Friday March 16 7:30 pm Open Mic performance &
Saturday March 17 3 pm FREE performance
Haverford College Marshall Auditorium in Roberts Hall
370 Lancaster Avenue / Haverford, PA 19041
Dessert Reception to follow at 4:30 p.m.
Marshall Auditorium Lobby

ADMISSION TO THE MARCH 17 PERFORMANCE IS FREE with advance RSVP required. Click here to reserve tickets or call Asian Arts Initiative at (215) 557-0455.

Join us for an enchanted evening of dance at Haverford College’s Marshall Auditorium that will include Daniel Singh’s signature fusion work “Vasanth,” a piece that premiered to critical acclaim at Kennedy Center’s Maximum India Festival in 2011 and depicts the Indian myth of how spring comes to earth. Singh also shares the new piece “Since You’ve Asked,” a tender duet for two men drawing on his gestural, lyrical work and uses the poetry of Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel’s signature “Ne Me Quitte Pas” as the musical score. Aniruddh Vasudevan, a Bharata Natyam dancer based in India and Singh’s long-time collaborator joins Dakshina as a guest artist for this performance.

This tour of Dakshina is co-presented by Asian Arts Initiative and the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Haverford College and made possible with support from the Students’ Council at Haverford College, the National Performance Network (NPN) Performance Residency Program and a grant from Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This collaboration titled, Prana/Breath, between two dance companies, Dakshina, a Bharata Natyam and modern company, and Sakshi Productions, a neo-classical and contemporary Odissi dance company, explores the ways in which prana, or the breath manifests in different dancing bodies, dance histories, varying movement vocabularies and live percussion. Each piece engages with the notion of prana in a unique way and celebrates the life-breath of dance and music. Dakshina’s performance is presented by the Indo American Arts Council with generous funding support from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.

Dakshina warms you up with Singh’s signature fusion work “Vasanth” which combines Bharata Natyam with Modern Dance and depicts the Indian myth of how spring comes to earth–the work premiered to critical acclaim at Kennedy Center’s Maximum India Festival in 2011. “Since You’ve Asked” is a tender duet for two men drawing on Singh’s gestural, lyrical work and uses the poetry of Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel’s signature “Ne Me Quitte Pas” as the musical score. Aniruddh Vasudevan, a Bharata Natyam dancer based in India and a long time collaborator with Daniel Phoenix Singh will be joining Dakshina as a guest artist for this performance.”

Sakshi Productions is working with composer Kirk O’Riordan who will compose a 10-minute work titled Night of Summer Stars. This original score draws on a number of Eastern and Western influences, and explores the wide range of colors available to the metallophone subsection of the percussion family. It is performed by the Lafayette College Percussion Ensemble and choreographed by Carrie Rohman. A new choreography by Nandini Sikand and Donia Salem features the powerful cosmic dance of Shiva. Daniel Singh and Nandini Sikand will also perform their duet, “Symbiosis” that highlights the fragility and beauty of collaboration.

Baltimore Theatre Project
45 West Preston Street,
Baltimore, MD, 21201

Friday, March 30th, AND Saturday, March 31st, 2012 at 8:00PM

$20.00 Adults, $18.00 Seniors/Artists/Students

http://www.theatreproject.org/GetTickets/TheBoxOffice/ or 410.752.8558

Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company and Deep Vision Dance Company present a diverse evening of dance reflecting the rich culture of the Baltimore community.

Celebrating its eight season in Washington DC, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company warms the audience with Singh’s signature fusion work, Vasanth. Premiering to critical acclaim at Kennedy Center’s Maximum India Festival, Vasanth depicts the Indian myth of how spring comes to earth. Switching genres, Singh presents Since You’ve Asked, a tender duet for two men drawing on the gestural, lyrical aspects of modern dance.

Immersing the audience with videography and translucent mirrors, Baltimore-based Deep Vision Dance Company features two edgy works by Artistic Director Nicole A. Martinell. Fractured Spectrum traverses from dark, ambiguous self-absorption to light, clarity, and compassion; and Inner Palette sifts through a woman’s psyche. Martinell’s multilayered works allow audiences to re-experience her work again and again.

The performance will be held on Friday, March 30th and Saturday, March 31st at 8:00PM at Baltimore Theatre Project. Tickets are $20 for Adults and $18 for Seniors/Students/Artists. Tickets can be purchased by calling 410.752.8558 or the web at http://www.theatreproject.org/.

With generous support from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, Maryland Youth Ballet, volunteers, sponsors, donors, board and friends of Dakshina.

April 28th at 8 pm
April 29th at 7 pm
3225 8th Street NE
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Featuring: Lyric Suite, by iconic modern dance choreographer Anna Sokolow

with

Lorry May, Director of the Sokolow Dance Foundation and former soloist with Anna Sokolow–Ms. May will be staging Lyric Suite on the company.

Dakshina is excited to return to Dance Place for the 8th year in a row. Daniel considers Dance Place his home theater, and it is always a pleasure to be at Dance Place–DC’s hub for cutting edge dance. Featuring company premiere of Lyric Suite, Choreography by Anna Sokolow; and Vasanth, latest Indian/modern fusion work by Daniel Phoenix Singh.

Anna Sokolow was a lightening rod and was one of the key figures in establishing modern dance in Israel, Mexico and building her company in the US. There are very few figures contemporaneous to Sokolow who had such a wide reach during their lifetime.

Dakshina presents Anna Sokolow’s arresting Lyric Suite (1954) staged by former principal with the Sokolow company Lorry May. Upon showing this completed work to her music composition teacher Louis Horst, he supposedly remarked to Sokolow: “Anna, Now you are a choreographer!”

Sokolow created works full of dramatic contemporary imagery, revealing the full spectrum of human experience and reflecting the tension and alienation of her time. Rooms (1955), featuring music composed by Kenyon Hopkins for a jazz ensemble, dealt with urban alienation, while Dreams (1961) grew from the horrors of the Holocaust. Other major modern dance works included Lyric Suite (1954), Odes (1965), and Opus 65 (1965). In 1991, Anna Kisselgoff summed up Sokolow’s aesthetic as “American Expressionism,” and commented that “Stillness is a large part of her choreography, and Miss Sokolow can sum up a state of being — an entire society — in an arrested pose.”

Dakshina is one of a handful of companies keeping her legacy alive and we’re proud to be able to partner with Lorry May, former principal with the Sokolow company. Lorry recreates Anna Sokolow’s process of creating dances, and it is liberating to take a leap of faith and have the movement and genius catch you and sustain you so many years after it was conceived and created. Her dances are a testament to the power of movement to survive through generations and across cultures.

The upcoming performance is a result of very old roots I have to Dance Place. Over 14 years ago, I saw Risa Steinberg perform Anna Sokolow’s Kaddish at Dance Place. I was immediately struck by the power of the dance to speak across so many decades. I promised myself that when I had my own company, we would perform the Sokolow masterpieces. It has taken all these years for the dream to come true. Lorry May, a legend in her own right, has been in residence with Dakshina and has painstakingly staged several Sokolow masterpieces on our company.

Lorry has been an amazing gift for our company and has given freely of the deep wisdom, knowledge and love she has for dance–Dakshina dancers and I are truly humbled for the wonderful opportunity Lorry has given us as she staged Lyric Suite on our dancers. Louis Horst wrote in Dance Observer that, “It is one of the finest examples of lyric theater dance seen in many a season…it speaks in abstract and stark simplicity, translating the qualitative moods of the music into penetrating and evocative movement designs. Superbly choreographed and thoroughly integrated, its beauty has a direct appeal to kinesthetic response.”
Buy Tickets

Join us for a sneak preview at our Open Rehearsal:

Saturday, April 7th at 2:30 pm
Maryland Youth Ballet
926 Ellsworth Drive
Silver Spring, MD

With generous support from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, Maryland Youth Ballet, volunteers, sponsors, donors, board and friends of Dakshina.

Hold the Date

Saturday May 19, 2012
Buy tickets here.
BlackRock Center for the Arts
12901 Town Commons Drive
Germantown, Maryland 20874
info@blackrockcenter.org
301.528.2260

Dakshina will be performing its signature fusion work Vasanth along with the Sokolow gem Lyric Suite. Guest artist Aniruddhan Vasudevan from India will be performing solo Bharata Natyam items along with Sudha Radhakrishnan, one of the principal dancers with Dakshina.

Buy tickets here.

With generous support from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, Maryland Youth Ballet, volunteers, sponsors, donors, board and friends of Dakshina.

Dakshina, The Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, brought its dramatic signature work “Vasanth” and three mood pieces to the new (10/10/2010) Artisphere. “Vasanth” tells of the death and rebirth of Love and of Spring’s return to this world. It has runs for the corps that swirl swiftly about the stage, pantomimic action with a poignant appeal, sensuality plus a feast of joyous foot patter. A mixed cast of familiar and new performers (including Graham Pitts as Love, Shailaja Maru as Spring, Singh as the entranced/awakened great god Shiva, Madhvi Venkatesh as Desire, and Stacey Yvonne Claytor as Shiva’s consort) gave a very fresh performance of Singh’s melding of Indiadance, modern dance and ballet.

The three other works went well together. One was a thoughtful love dance for two men, “Since You’ve Asked” by Singh. He and Jamal Ari Black gave it nobility. In “By the Light…”, the late Eric Hampton visualized Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” as a woman’s solo of sorrow. She looks up into the light of the moon, she leans back in the moonbeams as if to remember, she grieves and, briefly, succeeds in conjuring up her lost love. This is a solo more than it is a duo, one of intensity and utter simplicity. Natalia Pinzon honed it to perfection. As her ghostly partner, Black was present for an instant and then not. The last formal piece on the program, Ludovic Jolivet’s “Voy y Vengo”, is for 6 dancers (only 5 were listed in the program) seated on roller chairs. Jolivet transformed the people and chairs into a congregation. Its members bowed and straightened, they held up their arms and folded them, they took hold of others’ hands and let go while unobtrusively pedaling their chairs over and around the stage space. They moved on smooth paths and in simple formations to music by Franz Schubert, Yann Tiersen and Jolivet himself. This roller dance could have been shorter but by no means was it a gimmick. Concluding the program was a dance party in Artisphere’s ballroom . (December 11, 2011 in the Black Box Theater of Arlington, Virginia’s Artisphere.)

What drew you to Dakshina?

Donald with visiting artist Alarmel Valli

And what keeps you coming back?

Three things: Daniel’s insistence that his work include social awareness; the concept that dance does not (and cannot) exist apart from all of the other arts; and, the fact that the Company is like an extension of family for all of its members.

What is your most treasured story of a visiting artist you met?

This is absolutely NOT a fair question as I have treasured memories from each of our guest artists. While I understand that each of them is a world class artist, I interact with them, and view them, as a new friend that I am hosting in my city.

Runners-up: Being the lunch guest of VP & Shanta Dhananjayan with Daniel at the Yogaville ashram; being invited to share the afternoon meal with Mallika Sarabhai and her dancers last fall; being invited to share rehearsal with only Lorry May, Melissa Greco Liu and Daniel.

However, you said “story”, so here is the winner:
During the 2009 Fall Festival, I was fortunate to spend a great deal of time with Madhavi Mudgal and her niece Arushi. As the guests were arriving for Leela Samson’s Saturday night performance, I met Alif Laila, who is a great friend of the Company, also my personal friend and an extraordinary sitar artist. Knowing I was watching over our guest artists, she asked about meeting them. I assured her I would introduce her to Leela after the performance. I added that Madhavi was coming to the performance to see her friend Leela and I would make sure she met her for a few private words. Alif asked, “Madhavi? Do you mean Madhavi Mudgal? You know her? Donald, she is like a goddess to me!” So, at intermission, I walked Alif Laila to meet her goddess, Madhavi Mudgal. The joy in Alif’s face – that I will never forget.

What one thing would you tell prospective volunteers?

This is very easy. Friends always ask, hey what did you do yesterday, last week, this past weekend. After a few Dakshina events – sitar, spoken word, backstage at the Lincoln Theater, rehearsals, – your friends will say: “Wow. You have a very interesting life”.

Have you considered volunteering with Dakshina? You’ll get the satisfaction of making dance a central part of the art scene in DC, and you’ll get to meet world class artists through out the year. There are several ways in which you can get involved. Please consider

1. Joining our board
2. Volunteering with us for special projects
3. Interning with us–you can even earn course credit

Feel free to email us with questions at info@dakshina.org.

Participants will learn one item and then Ms Samson will explore the dynamics of group choreography by adapting the dance item taught into group choreography. For advanced Bharata Natyam dancers–post Arengetram level highly recommended.

Dates of workshop will be between Monday October 3rd through Wednesday October 5th. Final times will be published by the end of August. Participants will learn a historic dance “Nee Uraippai Hanumane” originally choreographed by Rukmini Devi Arundale. Leela akka learnt this dance directly from Rukmini devi and this will be a rare opportunity to learn one of the Kalakshetra items first hand from Leela akka. We encourage workshop participants to stay for Leela akka’s Solo performance on October 7th and the Kalakshetra group performance on October 8th.

Venue: Workshop will take place from 9 am to 12 pm in the mornings on October 3, 4 and 5th, in Silver Spring, at the Maryland Youth Ballet–easily accessible on the subway or metro buses.

Cost of workshop is $450. Only online payments will be accepted.

Leela Samson is among India’s most dynamic and technically brilliant dancers, an outstanding representative of Kalakshetra, the famed institute for the classical arts founded by the late Rukmini Devi Arundale on the Chennai ocean front. She joined Kalakshetra as a young child and her formative years were spent in imbibing the nuances of Bharata Natyam and related arts at the feet of celebrated gurus.

Her personal style is unostentatious, serene and characterized by an impeccable technique that blends geometrical precision with vibrancy and an unfettered ease. Her rhythmic acumen is apparent in dance compositions containing varied and challenging percussion patterns. Among the many honours conferred on her, Leela Samson was awarded the prestigious Padmashri by the President of India in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the art of Bharata Natyam as well as the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award instituted by the apex cultural body of the Government of India. Currently, she is the Director of Kalakshetra, Chennai, the oldest dance/theater institution in India.

With support from the ICCR, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and in cooperation with the Indian Embassy.
Friday October 7 at 7:30 pm
Lincoln Theatre
1215 U Street NW

PLENTY OF TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE THEATRE. Box office will open at 6:00 pm.

Join us for our 8th Annual Fall Festival of Indian Arts. Leela Samson opens the festival on Friday October 7 at 7:30 pm with a Bharata Natyam performance. Samson is among India’s most dynamic and technically brilliant dancers, an outstanding representative of Kalakshetra, the famed institute for the classical arts founded by the late Rukmini Devi Arundale on the Chennai ocean front. She joined Kalakshetra as a young child and her formative years were spent in imbibing the nuances of Bharata Natyam and related arts at the feet of celebrated gurus.

Her personal style is unostentatious, serene and characterized by an impeccable technique that blends geometrical precision with vibrancy and an unfettered ease. Her rhythmic acumen is apparent in dance compositions containing varied and challenging percussion patterns. Among the many honors conferred on her, Leela Samson was awarded the prestigious Padmashri by the President of India in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the art of Bharata Natyam as well as the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award instituted by the apex cultural body of the Government of India. Currently, she is the Director of Kalakshetra, Chennai, the oldest dance/theater institution in India.

PLENTY OF TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE THEATRE. Box office will open at 6:00 pm.

With support from the ICCR, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and in cooperation with the Indian Embassy.
Saturday October 8 at 7:30 pm
Lincoln Theatre
1215 U Street NW

PLENTY OF TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE THEATRE. Box office will open at 6:00 pm.

Join us for our 8th Annual Fall Festival of Indian Arts. Leela Samson closes the festival on Saturday October 8 at 7:30 pm with Spanda, her critically reviewed Bharata Natyam performance. Samson is among India’s most dynamic and technically brilliant dancers, an outstanding representative of Kalakshetra, the famed institute for the classical arts founded by the late Rukmini Devi Arundale on the Chennai ocean front. She joined Kalakshetra as a young child and her formative years were spent in imbibing the nuances of Bharata Natyam and related arts at the feet of celebrated gurus.

Watch a video clip of SPANDA.

SPANDA

‘Spanda’, (a vibration) is symbolic of the enduring and perpetual energy that is the life force of the universe. It incorporates the philosophical concept of Prithvi as the center and source of energy in the universe and equates it with the nabham, the womb as the origin of energy in the human body.

The rediscovery of the basic movements of Bharata Natyam and the need for a reinterpretation of its traditional vocabulary challenges Spanda. Spanda seeks to establish a more relevant dialogue between dance, music and stagecraft.

PLENTY OF TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE THEATRE. Box office will open at 6:00 pm.

‘Spanda-Matrika’ reduces movement to its essence. It is a journey inwards seeking the essential ‘center’, the origin of movement and its source of strength through the adavus (dance steps) of the Bharata Natyam style. On one level, it attempts to internalize the consciousness of the dancer towards the particular movement rather than on the composition of the whole. On the other, no dancer is whole in the composition
without every other. Much like life, the dancer is made conscious of the energy she brings to the group and how that enhances the whole. Spanda Matrika is based on the various rhythm cycles in Carnatic music.

Aakash

‘Who would breathe, who would live,
If there were not this bliss in space’

Aakash attempts an exploration of the concept of space. Using slokas (verses) from the Vedas, the dancer discovers it, explores it, celebrates it – through movement. Aakash is the universe. Its garbha is Prithvi, the earth. All life emanates from this center, explores outwards, interacting constantly with space – which surrounds it, nurtures it, gives it form and being. The life-force of the dancer is the nabha – from
this center, all movement emanates.

Charishnu is indicative of the intent or desire to move. It is an expression of the joy of ‘journeying’. Every individual, animal, or nation – journeys in a manner typical of his own nature. We move in different ways, in different directions, at a differing pace. What is exciting is the dynamics of this movement happening differently, at the same time. It is the physics of the constellations. It is the happening of creation. Making use of the the different rhythm cycles in Carnatic music, the abstract movement in Charishnu simply enjoys what it is doing.

The choreography for ‘Spanda’ is by Ms. Leela Samson.