Choreographies of Scent, A Libretto for Dance

Craft in South India: A Legacy at the Crossroads

Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan

Jahnvi Lakhota Nandan is a multi-disciplinary perfumer. Her studio practice, The Perfume Library, merges scents with original compositions of poetry, music, architecture and dance. She sees perfumery as a performative art, freeing it from the confines of a bottle. The Memory Pod Project consists of such ‘interactions’ with people through words and smells, a ‘deep smell lab’ that is an experimental project of graffiti with scents. Some of the fragrances created from this project can be experienced at the new CAM space at Foundation Gulbenkian in Lisbon and the Old War Office in London, Goodearth India and soon at Coonoor & Co.

AJ Mallari

AJ Mallari straddles the confluence of product, space, and systems design as a consultant focusing on holistically outfitting design-led initiatives with heavy leanings on craft and artisanal production to reach their creative goals. He has worked across South and Southeast Asia facilitating workshops, teaching, conducting research, and managing creative interventions while ticking off a shortening list of must-see places. He recently moved to the Visayan Islands after finishing further studies in Belgium last year, he currently runs a start-up creative practice while teaching design at the local university.

Choreographies of Scent: A Libretto for Dance

Is

This space in between you and me
With woodpeckers peck pecking
And cuckoos cocooing
Their soft, sounds resounding
In ponds and coves and groves

The winds roamed the pillars and galleries
And the mother pine’s thick top trembled
Kneeling down with musk, you draw me
Over my pillars you stand
To see yourself in art
I am a parasol in your hand

Every time I hear a flutter
I imagine it’s you
Madly moved by a musky zest
I look all around for you

Tree scents make me shiver
Moon shafts waste me away
Anguished in your absence
I know not what to do

{Cut grass, Mint, Violette, Cedarwood, Amber …}

The libretto below is the dance that accompanies the creation of a fragrance. A part of it was choreographed by Guru Mandakini Trivedi in January 2021.