19th November 2021
‘Baa’s Gold 10’ was performed at the National Gallery, London, in November 2021 as part of ‘Dance to the Music of Our Time‘, a live exhibition exploring the relationship of storytelling and contemporary art through the use of movement, dance and choreography.
The performance recounts the story of the burglary of Hetain Patel’s ‘Baa’, or grandmother in Gujarati, whilst at home in Bolton where she lived alone. In a pursuit for gold, Patel’s Baa endured a violent ordeal at the hands of a gang of men who specifically targeted Hindu widows for their cultural tradition of only wearing gold jewellery. As the story is recounted multiple times in the form of a spoken screenplay by a group of performers, Baa regains her own agency, enacting revenge in the final version of the screenplay.
Patel’s performances process events from his own biography through a range of media, often recounting these stories in various ways. Patel presents his own domestic British Indian story in amongst the Western canon of art history as equally epic and fantastical, using both the traditional act of live performance, and the modern form of cinematic storytelling.
Watch the full film of the performance here: