The Collaborative Action Dance Project

Look into my Voice, Hear my Dance (LVHD)
2019-2020
"cathartic experience"
LVHD is a collaboration of Bharata Natyam dancers and survivors of sexual and domestic violence to bring their stories to the community.  The project began with an introduction and exploration of different approaches to dancing and creating with BN, including Bharata Nrityam, with 4 BN dancers at ASU.  With these additional creative tools and an introductory advocacy training by ACESDV staff Doreen, the dancers paired up with 4 survivor-members through ACESDV, while 3 survivor-members worked directly with Sumana to generate their own pieces.  We were actively sharing, creating, thinking and dancing together for the past year and strung this garland of mini-performances for you to experience.  LVHD is a collaborative action dance project:  it is dance as a language of empowerment; it is joining a movement to end violence in our communities; it is awakening a collective consciousness.  It seeks to do what dance has always done—build community for everyone.
Glimpses at:  LVHD Seen
Feedback:
  • The process was well-structured along with including plenty of creative elements. It was surprising to me as to how what we needed next was well thought-out by our director and it was made available either as a resource or an answer.  ~Dancer-Participant
  • emotionally demanding, satisfaction, connection  ~Dancer-Participant
  • Movement speaks louder and more gentle. Less trauma through movement and a space was opened up to allow healing and a bridging between me and the audience   ~Survivor-Participant
  • They listened. That is powerful. It was amazing to see how much the audience embraced our art by watching and listening.   ~Survivor-Participant
  • Emotionally overwhelming performances; amazing how dance can amplify thestories, their impact + help the audience connect at a much deeper level   ~Attendee
  • This was a moving & beautiful, educational experience. I learned Bharata Natyam as a child & only today witnessed how impactful & empowering of an art form it is. Amazing job!    ~Attendee
Photos by Ri Lindegren
​Information & Booking:
The LVHD collaborative action dance project can be shared as
  • a summer intensive or as a residency for dance, especially Bharata Natyam, in creating a project for participants to engage with their community about a justice issue of their choice.  The LVHD collaborative action dance project is suitable for all ages in studio, K-12 or higher education settings.
  • a workshop with performance opportunity for survivors/victims of sexual assault and domestic violence to worker further in their healing process by reclaiming their narratives and being able to share them with diverse communities, including their movement partners, thus rejecting the often imposed silence.
Contact Dansense to book the "LVHD collaborative action dance project" for your students/institution.

KRITI
2019

Photos: Coley Curry, Naini Mandala, Lawrence Fung, & ASU School of Music, Dance, Theater.   Video: Lawrence Fung.
Kriti is a choreographic work of about 15 minutes in collaboration with 8 dancers and 4 Indian musicians exploring how tradition can be translated from ancient thought to contemporary lived experiences through various movement practices with a grounding in Bharata Nrityam and Carnatic music.  A multicultural work that treats ancient stories of Ganesha with contemporary perspectives, it leads to individual and collective discoveries about common values and questions we have as human beings across time and borders. 
What is a story? How do we listen? I love our stories and learn something new from them with every retelling. Those who made them gave us so many different ways of seeing wisdom. Perhaps that is part of the wisdom— to keep looking from different perspectives. So, with the help of my co-conspirator artists, we share an exploration of the stories that evoke Ganesha and the ideas we gleaned from them, utilizing our varied, yet collective approaches. The original Bharata-Natyam choreography by N. Srikanth appears as a reminder to recognize our roots and foundations, even as we set out to explore new frontiers.

Information & Booking:
Kriti can be commissioned as a performance of the original set work or as a short dance-intensive to explore the basic process of a collaborative action dance project and create a choreography, using Bharata Nrityam pedagogy and somatics, unique to the intensive's participants.
Contact Dansense to book the "Kriti collaborative action dance project" for your students/institution.