The Damini House of Culture Company, in collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Sudesha Adhana, who works and lives in Oslo, are these days at the TOPIC in Tolosa carrying out an assembly residency. This is the second part of the “Mahabharata” project, the first part of which was performed at the National Theater in Oslo, to a full house, during the ‘Year of Cultural Diversity’ of that country, in 2008.

‘Dre: Three’ (Tree) is a production of puppets and contemporary dance whose preview will take place at the TOPIC on October 9, at eight in the afternoon, to later, on the 12th and 13th of the same month, premiere in the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo. Along with Sudesha Adhana, high-level artists from India such as Aditi Mangaldas and Dadi Pudumjee participate in the show.

This montage, which is being put to the finishing touches at TOPIC, creates latent conversations about power, life, and death. The artistic starting point of this show is based on an episode of one of the longest wars in Indian mythology in the epic “Mahabharata”. Conceived and choreographed by Sudesh Adhana in collaboration with puppeteer Dadi Pudumjee and Kathak dancer and choreographer Aditi Mangaldas, ‘Dre: Three’ provokes the audience to revisit the myth on their own terms and contexts.

“This collaboration has awakened in each of us what we normally do, to find a common language that brings together the animate and the inanimate, the monochromatic and the spectacular. As actors, we push the envelope beyond pre-established forms and cultures, and I want the same from audiences. The idea is to create an open, unfinished dialogue, to provoke something in our collective memories and our imagination”, says Sudesh Adhana, a dancer who works in contemporary dance with artistic tools such as aerial silk weaving, Chau and Kathakali.

“I think everyone finds something of themselves in this show”, says Dadi Pudumjee, founder of the Ishara Puppet Theater Trust and a renowned puppeteer whose own work moves with creative freedom across multiple cultural traditions. Pudumjee, pioneer of a new creative form of puppetry in India, and artistic director of the Ishara Puppet Trust, works for UNESCO (Paris) and the European Union on a project with street children who have suffered sexual abuse.