Art Share 2024 Program

Saturday, October 5th at 6:30 PM
Joe Goode Annex, 401 Alabama Street, San Francisco, CA

The Art Share 2024 is a works-in-progress showing of the members of our 2024 cohort! Shireen Hamza, Maya Rau-Murthy, and Meghana Ravikumar will share their work in person and Sudesh Mantillake will show their work virtually. Pritam Das, Dayita Nereyeth, Shwetha Gopalakrishnan will share excepts of their Bangalore sharing and Parijat Desai will also show highlights from her process. The 6 month residency emphasizes process over product, and the artists have been digging deep into each of their works to put together an intimate preview of the projects they continue to work on. Grateful to Joe Goode Performance Group, who is our space partner, whose support has been instrumental in bringing this vision to life.

Program

What Kind of Partner is the Floor? by Shireen Hamza and Eshan Rafi

What Kind of Partner is the Floor? In this new collaboration, Shireen Hamza and Eshan Rafi bring together their practices of working with archives, stories, contact improvisation and somatic movement. How do we relate to the floor, and how is this conditioned by social histories? Seemingly solid and constant, the floor's meanings are charged and shifting. In this participatory piece, we invite an embodied exploration of our relationships to the floor.

Credits:
Choreography: Shireen Hamza and Eshan Rafi
Performance: Shireen Hamza and Eshan Rafi

Steps Beyond Silence by Maya Rau-Murthy

Directed by Maya Rau-Murthy, Steps Beyond Silence is a multi-media awareness education production amplifying the silenced voices of survivors of gender-based violence. Stemming from her personal journey as a survivor and her advocacy work for survivors, the production blends live rap, animation, konnakol, bharatanatyam, navtar, mridangam, and Carnatic vocals. The work aims to validate survivor experiences; educate on consent, the bystander effect, and intergenerational trauma; and empower viewers to be upstanders.

Credits:

Director, composer, choreographer, konnakol artist, rapper, dancer - Maya Rau-Murthy
Music co-director, composer, carnatic vocalist - Sindhu Natarajan
Animation director, choreographer, dancer - Mrinaalika Sivakumar
Composer, navtar - Vishnu R
Composer, mridangam, kanjira - Shubha Chandramouli
Choreographer, dancer, rapper, singer - Meenakshi Chen
Dancer - Surabhi Bharadwaj
Choreographer - Anugraha Shirdar

The team that will be performing the work live are: Maya Rau-Murthy, Sindhu Natarajan, Mrinaalika Sivakumar, Meenakshi Chen, Surabhi Bharadwaj

Kala by Meghana Ravikumar

Over the course of the pandemic, I started to develop an intense longing to find and know what home feels like. Whenever I think of home, I think of my grandparents home where I lived when I was 4 years old. I think of running around on warm streets, climbing my neighbors’ fences, picking flowers with my friends, rose and orange popsicles, and my loving grandparents. I am thrown viscerally back into this home when I walk by blooming jasmine or feel humid heat on my skin. It has been odd knowing what home is and where it is but not being able to physically get there. This work in progress piece is an exploration of trying to get back to a home that no longer exists physically, where it’s simultaneously lost in time but ever-present and, almost, yet never tangible.

*Warning: The first 24 seconds includes a slow flashing light.*

Credits:
Production & Performance - Meghana Ravikumar

Transcript of recordings:

May Day May Day May Day May Day.

My transport is malfunctioning. I am in uncontrolled descent in unknown territory within Sector 8342 Alpha Zion. Again, sector 8342 alpha zion. Send help. send help.

Captain’s Log: Star Date 300.1

Day 50 after I crash landed on this planet. From initial exploration, the locals seem to obsess with staying out of the sun and have built everything with straight lines. Their linguistic patterns match those of their architecture, sharp and linear. Organic life is bottled and manicured to fit these rigid shapes. I find myself walking in grids. I do not know how sustainable this is. I hope to salvage scraps to fix my transport and make my way back home.

Captain’s Log: Star Date 551.32

Day 1235 after I crash landed on this planet. My starship continues to need parts I cannot find. I have partially given up upon recovering my transport. Instead, I scour my ship and this planet for pieces of the earth. I’ve found jasmine vines, rose petals, an old soap box, expired sweets, hing, boiled peanut shells, warm sea, and marigolds. I wrap myself in my collections, close my eyes shut, burrow deep in my body, and will myself to rip through space time. To my home, that I can no longer reach, and no longer exists. And in those moments, I feel warm again.

Response to Tea Dance by Sudesh Mantillake

Response to Tea Dance is a piece that records the process of reflecting on and expressing the problematic "tea dance" choreography used to represent up-country Tamil plantation workers and their Malayaga community in Sri Lanka. People of the Malayaga community are the descendants of migrant workers from South India who were brought to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) by the British Colonial Government between the 1830s and 1930s. In the 1970s, Sinhala choreographers created the "tea dance" for the first time to represent Malayaga Tamil people on stage, under the choreographic model used to create Sinhala "folk dances." In effect, they choreographed their imagination of the lifestyle of the women and men who work on tea plantations, portraying them comically and ignoring the stark socio-economic realities they are forced to struggle with. A group of artists came together to collectively respond to this problematic "tea dance.”

Collaborative choreographers:
Sudesh Mantillake
Hewagamage Chamanee Darshika
Selvaraj Rajeew
Sumudu Wikasitha Manelanga
Rasiah Dhanarajh
Kaladevi Anah Harish

**Excerpt of ANKAHI by Pritam Das**

In the whispering shadows of legend, a mysterious woman emerges, her essence woven from the threads of compassion, strength, and devotion. A warrior’s heart beats within her, tempered by the depths of love and the ache of loss. Her spirit, a complex and beautiful presence, slowly reveals itself, like a hidden garden finally uncovered, its beauty and depth waiting to be discovered.

Credits:
Conceptualized and presented by Pritam Das
Script by Shri Divy Anand Jha
Musical Inputs by Dr S Vasudevan and Shri Ronak Ramchandran
Narration by Shri Subhav Nogia
Flute by Shri Raghi Simha AN
Rhythm Pad and Konnakol by Shri Mithun Shakthii S
Logistics coordinator Shri Pinaki Chakraborty

**Excerpt of Tick Tock by Dayita Nereyeth**

Tick Tock is a time-based exploration involving a contemporary dancer and a ‘twin’ bonsai plant. It acknowledges and inhabits different experiences and layers of time, both linear and cyclical. There is always a continuous return, with no clear beginning or end, and a feeling of moving forward. This work-in-progress is part of an evening-length piece called Rooted, which is being developed in collaboration with Abhaydev Praful, Joshua Sailo, and Bharavi.

Credits:
Choreography: Dayita Nereyeth
Performance: Dayita Nereyeth and Mandrake
Sound: Abhaydev Praful
Shadow: Joshua Sailo
Light: Bharavi

**Excerpt of Goodbye to Alarippu by Shwetha Gopalakrishnan**

Goodbye to Alarippu is a solo devised theatre piece that tells the story of a dancer’s struggles for freedom and identity amidst continuous ruptures of violence. This piece uses the dancer’s memories, objects, experiences and everything unsaid to raise questions of care and healing. Highlighting the dancer's continual struggle and the repeated attempts to repair injuries, this piece talks about the dilemmas of finding courage to move amidst the overwhelming stuckness and spirals of structures.

Credits:
Sound Design- Abhiroop Paul
Production - Deepika Gulati
Project mentor- Talin Subarraya
Social media design by Sukriti
Creative Direction- Sapna Ahuja
Dramaturgy and vision- Veena Basavarajaiah (cartoon natyam)
Executive Direction and concept- Shwetha Gopalakrishnan
Developed in Black Box Okhla
Project supported by Unrehearsed Artist Residency

Funders
Unrehearsed Artist Residency is created by Nava Dance Theatre, and is a part of the Unrehearsed Activism program, supported by the California Arts Council Impact Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation and individual donors.

Consider donating to keep this program going! All donations are tax deductible in the US.

NAVA DANCE THEATRE IS A 501(C)3 REGISTERED NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION.

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About Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program
The Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program aims to fund and support the creation of new dance work by artists who are often not represented in conventionally-funded spaces in the South Asian Dance industry. The program keeps care & developmental support front and center while working toward sharing a final work in progress

Special thanks
We would like to thank those who supported this work through community engagement programs, being present for work-in-progress sharings, having 1:1 conversations with many artists, past cohort members, panelists, and those advising on the direction of this program. We would like to also thank Veena Basavarajiah (Cartoon_Natyam) and Jason Wyman (Queerly Complex) for their support and guidance at different stages of this years program. We would like to especially thank ALL the artists in this years URP cohort, for being so open to process over product and really digging deep into their work.

Art Share 2024 Program

Program