Festival of Indian Dance Schedule Announced
By: Victoria Myers Aug. 08, 2008
The Indo-American Arts Council today announced a packed schedule of performances to be presented as part of the Erasing Borders: Festival of Indian Dance to be held in New York from August 18-21, 2008. The lineup of performances showcases the richness in the range of Indian dance forms and puts the many facets on the art of dance on display. In its debut year, the dance festival will showcase 23 different performances by 15 dance troupes and solo performers from around the world. Classical, modern and contemporary dance share the Erasing Borders stage to form a magnificent mélange of styles and traditions. The festival's educational component will explore the complexities of aesthetics, sensibilities, issues and perspectives of the rich tradition of Indian dance while nurturing exciting new dimensions developing in the Indian, American and global contexts.
Battery Dance Company's Downtown Dance Festival
Performers: Natya Dance Theatre, Manu Kala Mandir, Anurekha Ghosh &
Company, Janaki Rangarajan, Ananya Dance Theatre CompanyTime: 12pm - 2pm; Venue: One Chase Manhattan Plaza (Nassau & Liberty St)Tuesday, August 19th: Free Lunchtime PerformancesBattery Dance Company's Downtown Dance Festival
Performers: SAMPRADAYA Dance Creations, Manijeh Ali, Thresh, Nayikas Dance Theater, Dakshina/ Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, Sinha DanseTime: 12pm - 2pm; Venue: One Chase Manhattan Plaza (Nassau & Liberty St)Wednesday, August 20th: "Transitions & Translocations"
Performers: Natya Dance Theatre, Parijat Desai Dance Company, Thresh,
SAMPRADAYA Dance Creations, Anurekha Ghosh & Company,
Manu Kala Mandir, Janaki Rangarajan, Parul Shah & Prashant Shah. Q & A Moderated by Uttara Coorlawala, Modern Dancer, Scholar & CriticTime: 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Venue: The Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W 55th Street at 9th Ave
Cost: Regular price $35 per person; Students $25 (with Student ID)Thursday, August 21st: "Globaliz-Asians"Performers: Nayikas Dance Theater, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, Sudarshan Belsare,
MariaColacoDance, Sinha Danse, Ananya Dance TheatreQ & A Moderated by Rajika Puri, Dancer. Choreographer and Writer
Time: 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Venue: The Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W 55th Street at 9th Ave
Fundraising Dinner & Concert: $100 per person
Concert Only: Regular $35 per person; Students: $25 (with Student ID)The performances include:Ananya Dance Theatre (Minnesota): It is a company of women artists of color, diverse in age, race, nationality, and sexual orientation. Based on contemporary interpretations of the Odissi dance form, aesthetic traditions of Bengal, and practices of street theater created by women's groups, the company seeks to reach and engage diverse people. Drawing from the passion of women's movements world-wide toward social justice, the choreographic trend of the company's work involves dancing stories of ordinary lives to invoke a broader commentary about social justice and philosophy.
Anurekha Ghosh & Company (United Kingdom): The performance is a combination of music, dance, visual art, film, poetry, and mime. The company's aim is to communicate the beauty and emotional intensity of North Indian classical Kathak dance while interpreting the contemporary world. Dakshina /Daniel Phoenix Singh and Company (District of Columbia): They give viewers the unique opportunity to experience dance as a movement that links arts, cultures, and social causes. The vision of Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company is to explore and present dance in its complexity and multiplicity, celebrating tradition while constantly creating new vocabularies in movement and dance, evolving to newer and higher standards. The performances connect tradition with cutting edge ideas, using mythology to explore sexualities creating a stunning visual feast.Dr. Janaki Rangarajan (Virginia): Dr. Janaki Rangarajan is a senior disciple of Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam for more than 23 years and started learning Bharatanatyam from her illustrious Guru at age four. She will perform dances that are praises to the Hindu deities specifically to Lord Shiva. It is a combination of musical notes or Swaras along with prose/poetry or Sahitya, usually in praise of a Hindu deity. Manijeh Ali (Canada): Manijeh Ali is a contemporary dancer and choreographer with intensive training in Bharata Natyam, Kathak, and traditional West African dance. Originally from Afghanistan, Manijeh is the founder of Silken Dance (2006), which is committed to creating and producing contemporary dance projects that portray the history of people who live along the Silk Road.Manu Kala Mandir Dance Academy (Canada): The performances highlight the male/female interaction. The items selected for the festival capture two important markers in the thematic arch: the moment when the male and female spirits feel the initial attraction and meet for the first time (Abhisaranam) and the moment when, after a period of separation, they reunite and, like the two merged rivers, build a stronger, deeper relationship where they complement each other and become integral halves of a twofold whole symbolized by the iconography of Ardhanarishwara. Maria Colaco Dance (New York) Maria Colaco creates work that is a culmination of her cultural, professional and educational experiences - whether from her native India, her years on Florida's Redneck Riviera or her current life in New York. Influenced by pedestrian gestures, break dancing, classic modern dance and theatre, and frequently utilizing text and a wide range of media, Maria Colaco's work appeals to an ever-expanding audience. Maria's choreography benefits from her commitment to challenge the established boundaries between sacred and secular, classical and pop, comedy and tragedy.Natya Dance Theatre (Illinois): Hema Rajagopaln and Krithika Rajagopalan, the mother-daughter duo, believe in producing innovative work that preserves Bharat Natyam in its full integrity, developing the art form in new directions, and bringing it to diverse audiences all over the world. As a choreographer Hema has created numerous short works and over thirty evening-length productions. The company will present both traditional and innovative works at this festival ranging from stories of the Krishna, rhythmic explorations to the stories of creation. Nayikas Dance Theater Company feature Rudrakshya (India & New York): Nayikas is New York's first resident classical Indian Odissi dance theater company. Nayikas is both a presenting and performing company. It draws from feminist iconography present in the footnotes of Indian mythology, history and literature. In a rare collaborative production with Ridrakshya, an all-male Odissi dance company on tour from India, they will present 'Ardhanarishwara'. This piece explores dimensions of the primordial androgyne, both as the mythographic diety Shiva, and as the human being who transgresses or otherwise blurs gender-divides.Parul Shah & Prashant Shah (New York & India): Parul Shah from New York and Prashant Shah from India are both powerful performers trained in Kathak dance, who have performed and toured extensively all over the world. They come together to perform 'Yugal' a signature piece of renowned choreographer Kumudini Lakhia that has been presented all over the world to great acclaim. Yugal literally means duet, and is explored through 'Nritta' or the abstract element of Indian dance extracted from its physical structure.
Parijat Desai Dance Company (New York): Since 1995, Parijat Desai has been exploring ways to blend Indian classical dance, modern/postmodern dance and other forms. She strives to find organic connections between forms, to investigate new ways to respond to Indian music, and to find overlaps between drama in the Indian classical tradition and Western dance-theater. The performance for the Festival, is based on The Wall, a folk tale passed down by generations of women and collected by poet-folklorist A.K. Ramanujan. Sampradaya Dance Creations (Canada): Sampradaya believes that dance is a mirror to society, inspired and rooted in the expression of human experience. The Company explores dance as a medium for meaningful communication, engaging and enriching the lives of its collaborators and viewers. The Company's strength lies in its diversity and range of performance and collaboration; its versatility is showcased in traditional classical performances of Bharatanatyam and through its innovative works. The performances showcase a new take on the much-loved sport of cricket and a multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory, mystical movement piece evoking the mystery of 'Shunya' the full and complete void, intersecting the three cultural streams of India, China and the Middle East.Sinha Danse (Canada): Sinha's creative impulse wells up from the recollection of his cultural origins, expressing itself in a dynamic tension between the intimate and the universal, between control and abandon. Sinha uses the universality of the body to explore harmony and dissonance, and tensions created by the collision of East and West. Beautifully expressive mudras (hand gestures) and the rhythmically complex footwork of Indian dance combine with the full body movements of modern, ballet and the martial arts in "Quebasian Rhapsody" (a word play on Quebec & Asian). Sudarshan Belsare (Massachusetts): A transgender performer, Sudarshan Belsare is perpetuating the classical tradition of Stri-Vesham (female impersonation) where the target gender identity of a woman's psyche and body is the medium to communicate Nayaki Bhava (the voice of the female protagonist) in the traditional Bharatanatyam repertoire. Belsare is particularly interested in keeping the work bold, edgy and full of risks and remains committed towards extending critical thought in the understanding and treatment of traditional Bharatanatyam in North America.
Thresh (New York): Thresh was founded by Artistic Director, Preeti Vasudevan in 2004 with the main aim of exploring and developing a new dance-theatre language drawn from traditional Indian dance and contemporary global genres. Preeti has an MA in Choreography and Movement Analysis from Laban Centre, London and has recently released an interactive educational website on Bharatanatyam. Thresh will restage the work "Tides of the Moon" that was originally created for the Tsunami Disaster Benefit, Organized by the IAAC and Christies, NY. The Indo-American Arts Council is a registered 501(c)3 not-for-profit, secular service and resource arts organization charged with the mission of promoting and building the awareness, creation, production, exhibition, publication and performance of Indian and cross-cultural art forms in North America.The IAAC supports all artistic disciplines in the classical, fusion, folk and innovative forms influenced by the arts of India. They work with colleagues around the United States to broaden collective audiences and to create a network for shared information, resources and funding. The focus is to work with artists and arts organizations in North America as well as to facilitate artists and arts organizations from India in their endeavors to exhibit, perform and produce their works here. All donations to the IAAC are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable by law.For further information, please visit www.iaac.us About the Downtown Dance FestivalThe Battery Dance Company's Annual Downtown Dance Festival was initiated in 1982 to introduce a wide variety of worthy dance companies of all genres to the large and diverse audiences that gather in lower Manhattan's public spaces. Audiences are as likely to be first-timers as to be aficionados, with business executives sharing the space with mothers and toddlers, construction workers and bike messengers on their lunch break. The Festival places a strong emphasis on the inclusion of diverse dance styles and a multi-ethnic roster of performers.
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