at the auditorium of the Karachi Arts Council. It featured the dancer Joshinder Chaggar; the actors Sunil Shankar, Kashif Hussain, Erum Bashir and Vajdaan Shah; the musicians Haamid Rahim and Sikandar Mufti; and the painter and performance artist Syed Ammad Tahir. Amin worked with this multidisciplinary group for six months to create the work, which revolved around a large installation in the form of an Indo-Persian garden that he had recreated out of copper leaves hanging from steel beams above an eight-foot by four-foot wedge of mirror. It began with Haamid wearing a black robe and copper helmet sitting within the audience with his back turned to it as he played his own electronic composition. Kashif, in an orange sarong and copper helmet with curving horns, emerged from the orchestra pit. His bare torso and legs painted in strokes of black paint, he moved back and forth across the stage, tossing his head like a bull. Wearing a mesh mask, Sunil then entered the stage on all fours, prowling catlike. He climbed onto the central, mirrored surface, constructed in a slant, seeming to recoil from his own image. Wearing an avian mask of looking glass and nickel-plated copper, Joshinder lifted her cocked head from behind the reflective slide. Sunil and Joshinder sparred and embraced. Erum and Vajdaan joined them on stage, pairing off with the two in various combinations of male with female, female with female, male with male. Ammad then appeared onstage dressed in formal South Asian bridalwear while Sikandar coaxed a tabla, a drum associated with courtesan dances of the 18th century. The action that occurred around and atop the installation explored gender and the non-binary. In the end, Sunil, Joshinder, Vajdaan and Erum burned the nylon from which the leaves hung, destroying the paradisical garden.
