Parijat Desai: O.O.F. (studies in the opposite of fear) presented as part of CPR’s 2019 Spring Benefit. Photo by Kathryn Butler.
FREE with registration, limited capacity
Register here
Registration will close on December 10 at 12PM
This workshop is open to dancers.
In accordance with the Key to NYC, CPR will require all workshop participants to show proof of full vaccination against Covid-19 (14+ days after final dose).
CPR is collaborating with dance artist Parijat Desai to co-present a workshop which explores material from her current project How Do I Become WE, and as an extension of her work as a 2021 CPR Artist-in-Residence. The workshop is an opportunity for dancers to engage with aspects of Parijat’s development process, including both improvisation and phrase material, and to forge a creative relationship for possible longer-term collaboration.
How Do I Become WE is a multimedia performance and participatory ritual. Built around a Kannada women's folk tale and Navratri garba (an autumnal circle-dance ritual in worship of primordial Mother), the work explores the relationship between our individual woundedness and the wounds of our world. Employing culturally rooted and experimental dance, with a dose of trickster energy, the piece is an inquiry into the process of releasing hurt, of activating our collective energies, and reconnecting with the natural world.
India-born, U.S.-raised dance artist Parijat Desai creates hybrids of contemporary, Indian classical and Gujarati folk dance; theater; martial arts and other forms to articulate a South Asian American experience through the body, and to challenge ideas of cultural purity and fear that underlie nationalism and xenophobia. Parijat also leads Dance In The Round, sharing circle dances from Gujarat, India. By reframing these ancestral dance practices as inclusive, participatory movement spaces for people across age, ability, caste, and gender, she seeks to support community well-being and activation. Parijat began Parijata Dance Company in 2000 in Los Angeles, and has been based in Lenapehoking / NYC since 2004. She is a 2020-2021 CPR Artist-in-Residence and was a 2018 CPR Technical Resident. In 2021 she received a residency at BRIC Arts | Media, and is a 2022 Gibney DiP Resident. Parijat is a member of the SAEDA Working Group, a collective of South Asian experimental dance artists that has received support from NCC Akron and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is also grateful to have received support from Soham Dance Space/Chicago, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and The Bay and Paul Foundations.