When Indian-Japanese dancer Shakti steps onto the stage, she constructs a world of contrasts: traditional methods melded with modern techniques; Eastern choreography unfolding against Beethoven, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky.
Her movements are fluid and visceral, radiating a creative energy, an intense emotion and a sensuality inspired by the tension of opposing forces: life and death; creation and destruction; chaos and serenity.
To her, it’s as natural as breathing.
Shakti – whose father was an Indian English professor and yoga instructor and whose mother was a dance teacher and the first woman to bring traditional Indian dance to Japan – says she feels most at home when she’s on stage.
Born in the Japanese city of Kyoto, Shakti has been dancing as long as she’s been walking and has been on stage since she was five.
“To me, dance is not a profession or a career, it’s my life,” she says.
As a young woman she studied Indian Philosophy and Literature at New York’s Columbia University, and learned modern dance under renowned teachers Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey.
But her true passion lay with Eastern dance.
“I learned a lot from modern dance,” she says.
“I learned so much that it really sent me right back to my roots.
“I appreciate what it taught me and I learned a lot of things I wouldn’t have even imagined if I didn’t do it, but I decided, yes, I’m an Eastern dancer.
“… I also found (Indian dance) has so much scope with very disciplined, rigorous technique and expression.
“What modern dance did to ballet, I wanted to do to Indian dance.
“So I started combining the yoga and the classical Indian dance with the free expression I also learnt from modern dance.
“And being Japanese and being raised in Japan, the butoh dance element also was in my heart and in my body.
“So my dance right now is a combination of it all.
“It’s Eastern, but yet it’s very free.”
Over the decades, Shakti has taken her style of dance all over the world.
Her troupe is based in Japan, and each year she brings a couple of dancers over to Australia for the Adelaide Fringe and then two others to France for the Avignon Festival Off.
When she returns to Japan, they all dance together.
And her 96-year-old mother – who no longer dances, but still teaches – is still part of their performances through poetry and spoken word.
Shakti has danced at Japanese temples, in intimate 30-seat theatres and New York’s Lincoln Centre, for audiences that included former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and a former Emperor of Japan. But it’s an intimate Adelaide Fringe show at the turn of the century that is closest to her heart.
“During the show it might not have been so special … but when I reflect on it, it’s what changed my life,” she says.
“That was in 2000 when I was performing at the Adelaide Fringe.
“I did a show called Swan Lake – don’t even think about ballet, it’s a totally different take on Swan Lake.
“… One week later I got an email from somebody who saw my show and said how much they loved it and that is now my present husband.
“So that’s what brought me to Australia.”
Shakti moved to Adelaide in 2002 and she and her husband, Jorg Hacker, now live near Gumeracha, with sweeping views across their native bush block. When Shakti is not performing, she’s seated beside her scientist husband in a light aircraft operating instruments for not-for-profit organisation Airborne Research Australia.
“Half the year, we’re doing art and when we’re doing art, I’m the boss,” Shakti says.
“And he does all the lighting and the sound and all the technical aspects of the show.
“And then when we fly, when we are with Airborne … he’s the boss.”
The work has taken them all over Australia – flying across the Nullarbor, up to Cape York and as far south as Tasmania.
And the natural bush environment of their home and vast Australian landscape seen from the air have become a form of inspiration for Shakti’s dance.
She finds that natural inspiration everywhere – in the earthquakes she experienced in Japan, the monsoons of India, and the blackened earth and regenerating vegetation following the two major bushfires – Sampson Flat and Cudlee Creek – that have swept around her home since she’s lived in Australia.
But there is another key thread that runs through all of Shakti’s work: opposite forces.
“My basis of the dances is life and death, creation, destruction, day and night – two opposite forces,” she says.
“It runs through all of my dances.
“It’s the power of life – and not to be afraid of death, because death is what hands us life, and vice versa.”
For Shakti, dance is also deeply personal.
Far from masking herself behind her technique and choreography, she is the truest version of herself when she steps onto the stage.
“For me art is an expression,” she says.
“The dance is not about striking a pose with perfect symmetry and balance, it’s about the energy that you go through with it and trying to relate that to people.
“… If you’re not feeling 100%, that also needs to be part of the show.
“You can show your vulnerability.
“Don’t lie.
“Don’t pretend everything’s alright when it’s not.”
