When art meets architecture, the twain creates a montage of a supremely aesthetic kind. And when this happens at what was once a much-loved locale of Mumbai, it becomes an evening that the ‘culturati’ will cherish. So, when the artistically-inclined Maker Maxity decided to use the city’s one and only erstwhile Drive-in Theatre for an exclusive cultural evening, it was the time to watch and applaud.

A multitude of talents brought together outside the confines of a regular art gallery by GALLERYSKE encompassed a range of genres like cutting-edge video art, installations (static and dynamic) and photo art. The participating artists included Anup Mathew Thomas, Avinash Veeraraghavan, Abhishek Hazra, Sudarshan Shetty, Shrestha Premnath, Srinivasa Prasad, Bharti Kher, Krishnaraj Chonat, Navin Thomas, Dayanita Singh and Sakshi Gupta. The works greeted visitors’ eyes as one strolled in on the red carpet to the cool lounge – think garden motifs with rose lanterns – at ground level. A blanket-framed bullock-cart that evoked the feel and smell of rural India, a scoop ingeniously used to showcase stuff that kids would delight in, a water-filled tub with scissors that snipped frantically in its lit interior, glasses that cracked at the fall of the hammer…. But above all – literally and undoubtedly and naturally so – the aerial dancing by Project Bandaloop from the US, who for the first time walked the air for Mumbai’s own!

Sitting on the first level of the theatre – yes, a large part of the regular seating is intact and even the building remains infused with its old-world charm – it was easy to spot the four dancers as they trod air – climbed and rappelled to craft dances. Later, from a higher level, one could witness the magic of Project Bandaloop against the façade of a glass-fronted office building. Vertigo, be damned! Their forms twirled and whirled, leapt and turned as they used the vertical space to showcase their supple and sinuous movements – held in place by the oh-so-seemingly slim wires. Killing gravity, softly; art will no longer be the same!

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