Choreography

2006 Replaced Rituals
This work in progress deals with memory and identity created through ritual enactments for migrant communities.  We especially focus on Sufi and Bhakti rituals from Islam and Hinduism to explore how memories imprinted in our bodies evolve to encompass a new context.  Dance vocabulary draws on Kathak and Bharatnatyam movements.

2005 Union/Dissolution





A dance-theater piece conceived in collaboration with theatre artist Ulla Neuerburg-Denzer.  The work explores emotional states and spiritual transcendence within the backdrop of war and violence.  The method used for crafting the piece was based on the Indian aesthetic theory of rasa.  Rasa involves engaging the audience through intense emotion.  Ulla approached it through theatrical methods devised by Richard Schechner, and my approach was through the techniques of traditional classical Indian dance.

2004 Longing
This short composition explores the essence of the aesthetic theory of rasa through the emotional state of longing.  Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry is interspersed with a traditional north Indian song to evoke a heightened emotional state due to the arrival of monsoon.  The movement vocabulary is based on traditional Kathak repertoire

2003 In Search of Sound
Based on Kathak and various pedestrian movements and gestures the piece choreographs the cacophony of sound and movement that surrounds us.  Yet there is an eternal quest for clarity and sense of self that unites us as humans.  This piece blends various percussion beats from tabla, taiko drums, and vocal tones.

2002 Threads: Story of a Sari from Labor to Market





This piece inspired by the weavers of rural India, tells the story of the journey of a sari from villages to the global market.  The dance vocabulary is a blend of Kathak interpretive work gestures, and contemporary movements. 

Selected in the arts pick section of the Philadelphia City paper.

2002 The Mahatma is Fasting





This piece was specifically created for Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday celebrations at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  The piece uses song, dance and poetry to interpret his political and moral philosophy and present his method of nonviolence as a tool for social change.

2000 Imagining Jamuna





This piece is a critique of the orientalist rendering of classical Indian dance.  Using classical dance movements and everyday gestures, this piece imagines the lives of domestic women workers whose labor maintains the comforts of bourgeois life in India.

Featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer Calendar section. March 16th, 2001.

2000/1 Silencing the Nautch





This composition uses video and dance performance to represent the repressed history of the (Nautch) dancing girls in India.  The dance movements are based on traditional and interpretive Kathak.