Day 2: Art Share 2022 Program

Thilagavathi P

Tamil Nadu, India

Thilagavathi Palani is the first-ever female performer of the traditional art form Kattaikkuttu, an all-night form of Tamil theatre that had predominantly male performers for years. Trained under Perungattur Rajagopalan at the Kattaikkuttu Gurukulam, she is the first woman to found her own Koothu company and also the first Kattaikkuttu artist to receive the national award, Sangeet Natak Akademi Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar. Having performed in countries like France, UK, Malaysia and Netherlands, she works to help many marginalized communities in her area with food, health care and access to education and continues to create performances for social justice. Till date she has performed over 2000 all night Kattaikkuttu performances and runs the Katradi after-school program for empathy based social transformation. Since then she has broken many stereotypes in her personal and professional life.

This shARING will be performed live on Zoom.

About the work: @thilagavathi.kattaikkuttu tells the story of Alli, a legendary Tamil warrior queen whose army had only female soldiers and who led her kingdom even though she had been married off as a young girl to the famous hero Arjuna. She creates a special ‘Kattai vesham’ costume - one worn by male heroes and warriors, with a strong face painted like a mask, traditional wooden ornaments, a crown and a typical full skirted presence, to celebrate her ‘veeram’ or courage. Her story turns patriarchy upside down, gaining ownership of her body and refusing to be treated as property to be married off. Additionally, although Alli is said to be married to Arjuna, she is not from the Sanskrit version of the Mahabharata; but is located in the Tamil Dalit landscape. For obvious reasons, the traditional all-male domain of Kattaikkoothu never chose to perform this female centric script.

As a female koothu artist, Thilaga would like to tell stories of strong powerful women through her art. She believes that the more we hear stories of empowered women in the arts, it will inspire women and also impact the society.

Cauveri Suresh

California, USA

Cauveri Suresh is an artist whose work orients around lineage, improvisation, color, and relation to physical environment. They are influenced by study with teachers including Jodi Melnick, Christina Robson, and Joanna Kotze, as well as from performing with Leah Samuels, Lauren Simpson Dance, Kickbal, and GERALDCASELDANCE. As a facilitator, they are grounded in accessing embodied and ancestral knowledge of power and accountability through conflict resolution methods practiced for centuries by the global majority. Cauveri is also a painter and gardener, and graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 2018 with a B.A. in dance.

About the work: “This project explores ancestral narratives traditionally told through South Indian craft forms (specifically Tanjore and Mysore ganjifa painting). Using these mediums as source material for movement, I am creating scores and scenes to inhabit corporeally, seeking new understandings of the narratives created when my body is the storyteller. I ask where my ancestry is referenced, where in my lineage I am at home and where in my lineage I am in tension—and revel, rather than despair, in the places where these fissures are illuminated. In my questioning, I am working within a framework of queer futurity that insists upon a safe past in order to create a safe present, which, of course, is also a future.” - @cauve.ri

Bhumi Patel

California, USA

Bhumi B Patel is a queer, desi artist/activist, dance scholar, and director of pateldanceworks (she/they). In its purest form, her performance work is a love letter to her ancestors. Patel aims to support marginalized and oppressed voices through performance and movement education. She earned her MA in American Dance Studies from Florida State University and her MFA in Dance from Mills College. Bhumi was a 2017-2018 Lead Artist with SAFEhouse Arts, a 2017-2018 Emerging Arts Professionals Fellow and a 2019 Women of Color in the Arts Leadership through Mentorship Fellow.

More info on pateldanceworks.org

About the work: In August 2022, @pateldanceworks made an offering of their work in progress, fault lines, at the Asia Pacific Dance Festival Conference (@apdancefest)! This work is a multidisciplinary collaboration between movement artists, experimental composers, and a visual and textile artist. They generate a ritual portal - an opening across generations and geography - invoking time and space travel to return home. The full work will premiere in May 2023!

Directed by Bhumi B Patel

Performers/collaborators: Sholeh Asgary (sound), Rachel Austin (sound), Hannah Meleokaiao Ayasse (movement), Tessa Nebrida (movement), and Emma Tome (movement)

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, 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.

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, and advising on the direction of this 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.

URP Leadership

Program Director: Tanu Sreedharan

Program Manager: Uditha Thiagarajan