Digging Deeper: একসঙ্গে / Akshongay – Then and Now
Nova Bhattacharya is an award-winning, barrier-breaking, artist and cultural leader based in Tkaronto. Her inspiration is found in identities, hybridities and diversities, manifesting creations that resonate with technical virtuosity and lush, vivid imagery. She’s always been a rebel reinterpreting traditions and reinventing rituals. She is the Artistic Director of Nova Dance.
Louis Laberge-Côté is Associate Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University since July 2018. He is a Toronto-based dancer, choreographer, teacher, and rehearsal director. An acclaimed performer, he has danced nationally and internationally with over thirty companies. He has created over eighty choreographic works, which have been presented and commissioned in Canada and abroad.
Photo by Rajvi Dedhia
In 2000, we met as strangers, drawn together by curiosity and an undeniable spark of creative admiration. We had seen each other dance, felt something stir, and took a leap. Rather than emphasizing our stylistic differences, we embraced them, finding play, humour, trust, and authenticity in the space between.
After a series of short collaborative works, we knew we were ready to dive deeper. That dive became Akshongay. A full-length duet, it marks the meeting of bodies, cultures, histories, and imaginations. It explores harmony and dissonance, connection and distance, joy and grief, death and renewal. It is a world we built together through movement.
Revisiting that world twelve years after its premiere and nine years since its last performance has been both a profound gift and a significant challenge. Time has brought us an expanded perspective: the ability to reexamine structure, impact, and emotional arc with greater clarity. At the same time, our bodies have changed. Physical constraints required us to reassess the movement with a sense of transformation. Dancing the work again became both refreshing and familiar, like returning to a house built long ago, only to discover new doors and windows.
A Selection from Louis & Nova’s archive, captured by Rajvi Dedhia
The universe of Akshongay also lives through our collaborators. Marc Parent’s lighting design continues to shape the world we inhabit. Now, his role also includes calling the sound cues for the late Phil Strong’s evocative score, a gesture that reflects the deep integration of design, composition, and choreography at the heart of the piece. Debashis Sinha has stepped into Phil’s sonic world with care and reverence. As we reshape the choreography, he makes thoughtful adjustments, helping to carry Phil’s legacy forward with quiet determination.
We are dancing with more ghosts. Tedd Robinson and Dan Wild were essential to the creation of this piece, and though they are no longer with us, their presence lingers in nuance, in silence, in breath. In their place, we are supported and challenged by two extraordinary artists: Marie-Josée Chartier and Andrea Nann. Their eyes, insights, and generous provocations help us see the work anew, offering pathways that expand our creative field.
photo by John Lauener
As we enter the final stages of this rehearsal process, we reflect on how our bodies and spirits have transformed. This remount holds space for the passage of time, not only the aging of the body, but also the wisdom, resilience, and tenderness that come with it. Akshongay was created in togetherness and in distance, shaped by shared time in Toronto and continued through periods when Louis was living in Germany. During the pandemic, when we couldn’t be in the same room, we kept in touch through weekly phone calls, lifelines of connection and creativity. It was in those conversations that the idea of one day dancing Akshongay again began to quietly re-emerge. Now, revisiting this work calls us to consider impermanence: our eventual departure from the stage, and the stories we’ll leave behind.
Akshongay is a layered tapestry woven from memory and imagination, cultural roots and shared experiences, movement and stillness. As we bring this renewed version to life, we invite you to step into it with us. It is an invitation to reflect on your own stories of love and loss, aging and becoming, and the beauty of being together.
Click the image below to watch a behind the scenes video by Company Dancer and Administrative Coordinator Rajvi Dedhia captured during rehearsals.