Duty Free: Bijli

Free
Dance
Performance

The Old GMC Complex
First Floor, GMC Building

14th December - 15th December
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM

14th December - 15th December
04:00 PM - 04:30 PM

This performance is inspired by a deeply personal moment with the performer’s grandmother, who at stage four Alzheimer's, spoke a phrase that startled them: “Mein bijli hu” (I am lightning/current/electricity). Despite her deteriorating memory, she accesses a profound feeling with clarity, expressing an innate connection to the energy and force of electricity itself. The dance begins there, in this one moment of grief, instinct and bewilderment. The dance takes the grandmother’s words and the performer’s memory of her last years as a starting point. This moment revealed a unique form of communication that transcends the linear logic of memory, rooted instead in instinct and raw feeling.

The performances will be followed by workshops that invite participants to explore embodied memory, care, and connection through movement and reflection.

Conceptualised as part of Duty Free curated by Ranjana Dave.

A medical college. The human body. You might expect examination, diagnosis and treatment, but Duty Free serves up movement encounters and sensorial discoveries. Rather like its namesake at the airport, it sets itself up as a space of wonder and curiosity. Over eight days, three dance artists take turns inhabiting a riverfront verandah in the Old Goa Medical College building, making it both studio and stage.

Duty Free is open through the day, functioning as an exhibition space and embodied archive, interspersing the behind-the-scenes labour of dance – improvisation, repetition, failure – with performances and workshops at scheduled intervals. Its artists set up interactions that are tactile, embodied, textual and aural, offering movement prompts and traces of their practice for you to engage with.

Duty Free is commissioned by Serendipity Arts for Serendipity Arts Festival 2025.

Performers: Jasmine Yadav and Surbhi Mittal
Scenographer: Sukanya Ghosh