Dates:
Tuesday April 23 7-10 pm
Wednesday April 24 7-10 pm
Thursday April 25 7-10 pm

Address:
Maryland Youth Ballet (On RED line metro stop)
926 Ellsworth Drive
Silver Spring, MD

Workshop fees:
The workshop fees are $450.00.

For daytime workshop details please visit www.kalanidhi.org.

Leela Samson
Leela Samson is an alumnus of Kalakshetra. Her seemingly understated delineation conceals a powerful and inspired inner
source, which gradually unfolds before the viewer. She is a virtuoso performer and a sensitive interpreter of the nuances of Bharatanatyam.

Two significant documentary films have been made on Leela Samson – ‘Sanchari’ by Arun Khopkar and ‘The Flowering Tree’ by Ein Lall. Leela is the recipient of the Sanskriti Award in 1982, the Padmashri Award in 1990, the Nritya Choodamani Award in 1997 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2000. She served as Director of the Kalakshetra Foundation from 2005 to 2012. She is Chairman of the Central Sangeet Natak Akademi as well as Chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification.

Spanda, a group that presents works conceived and choreographed by Leela Samson, attempts to explore bharata natyam. Launched in September 1995, Spanda now has an evolving repertoire. Spanda is ‘a vibration’ or pulse and is symbolic of the enduring and perpetual energy that is the life force of the universe. It acknowledges prithvi – the earth, as the central source of energy in the universe, as the nabha, the womb is the energy centre of the human body.

Bragha Bessel
Bragha is a consummate artist. She has been a senior student of Adyar K Lakshman and Kalanidhi Narayanan and is renowned for her abhinaya. She is the quintessential Bharata Natayam dancer, totally immersed in the art of learning and in the emotional aspects of the music she portrays. Bragha has a simple, unassuming presence, until she begins to weave magic on her audience with her sophisticated mimetic skills.

She has often played the lead roles in her teachers’ dance productions and also teaches at her guru’s institute. With many awards to her credit, she has given numerous performances in India and abroad. She has participated in dance festivals in Chennai and has performed extensively in India, the United States, Canada and throughout Europe. She has made TV appearances in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Japan and on AsiaNet. She has also conducted many workshops and lecture demonstrations. Her classes in Abhinaya, interpretation and choreography are eagerly attended by senior dancers, teachers and students.

Workshop details:
Advanced dancers will get to work in a professional setting with two renowned master teachers each evening. There will be three sessions of 90-120 minutes with both Leela akka and Bragha akka. Must be able to work in a quick pace of a dance intensive.

Pola Nirenska (1910-1992) was a matriarch of modern dance in Washington, DC who survives through her work, and the gift of an annual award to honor those who have made outstanding contributions to dance. Founded in 1993 and supported by donations by Dr. Jan Karski, the late Ms. Nirenska’s husband, the Fund is administered by the Washington Performing Arts Society which hosts a committee that annually decides to whom the award shall be given. Special consideration is given to the community of dance in Washington, DC where the couple lived and worked during their later years. The current committee is comprised of Dance and Arts community leaders including: 1) Veteran dance critic George Jackson who wrote frequently for the Washington Post, Dance Magazine and is an active contributor for the www.danceviewtimes.com. 2) SaliAnn Kriegsman, wife of the late Pulitzer Prize winning dance critic Alan Kriegsman, 3) Carla Perlo, Founding Artistic Director at Dance Place, 4) Anthony Gittens, Director of Film Fest DC, 5) Meg Booth, Director of Dance Programming at the Kennedy Center, 6) Doug Wheeler, President Emeritus of the Washington Performing Arts Society. The award is highly competitive and past recipients have included distinguished leaders such as Rima Faber (current chair), Liz Lerman of Dance Exchange, Carla Perlo of Dance Place, and prominent choreographers Eric Hampton, Jacek Luminski, and Sharon Wyrrick. Daniel Phoenix Singh has been chosen for the 2013 Pola Nirenska Award for Artistic Excellence.

Daniel Phoenix Singh is the Artistic Director and President of Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, whose revival of Anna Sokolow’s Lyric Suite at Dance Place was selected as one of the top three local dance performances in 2012 by Pulitzer Prize winning dance critic Sarah Kaufman in the Washington Post.

Singh holds an MFA in Dance and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of Maryland. He also holds a Laban Movement Analyst Certificate from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York City. Singh trained in the Indian classical dance style of Bharata Natyam with Guru Meena Telikicherla of Nrityanjali. Singh’s most recent explorations in dance include Cuban/Colombian variations of Salsa and Merengue with Javier Varela and Shawn Malone. Singh is currently on the faculty at Maryland Youth Ballet.

Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company received the Founder’s Award for Innovation in Dance in 2007 and received the Emerging Group and Excellence in Costume Design Awards in 2008 from the Metro DC Dance Awards. In 2009, Dakshina received a prestigious touring grant, performing Anna Sokolow’s work in India. The company was also the first U.S.-based dance company to visit Bangladesh since the country’s founding in 1972. In 2010, Singh became one of the youngest finalists for the DC Mayor’s Arts Awards in the Innovation in the Arts category. Dakshina is one of two U.S. based dance companies to be invited to perform in the Kennedy Center festival Maximum India in 2011.

Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company is excited to return to our home theater Dance Place in April 2013. We will be presenting our signature program of classical Indian dance and Modern dance.

The program will open with some of the traditional gems of Bharata Natyam featuring our company dancers Madhvi Venkatesh and Kasi Aysola. Vibrant and musical, the dancers go back and forth between lush storytelling to abstract dances.

The highlight of this year’s show will be our reconstruction of Anna Sokolow’s Magritte, Magritte (1970). The iconic work was Anna Sokolow’s multi-media masterpiece that gave rise to the theatre/dance genre, and is one of the most influential modern dance works ever created. Lorry May, former principal dancer of with Anna Sokolow on whom many works were created will be in residence with the company in March for the reconstruction of this work.

The music includes French songs and selections from Liszt, Satie, and Scriabin and the text used in the work draws on Paul Eluard, Edgar Allan Poe, and John White. Dance, music, and text come together in a work that borders on the line between poignancy, fantasy, and sheer farce. Sokolow who was known for her strong socially themed dances, shows us a warm, witty and down right silly side in this work.

The source of the inspiration
In her biography, Larry Warren writes that, “Anna’s most extraordinary work for the Lyric Theatre was Magritte, Magritte, which was inspired by the paintings of the Belgian surrealist artist. It was with Magritte that Anna most clearly achieved the balance between theater, music, and dance that she had been pursuing with varying degrees of success for many years. In developing her choreography she made full use of the painter’s familiar images, such as a pipe, a candle, a derby hat, an apple, and boots that mysteriously have lower legs growing out of them. With these pictorial ideas and the evocative and haunting poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, John White, and Paul Eluard, she created a surrealistic dance/theater piece that carried Magritte’s images into action.”

Warren continues, “The first vignette, “The Lovers,” was inspired by a painting in which Magritte depicted a couple isolated by their passionate involvement with each other. Their faces are covered by cloth bags tied at the neck. The sexual energy that carries them through a ballroom dance-like duet is breathtaking. The duet, as preserved in the 1971 television filming in Holland, is surely one of the most sensuous Anna ever created.”

About Magritte
René François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images that fell under the umbrella of surrealism. His work challenges observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality.

“It is a union that suggests the essential mystery of the world. Art for me is not an end in itself, but a means of evoking that mystery.” -— René Magritte on putting seemingly unrelated objects together in juxtaposition

Magritte’s work frequently displays a collection of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not “satisfy emotionally”—-when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.

René Magritte described his paintings as “visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, ‘What does that mean?’. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.” Magritte’s constant play with reality and illusion has been attributed to the early death of his mother. Psychoanalysts who have examined bereaved children have said that Magritte’s back and forth play with reality and illusion reflects his “constant shifting back and forth from what he wishes—’mother is alive’—to what he knows—’mother is dead’”. Read more on Magritte on Wikipedia here.

This engagement of Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the generous donors/board members of Dakshina.

DANCE IN WASHINGTON DC!

Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company based in Washington DC is currently recruiting strong male and female dancers with a solid background in modern dance and/or ballet and release technique for its 2013-2014 season. Dakshina has a multi-year partnership with the Sokolow foundation in restaging Anna Sokolow’s iconic modern dance works, works with Bharata Natyam—a South Asian classical dance form, and synthesizes the two forms in a unique three prong approach to dance.

We are looking for energetic, committed, professional, and positive dancers who love to engage and interact with each other. Artistic director Singh creates within 1) contemporary, and modern dance genres, 2) classical South Asian dance, and 3) synthesizing these forms in a unique signature movement style. Dancers must be interested in working with our educational outreach program in area schools and communities. In addition, Dancers must work well in a group, and be interested and willing to study other techniques such as Bharata Natyam and Social Dance forms. Experience in other dance forms with is a definite plus. Dakshina strongly encourages minority dancers to audition to work with the company

Rehearsals are from 7:00 to 11:00 Mondays and Wednesdays in Silver Spring (close to DC; metro accessible). Dancers will take class at Maryland Youth Ballet from 7:15 to 8:45 and rehearsals will continue till 11 pm each Monday and Wednesday. Interested candidates must be able to commit to at least 18 months to be considered for all positions. All performances and travel expenses are paid, and dancers receive a rehearsal stipend. The company has several local, national and international performance opportunities in the upcoming months along with a strong outreach program in area schools and community centers.

ABOUT DAKSHINA

Dakshina received the Dance Metro DC Founder’s Award for Innovation in 2007, and Emerging Group and Excellence in Costume in 2008. Dakshina toured India and Bangladesh in 2009/2010 and the company was one of two US-based dance companies to be invited to participate in the Maximum India Festival in 2011 at the Kennedy Center in DC. In 2012, the Sokolow Foundation’s restaging of Lyric Suite on Dakshina was selected as one of the top three local dance events of the year. We are a fun, vibrant, and exciting group to dance with, and use a collaborative work approach–Email us today to get started!

AUDITION FORMAT

· Auditions will be held Monday February 25 at the Ailey studios.

· The audition will include a short warm up and then rep phrases.

· Ideal start date will be March 10 (dancers relocating to DC will be permitted till March 18 for the move).

· Please email your resume, pictures with headshots and full body shots, and video clips (or links to clips) showing you dancing to info@dakshina.org.

LOCATION DETAILS

Alvin Ailey Studios
405 W 55th St, New York, NY 10019
Monday February 25 from 12:00 to 1:45. Please plan on arriving by 11:30.

For those of you who don’t know Jamal, he is a rare person who balances his artistry with kindness, gentleness and warmth for everyone. ALL proceeds raised through this effort will go directly toward Jamal’s medical expenses and recuperation. Dakshina, in collaboration with EDGEWORKS Dance Theater, is only facilitating the fund raiser as a community effort, and will not withhold any portion of these funds. We need your help in supporting our dear dancer–no gift is too small or too big. Every bit helps. Please spread the word and rally around Jamal.
Thank you for donating.

If you would like to mail a check instead of making an online donation, please send your check to:
Dakshina
Jamal Black Fund
4607 Georgia Ave NW
Washington DC 20011

Sincerely,
The Dakshina Family & EDGEWORKS Dance Theater

Edited by Philip Clark and David Groff

Thursday, November 29, 2012
6:30pm
Westminster Church
400 I (EYE) Street SW
RSVP by Emailing RSVP@dakshina.org.

Poetry performers include Chris August, Gowri Koneswaran, and Jaysen Wright. Following the poetry performance, we will have a conversation led by the editor Philip Clark.

From Reinaldo Arenas, Tory Dent, and James Merrill to Paul Monette, Essex Hemphill, and Joe Brainard, Persistent Voices memorializes these poets and many others by presenting their work often dealing with AIDS but also about other enduring topics in the context of an unending epidemic that has profoundly affected our literature.

Philip Clark is a writer and researcher from the Washington, D.C. area. David Groff is a poet, editor, and teacher in New York City. This event is made possible by the Rainbow History Project, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company and generous support from the Washington DC Humanities Council.

Philip Clark co-edited Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS. His passion is to bring LGBT writers to the forefront of our literary consciousness. Clark is a sought-after editor, writer, and essayist, with his works appearing in such collections as The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered; The Golden Age of Gay Fiction; 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read; and The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Ongoing research into Guild Press publisher and First Amendment pioneer H. Lynn Womack will soon be excerpted in 1960s Gay Pulp Fiction: The Misplaced Heritage (forthcoming, University of Massachusetts Press). He is also editing the selected poems of Donald Britton, a Persistent Voices contributor (completing the work of the late Reginald Shepherd), and has begun a collaboration with Dr. James Gifford on a scholarly edition of The Intersexes (1908), one of the first works of nonfiction about homosexuality, by “Xavier Mayne” (Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson). Broadly, Clark’s works are acts of remembrance, bearing witness to the often hidden history of gay and lesbian people and their struggle to achieve social equality and a sense of self-worth. In addition to writing, Clark pursues this goal as chair of Washington D.C.’s Rainbow History Project.

Chris August is a special educator, writer and activist from Baltimore, Maryland. Since 2002, he has hosted Baltimore’s only poetry slam series and represented Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, DC at the National Poetry Slam and the Individual World Poetry Slam. In 2011, he was named the number one performance poet in the country at the Individual World Poetry Slam, held in Cleveland, Ohio. Since then, he has competed in Paris, France, representing the United States at the Poetry World Cup, ranking second in the world. His latest book, A Life Called Special, is a collection of poems dedicated to his time working at a private special needs high school in Baltimore. He currently performs and runs workshops at schools throughout Maryland as a teaching artist with Young Audiences of Maryland, a non-profit organization dedicated to arts education.

Gowri Koneswaran is a Sri Lankan Tamil American poet, singer and lawyer. Her advocacy has addressed animal welfare, the environment and the rights of prisoners and the criminally accused. She was a Lannan Fellow of the Folger Shakespeare Library and a member of the 2010 DC Southern Fried Slam team, and has performed at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Gowri’s poetry has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon and Lantern Review. She leads poetry and communications workshops and hosts open mics at Busboys and Poets and BloomBars, where she serves as poetry coordinator. She is also a poetry editor with Jaggery: A DesiLit Arts and Literature Journal. Gowri tweets on-the-spot haiku @gowricurry.

Jaysen Wright is an actor, teacher and teaching artist. He received his MFA in Acting from Indiana University in 2012 and holds a BA in Theater from Grinnell College. His artistic interests focus on the intersection of theater, sociology and American studies. Since returning to DC in August he has been seen in 8: The Play at the Roundhouse Theater, presented by DC Theater Collective. He has previously worked with Arena Stage in various capacities including teaching artist and researcher. His regional credits include The Nerd at Brown County Playhouse and The Taming of the Shrew and You Can’t Take It With You at Indiana Festival Theater. His graduate school credits include The Pillowman, Nine Circles, Hair, Angels in America, Rabbit Hole, Take Me Out, As You Like It, Reasons to be Pretty and Palmer Park. At Indiana University he was awarded the National Society of Arts and Letters Career Chapter Award and the Charles Aidman Award.

Fund for the DC Community Heritage Project are provided by a partnership of the Humanities Council of Washington, DC and the DC Historic Preservation Office, a grant from the US Department of the Interior’s National Park Service Historic Preservation Fund, and by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Join us for our 9th Annual Fall Festival of Indian Arts and our 7th year of partnership with Alif. We are excited to have her back with us this Fall. Gracious and talented, she serves as a role model and mentor to Daniel.

Alif Laila was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her connection with the arts has been very deep since early childhood. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, she began her initial training in vocal music, and was eventually inspired to learn the Sitar by her mother, Shehida. She was trained on a ‘one to one’ basis in the techniques and compositions of classical music by Ustad Mir Qasem Khan, nephew of Ustad Allauddin Khan, and founder of the Senia Maihar school of music. Alif’s passion for the arts was beyond music alone. She attended the College of Fine Arts in Dhaka where she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree and received several awards for her water color paintings. The world of rhythm and tone in drawing and painting gradually merged with her music and her love story with the arts began. She was fortunate to receive guidance from teachers like Partha Chatterjee and Krishna Bhatt and blessings from Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. She has performed extensively in many prestigious venues in Bangladesh, India, Europe and the USA. World renowned Tabla artists like Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, Ustad Taari Khan, and Pandit Yogesh Shamsi have performed and recorded with her. In 2007 her DVD ‘Hrydayaragam’ was presented at The Smithsonian. She has recently released another DVD, ‘Strings of Resonance’ with Anubrata Chatterjee, presenting Indian Classical music as the link to the heritage of the land from the past to the present.

With devotion and dedication Alif embraces the Sitar as the instrument of her soul.

To know more about her and watch her video-clips please visit her website: www.aliflailasitar.com and blog: aliflailasitar.blogspot.com.

Joining Alif for our Art of Peace event is our wonderful friend and colleague Gowri. Gowri Koneswaran is a poet, singer, and lawyer whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Sri Lanka. Her advocacy has addressed animal welfare, the environment, and the rights of prisoners and the criminally accused. She was a Lannan Fellow of the Folger Shakespeare Library and have been a featured poet at Lincoln Center Out of Doors (NYC), the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Campus Progress’s Protest Through Poetry, and Sulu DC. Gowri’s poetry has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon, and Lantern Review. In 2010, she was a member of the DC Southern Fried Slam team and released her first chapbook, Still Beating. She hosts a poetry open mic every month at Busboys and Poets (14th+V St. NW) and assists with programming and events at BloomBars community arts space in Columbia Heights, where she previously served as program director. Read more about Gowri here.

Friday October 5th and Saturday October 6th
at 8:00 pm

Dakshina is excited to be invited to perform at UMBC as part of their featured programs in the Fall of 2012. Singh graduated from UMBC in the late 90s with a degree in Dance. He met his mentor and life long friend Pamela Mathews while taking dance classes at UMBC.

For the UMBC performance, Dakshina will present a signature program featuring Bharata Natyam, Modern Dance and Singh’s signature fusion of the two forms. The program opens with a Bharata Natyam dance staged on the Dakshina dancers by the legendary Leela Samson. The program continues with Singh’s fusion work Vasanth, and will close with Anna Sokolow’s masterpiece “Lyric Suite”.

Sarah Kaufman, the Pulitzer price winning chief critic at the Washington Post writes: “Few dance artists have practiced the creativity of subtraction as successfully as Anna Sokolow. The power in her works from the mid-20th century stems from a mix of space, absence, anticipation — and the sudden move that changes everything…Thanks to Singh’s efforts, and the staging by former Sokolow dancer Lorry May, we’ve seen a good handful of Sokolow pieces on local stages. Although they have all offered a testimonial to the aesthetics of simplicity, none delivers it more pungently than Lyric Suite.” Read the most recent review of Lyric Suite here.

Friday November 2, 2012
7:30 pm
Buy Tickets Tickets will be held at the box office under your name.
UDC Theater Note Venue Change
4200 Connecticut Avenue (Connecticut Avenue and Windom Place NW)
University of the District of Columbia | Google Map
5 Minutes from the Van Ness stop on the Red Line.

Rama Vaidyanathan is one of India’s leading classical dancers. She is considered as one of the best interpreters of the ancient art form of Bharata Natyam. She has been fortunate to have trained intensively under the legendry dancer Yamini Krishnamurty. Rama has also been under the guidance of the eminent Guru Saroja Vaidyanathan.

Everyone who has seen Rama perform is struck by her unique thought process and fresh approach to dance. While deeply routed in tradition. She has evolved her own individual style without forsaking the core principles of Bharata Natyam.

Rama has been performing professionally for the past twenty years and is one of the most sought after dancers of her generation. She brings to her dance a rare sense of devotion and dedication, which leaves the audience with a sense of spiritual fulfillment.

In SRUTI, India’s premier magazine for the performing arts, noted dance critic Leela Venkataraman writes, “The dancer’s fluency in negotiating space, her intutive ability for well- crafted and nuanced choreography with a sense of ‘belonging ‘ with the theme and a feel for asthetics are all factors to reckon with.”

Daniel wrote his first dance review after feeling compelled to articulate why Rama Vaidyanathan’s performance at Kalakshetra moved him so much. Read Daniel’s blog post here.

Buy Tickets

Tickets will be held at the box office. Thank you for your support!

Prime Orchestra $47.50
Rear Orchestra $32.50
Balcony $18.50
Email info@dakshina.org for group discounts for 8 or more people.

Saturday November 3, 2012
7:30 pm
Buy Tickets at the theater
UDC Theater Note Venue Change
4200 Connecticut Avenue (Connecticut Avenue and Windom Place NW)
University of the District of Columbia | Google Map
5 Minutes from the Van Ness stop on the Red Line.

Dakshina is proud to welcome the acclaimed danseuse Alarmel Valli back to Washington DC. Alarmel Valli is a leading Bharatanatyam dancer and choreographer, acclaimed internationally for her ability to turn a traditional grammar into a subtle, deeply internalized, personal dance poetry. Valli has evolved a distinctive style that has been described as “uncompromisingly classical, but, at the same time, an undeniable language of self-expression. It is both a stylised idiom and an idiolect, blurring the boundaries between tradition and the individual talent, inheritance and invention. It is obvious to even the lay viewer that her dance is not merely a received grammar. It is a reinvented one. ”

Amongst numerous awards received by Alarmel Valli, are the Padma Sri and the Padma Bhushan, conferred by the President of India, the Chevalier of Arts and Letters award from the French Government and the award of The Sangeet Natak Akademy – the apex body for Indian Music, Dance and Drama.

Dakshina is thrilled to be presenting this living legend of Bharata Natyam in Washington DC.

Buy Tickets–Tickets will be available at box office one hour before show time.