Lives of devadasi women interpreted through choreography
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Helmi Yusof
AN almost 70-year-old French play has inspired two Indian dancers to create a new work that comments on socio-religious issues in India.
The Maids, a 1947 play by French writer and philosopher Jean Genet, centres on two maids who hate their arrogant mistress so much that when the mistress isn't home, the maids escape into their own make-believe world. In it, one of them pretends to be the haughty mistress and the other role-plays the maid. Their imagined scenarios would climax with the maid strangling the mistress.
The Maids is filled with issues of power and violence, and is based on an actual 1933 case in France in which two maids murdered their employer's wife and daughter. The play has endured till today with a recent stage revival headlined by Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert.
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