barkha dance company

In Hindu philosophy, vasanas are unfulfilled longings that survive the death of the physical body, passed down through bloodlines as living, present icchā / desire.

icchā is a 60-minute interdisciplinary solo kathak work weaving original music, set design, kathak, and garba. barkha is visited by her maternal ancestors in a dream. They choose her to express, release, and fulfill their desires: born from survival, loss, intimacy, the denial of dance, and embodied selfhood.

Matrilineages are most often the unnamed, interrupted, and absorbed into the histories of patriarchs. The work confronts the body as a site of ancestral history asking: who do we carry within us? This work allows these ancestors to breathe again and ask what in your body might be their unfinished reaching? 

icchā is a somatic shraadh, an ancestral reverence of many secret tragedies that have dissolved with passing time. 

Caretakers of Land/Land Acknowledgement: Matinecock

Estimated Artist Fee: 

$7,200/performance (recorded music only, live music option available for an additional fee) + hotel (1 double and 2 singles per night);

$14,000/week + hotel (1 double and 2 singles per night); or

$3,500 for a virtual engagement including film of work, online Master classes, Q&A, behind the scenes of the making process.