Time is Out of Joint: Inside ‘Tesseract’ at NCPA

Mumbai: O-ri-ga-mi. The sum of the parts is far vaster than the whole. And as every dancer knows, every dance-the most palpable of art forms, where being and expression are joined at the hip, ankle, elbow, wrist, neck-lies in the folds. Time unfolds, folds, unfolds...an accordion, not the temporal tantrum of a steady flow. You realise this-sense this-as you're suddenly inside Mumbai's NCPA auditorium and set your eyes on the stage. A rehearsal is on-of Tesseract: The Geometry of Truth. The sounds, movements you see, are of organised chaos, of the Cartesian product of four intervals, [0,1]4, made flesh.

Because at the centre of it all hangs the tesseract-a cube within a cube, glowing softly, and pulling you in with its own gravitational force.

Hum of the rehearsal quietens as the tesseract-what a cube is to a square, the tesseract is to a cube-draws you in further. Almost meditative in its aura, the closer you look at its physical manifestation, the deeper you go. It seems to fold and unfold endlessly like a disciplined fractal. But into what? To what end?


In physics, philosophy, and art, the tesseract is often used as a metaphor for higher dimensions, non-linear space, or expanded perception. It is imagining realities beyond what our senses can access. Yet, choreographer Shiamak Davar and his troupe of over 100 dancers and performers, led by Megan Murray and Pia Sutaria, shake up our senses and invite us to pry open realities that seem beyond our immediate world. A pirouette here, a flap and ball change there, dancers move through door-like mirrors-or are they mirror-like doors?-twirling against the thought-provoking line: Future finally whole.

Mounted on a grand Broadway-West End scale, Tesseract's on high-shuffle-moving from humanity to science, and AI to extra-dimensionality. We are in the middle of what Robert Heinlein in his grand speculative novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, described as 'grok'-in the fictional Martian language 'to drink,' in the larger sense signifying a profound, intuitive, and empathetic understanding of something.

The visual spectacle at NCPA is mesmerising; a heady mix of 'awe-ntertainment', abstraction, intellect, and introspection. In one act, the dancers expand and stretch across the stage, then huddle and contract in repeating patterns, driving home the idea that time is uneven, pulsing, never constant. In trademark Davar style, it's a heady 'grok' of ballet, tap, tango, jazz, funk and contemporary dance.

Each segment of the production flows seamlessly into the next, an evolution, yet...each moment is whole itself.

Lights and music, of course, are characters. Bold lasers strike chandeliers, scattering light across and beyond the stage refusing monomaniacal singularity. The music ebbs and flows like foam in a tide, governed by the luminous globe in the tesseract, a post-Euclidian disco ball, suspended above.

Tesseract compels us to see more than what's merely visible to the eye, audible to the ear. It encourages us to discover the infinity within ourselves, and in everything else. It is a manifestation - and extension-of what Whitman said: 'I am large, I contain multitudes.' O-ri-ga-mi.

(Tesseract: The Geometry of Truth, produced by The Times of India, with concept and visualisation by Meera Jain.

Experience Tesseract: The Geometry of Truth, running from March 16 to 22 at the NCPA in Mumbai. Tickets available on BookMyShow).