SindhuPo: Suhaee Abro, Lucina Moretti bring Pakistan-Italy collaboration to Karachi

Dancers bring Sindh, Torino together with historic dance performance

KARACHI: The performance arts scene in Karachi sees several international talents visit every year. Individual performers also go out of the way to engage with different cultural experiences. Recently, Suhaee Abro and Italian dancer Lucia Moretti collaborated to give local audiences an eclectic, electric and unique dance flavour.

Titled SindhuPo, Abro and Moretti’s performance was an ode to the two famous rivers: Sindhu (Indus) in Pakistan and River Po in Italy. Speaking with The Express Tribune, the duo revealed how they came to work together.

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Both Abro and Moretti have been dancing since their formative years and have delved into contemporary dance genre. In 2016, Abro took a trip to Italy where she joined Nuova Officina Della Danza (NOD). It was during the year-and-a-half-long program that she met Moretti, who was interning at the academy at the time.

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Moretti, who started dancing at the age of five, had years of ballet training and contemporary dance, which included a year in Spain as part of the self-exploration process. Upon returning, she joined NOD in her city of Torino. The Italian performer revealed the collaboration has been in the making since October 2017. The two dancers collectively brand themselves as ‘Look but with Love’ – a reference to the popular Pakistani phrase ‘Dekh Magar Pyaar Se.’

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Talking about SindhuPo, which they performed last weekend at Karachi Arts Council, Abro said, “As I’m Sindhi, I belong to that culture first. Sindhu is the river Indus and Po is the famous river, which passes from Torino, in Italy. So, SindhuPo connects two cultures.”

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“We talk about our friendship. There is also a political element in it, about borders and how people are cut off from each other. There are a lot of things we have to pass through before we can be together, to continue working together,” she added. “We also talk about the beauty of these cultural meetings between us and the difficulties we face, such as the language barrier.”

Abro said that being young women of the same age group, both she and Moretti have had different experiences. “Yet, at the same time, we have had many similar experiences which connect us,” she said. “I don’t feel as comfortable with my body as Lucia does, because of our social consciousness and how our society works. So we explore a lot of different elements in the performance.”

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Moretti brings her cultural sensibilities with her to Pakistan. Combined with Abro’s, it delivers a message of hope. “We do everything by ourselves. Of course, we do have the support of the Italian consulate and the Arts Council but we have choreographed the performance ourselves and we do have a production team to work with us,” she shared. “It’s a 45-minute performance with different pieces. We have borrowed music from different composers, including British-Pakistani composer Sarah Sarhandi, Jocelyn Pook (famous composer who worked on Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut) and Ahsan Bari.”

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She said that when they created SindhuPo, the idea was that it won’t end with a couple of performances. “It may look like it’s finished on stage but the idea behind it is to give hope – a hope of continuation of meetings,” said Moretti. “After a few months, Suhai will be here and I will be back home in Italy. So we need to find new ways to connect again. We intend to continue performing it for another year before we begin another production.”

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