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Erasing Borders 2008: IAAC FESTIVAL OF INDIAN DANCE: AUGUST 18-21, 2008
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For immediate release:
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ERASING BORDERS FESTIVAL OF INDIAN DANCE BRINGS AN EXCITING SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES TO NEW YORK CITY SPOTLIGHTING A UNIQUE RANGE OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN INDIAN DANCE FORMS
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* Festival highlights classical Indian dances such as Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Odissi to contemporary choreographies, modern and post-modern works
* The Indo-American Arts Council presents the first Dance Festival to bring together performances and choreographers from all over the world to one stage in New York City Aug 18-21, 2008
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NEW YORK, NY - August 8, 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.
This year’s Festival programming kicks off with two free outdoor day-time performances as part of Battery Dance Company’s Downtown Dance Festival on August 18-19. Other Festival highlights include two evening performances on August 20-21 as well as an extensive variety of panels, lectures and workshops on topics such as “Expressions & Narratives on Indian Dance”, “Erasing Borders: Issues of Identity, Immigration & Change in Indian Dance” and “Reinterpretation of Traditional Movement.”
Festival Director Prachi Dalal says, “Erasing Borders brings together many different levels of conversations that are part of new movement vocabularies emerging in India and the diaspora. It provides viewers a selection of performances whose depth, scope and quality are simply unprecedented.”
Each day’s production is different yet is designed as a coherent, expressive performance which interweaves with the others to create a compelling whole. The evening performances have been arranged thematically into two showcases around the themes of "Transitions & Translocations" and "Globaliz-Asians."
A full list of artists scheduled to appear along with venue information for each day is included below. For more information on the entire festival and to purchase tickets, visit www.iaac.us
Monday, August 18th: Free Lunchtime Performances
Battery Dance Company's Downtown Dance Festival
Performers: Natya Dance Theatre, Manu Kala Mandir, Anurekha Ghosh &
Company, Janaki Rangarajan, Ananya Dance Theatre Company
Time: 12pm - 2pm; Venue: One Chase Manhattan Plaza (Nassau & Liberty St)
Tuesday, August 19th: Free Lunchtime Performances
Battery Dance Company's Downtown Dance Festival
Performers: SAMPRADAYA Dance Creations, Manijeh Ali, Thresh, Nayikas Dance Theater, Dakshina/ Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, Sinha Danse
Time: 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 & Critic
Time: 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 Theatre
Q & 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.
About the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC):
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 Festival
The 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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PRESS CONTACTS:
Peepul PR
646.495.6224
Gayatri Hingorani / Sri Bhattacharya
gayatri@mypeepul.com / sri@mypeepul.com
High resolution pictures are available upon request |
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Erasing Borders 2008: IAAC FESTIVAL OF INDIAN DANCE: AUGUST 18-21, 2008
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For immediate release:
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THE INDO-AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL IS PROUD TO SHOWCASE
A RANGE OF INDIAN CLASSICAL & MODERN DANCE IN
THE FIRST ANNUAL ERASING BORDERS FESTIVAL OF INDIAN DANCE
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* This 4-day Festival will be held from Aug 18-21, 2008 in New York City
Outdoors August 18-19: Chase Plaza.
Indoors August 20-21: The Ailey Citigroup Theater
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May 12th, 2008, New York, NY: The Indo-American Arts Council is proud to announce the First Annual Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance to be held in New York City from August 18-21, 2008. The IAAC Dance Festival will present Indian dance through its multiplicity of forms and expressions, exploring its complexities of aesthetics, sensibilities, issues and perspectives while celebrating its rich tradition and nurturing exciting new dimensions developing in the Indian, American and global contexts. The style of dance presented will range from classical Indian dances like Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Odissi to contemporary choreographies, modern and post-modern works by South Asian dancers and choreographers.
Founded in 1998, the IAAC exploded onto the New York cultural scene by establishing a unique multi-disciplinary focus in Indian arts and culture. It was the first organization to hold an annual theatre festival in 2000, annual film festival in 2001, annual playwrights festival in 2001 and annual visual arts exhibition in 2003. Aroon Shivdasani, Executive Director of the IAAC, says “The IAAC has presented dance since 1998 since our inception. We are now working towards our first dance festival and will present original works of emerging as well as established dancers and dance companies. We have developed education and outreach programs that will bring together dance practitioners, scholars, critics and audiences to discuss various aspects of Indian dance within its various cultural, social and creative contexts.”
While there are many performances and festivals organized by individual dance companies, there is no annual festival in the United States that presents Indian dance on a common stage and at a national level. The IAAC seeks to increase awareness about Indian dance within the dance community as well as to develop understanding and appreciation for Indian dance amongst diverse audiences through an annual IAAC Erasing Borders Festival of Indian Dance.
Goals and Objectives:
- To create an annual festival that will provide a common platform for choreographies and works that are based on Indian dance forms with high standards of quality and artistic excellence
- To reach out to new audiences and nurture understanding and appreciation for Indian dance among diverse audiences
- To provide a forum for interaction and dialogue amongst dancers, dance scholars, researchers, writers and critics.
- To present an annual platform for emerging dancers to perform, learn, grow and to highlight experimental work of established artists
- To provide opportunities for professional development such as production management, financial management, choreography, occupational injuries, etc
- To provide a forum for exchange and collaboration with dancers, artists and choreographers in all genres of performing arts
The Erasing Borders 2008 Festival of Indian Dance will comprise of:
- Two Outdoor day-time performances as part of the Downtown Dance Festival on August 18-19. Venue: Chase Plaza, NYC. Times: Daytime performances 12 noon – 1:30 pm. Price: Free
- Two Indoor evening performances on August 20-21. Venue: The Ailey Citigroup Theater. Times: Evening performances 7 pm – 9 pm. Price: $35 per person and $25 per person(Students & Senior Citizens)
- Education and outreach programs
- Workshops, panel discussions, lecture-demonstrations
The festival committee includes prominent names in the community such as Aroon Shivdasani, Executive Director, IAAC; Uttara Coorlawala, Dance Scholar and Choreographer; Jonathan Hollander, IAAC Board Member, Executive Director, Battery Dance; Rajika Puri, Odissi Dancer & Theatre Artist, IAAC Advisory Board; and Prachi Dalal, Dance Festival Director. “The number of submissions far exceeded our expectations. We received more than 75 submissions from the US, Canada, UK, Singapore, and India. We are in the process of reviewing and finalizing the selections for the festival,” says Prachi Dalal, Dance Festival Director.
About the Indo-American Arts Council (IAAC):
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 Festival
The 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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| PRESS CONTACTS: |
Peepul PR
646.495.6224
Gayatri Hingorani / Sri Bhattacharya
gayatri@mypeepul.com / sri@mypeepul.com
High resolution pictures are available upon request |
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