Friends,
Anyone for Navarasa (Nine Emotions) featured at the Nine Arts Festival, Seremban, Negeri Sembilan? The work is especially apt when the people of ‘Nogori’ has been undergoing quite a dramatic turmoil of emotions in the last few months!
If you are intrigued, come and experience the world premiere of Navarasa, a dance/music/theatre and contemporary modern work that Sutra will be presenting at this unique festival in Seremban. The piece has been commissioned by the Nine Arts Festival under its Negeri Sembilan-born, London-based composer MeiYi, happening at Millennia Village, Seremban, on 14 August, 2026.
Rasa is also a Malay word derived from Sanskrit to mean exactly the same thing – essential flavour, emotion, feeling and so on. Navarasa, is a contemporary modern dance/music/theatre piece, based on one of the most important aesthetic theories (certainly the oldest), the Rasa Theory. The latter was first put forward more than millennia and a half years ago in the Natya Sastra (Indian Dance Treatise on Dramaturgy compiled between 2 Century A.D – 5 Century A.D.), to describe the core relationship between a performance and the audience.
The Rasa Theory simply says that if a performance is unable to evoke the intended ‘rasa’ (the designated emotional states) in the mind of the audience, then the performance/performers have failed in its objective.
The music of this 40-min Navarasa, performed by senior dancers of Sutra, is curated by Nine Arts Festival Director, composer MeiYi, as a smorgasbord of newly composed and improvised works played together with a famous French piano classic, performed live by both Malaysian and London-based musicians, Foo Mei Yi (piano), Bartosz Woroch (violin), Yii Kah Hoe (suling), Joachim Lim (percussion) and Noghori Arts School musicians.
Conceived by Datuk Ramli and created by Sutra Collectives under his direction, the work draws eclectic inspiration from Asian dance forms including Odissi, mime and even Randai, the circular based dance-drama of Minangkabau still sometimes performed in Negeri Sembilan.
The dance attempts to delineate each Rasa and its accompanying hued tonalities & nuances without transgressing into another Rasa. For instance, the Rasa of Vira (Malay also Kewiraan) or Valour, should not transgress into that of Raudra or Anger. The ‘colour’ should be kept consistent.
The Navarasa (Nine Rasa) constitutes Love, Heroism, Compassion, Wonderment, Laughter, Fear, Disgust, Anger & Serenity.
Naturally, a multi-flavoured cuisine is served before Navarasa, the performance.
See you at Millennia Village!
Sutra.