Breaking Boundaries being staged in the city. (Aranya Sen)

The audience is very discerning. The organisers are usually a pain,” laughs Astad Deboo. After three decades of performing around the globe with Pink Floyd, Pina Bausch or Alison Chase , Deboo still fails to interest producers to host his solo shows in India.

In the country, the pioneer of contemporary Indian dance works mostly with the physically and economically challenged. He performed Breaking Boundaries with students of Salaam Balak Trust from Delhi on Tuesday at the GD Birla Sabhagar in the city. Excerpts from a chat:

When was the last time you did a solo here?

About 10 years back. My solos mostly open abroad. I do one solo each year on January 1 at the Sahmat festival in Delhi, but since the ’90s I have kept to group work because funding is a problem.

I stumbled on to The Action Players (of Calcutta) and enjoyed working with them so much that I welcomed invitations from NGOs and corporate houses. As a teacher I could not avoid responsibility. So I launched the Astad Deboo Dance Foundation.

Even when you began, you stood out as a traditionally trained Indian dancer who focused on contemporary issues…

When I began no one wanted to deal with the contemporary but now the situation is reversed. Which is good, but to have a new language of your own you have to have a vocabulary and that can only come from reaching beyond boundaries, exploring. Without that you have just your old technique and a meaningless mishmash.

Yes, I have always been politically and socially aware, though the rasa has been very important. One of the first political satires was for the Khajuraho dance festival that expected performers to either work on the myths of the temple or on the work of a famous poet of Madhya Pradesh.

Satyadev Dubey suggested Muktibodh — Lakdi Ka Ravana (I began with theatre and those links have remained so strong. Even now I do dance theatre). I presented Ravana as a politician. In Skin Deep, which I did soon after Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, I would come on stage in western costume that was shed in the course of the dance to reveal the typical kurta, pyjama and cap… a tongue-in-cheek reference to Rajiv Gandhi’s friends from abroad.

A word on Breaking Boundaries?

Breaking Boundaries is a series of abstract pieces, by 13 street children around 16. I hate explaining my work because I want the audience to think, something not there in our culture. To the students I have suggested that they imagine themselves as sprouting trees exploring a new world with their branches. I made them dance on benches. When they asked “Yeh dance hai?”— because they are used to only traditional and Bollywood dance — I told them it is to understand how the body can move both in confined and open spaces.

What about reality dance shows?

These silly dance shows upset me. I don’t like the idea of children gyrating. And the judges are worse…. I feel like questioning their educational background.