Pune: A dancer moves across a stage and a brush follows the movement on canvas. There is no sketch of a body, no attempt to reproduce a face or pose. Instead, each turn, pause, sweep and sudden burst of movement is translated into brushstrokes on paper. Curves become gestures, straight strokes echo outstretched limbs and the rhythm of the dance gradually takes shape as an abstract calligraphic work.“Instead of drawing the dancer, I use my brush to capture the energy and moment of movement on canvas,” said Neelam Nagrale, a graphic designer and calligrapher who has spent two decades in the creative industry.Nagrale’s Rhythm in Ink, a live performance, will be presented at the Pune Calligraphy Show from Aug 14 to 16 at Ravi Paranjape Art Gallery in Model Colony.The experiment began with a question about what calligraphy could become when it was freed from letters. “Calligraphy for me has gone beyond words. I started to explore movement through abstract brush strokes. It led me to combine dance and calligraphy,” he said.The connection between the two art forms lies in the shared vocabulary of movement. “Calligraphy is made with curves, lines and straight lines. Dance movements also have the same structures. When you open your arms, for instance, it becomes like a T. Somewhere along the way, I began seeing the connection between dance and calligraphy,” he said.The performance is deliberately unpredictable. “Dance is a structure. The performance is planned. As a calligrapher, I don’t know what will come on the canvas,” said Nagrale. During a live performance, he watches the dancer and responds almost instinctively with brushstrokes on his canvas set up on the stage itself. “My nature is to study human movement through calligraphy rather than draw it realistically. It is about the curve, the pause and the sweep,” he said.He first tested the format in 2023 at World Art Dubai, working continuously for 20 minutes with different dancers. “I finished almost 50 large sheets with black strokes in those 20 minutes. I don’t think how it will appear. I just have to grab the emotion through my brush movements within a few seconds,” he said.The experiment has since expanded to ballet, contemporary dance and hip hop, with the brushwork changing according to the movement. “When you see the performance, you can identify the dance form through the brush strokes and gestures,” he said.Nagrale, who lived in Dubai for 14 years before recently moving to the scenic village of Tattapani in Himachal Pradesh, will present the performance for the first time in Pune. He recalled the last time he shared his art with the city through a solo exhibition in 2004, when his work was rooted in more conventional styles of calligraphy.Over 60 calligraphic works will be displayed, alongside demonstrations and interactive sessions at the Pune Calligraphy Show.“The artists will show calligraphy on paper, canvas, boxes, caps and hats, so people can see the range of styles and interact with them,” said event organiser Ranjit Jagtap.The participating artists include Nagrale, Sameer Mehta, Ashok Hinge, Manohar Desai, Milind Phadke, Sanjeev Joshi, Anil Govalkar, Prakash Joshi, Yatin Moghe, Mahendra More and Prabhakar Bhosale.Mehta, a calligraphy artist from Hyderabad who specialises in pointed flex calligraphy, will demonstrate Engrosser’s scripts as well as modern penmanship. “People commision names, favourite quotes, invitations and so on. Calligraphy has been my practice for several decades and I teach students across India,” he said.
