Last weekend, we had the opportunity to witness a beautiful Bharatanatyam dance titled – Me, Myself and Trash. The thought provoking performance was by dancer Preethi Bharadwaj.

As someone who gets excited by seeing trash (because trash = disneyland wala feeling), it was heartening to see parallels drawn by the artist on this topic.

As an artist, Preethi engaged with the audience on this topic, questioning us about how art is everywhere, as is trash.

The dance floor was adorned with daily trash (all clean and mostly crowd-sourced)

Simple questions like where do we find trash – from our purses to trees made the audience wonder about this deep problem that now sits at crossroads. Crossroads here got me thinking – crossroads of action, crossroads of how the problem has just exponentially increased and crossroads of a do now or it’s too late.

Piece after piece, Preethi drew parallels on women being treated as trash, to how festive celebrations generating trash to even how effort in relationships can seem as trash. Every piece stood out, and every thought expressed sat with us as the audience.

Humour is a powerful tool in storytelling. And this was also incorporated in a matchmaking, or as the artist called it Trash-making. The puns, the added elements of social media euphemisms just made it a power punched performance. The heart, at this point was simply craving for more.

One assumes that after a decade in this field, what can one add more to this sector. Preethi’s performance has left me with newer questions, on how art can intersect and play a role in taking this to larger audiences. One question I am sitting with is, how can art help sustain behaviour change and make the mundane task of waste segregation rewarding?

She had one question that had me amused, ‘What will you do with your broken dustbin?’ I actually thought of whether any of our dustbins have ever broken. And to my surprise, I don’t remember. But some of the audience did share that their dustbins did break. And to my surprise, the next question Preethi asked was, so did you put it in another dustbin before throwing it out?

It seemed like trash played a pivotal role in soul-connecting. Preethi’s costume was in collaboration with Poornam Ecovision

We need more deeper and meaningful engagements on this topic. This one particularly revived the old flame that inspired me to take this path. Not everyone understands what about trash leaves you mesmerized. But Preethi Bharadwaj’s understanding, passion and performance just cracked it!

The performance was made possible thanks to Poornam Ecovision, RRBCEA and Kala Sadhak. May we see more of these in our lifetime.