Summer is here, and so is Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City festival, jam-packed with its hundreds of free and choose-what-you-pay events happening throughout its sixteen-acre Upper West Side campus. One of the 2024 festival highlights is sure to be India Week, which starts tomorrow (July 10) and will celebrate the country and its diaspora’s music, art, literature, film, cuisine and, of course, dance.
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Dance and movement are deeply embedded in Indian culture and traditions—from the sacred classical dance forms and yoga to the joyous Garba and Bollywood dance styles. It is no surprise, then, that the week features five nights of silent discos (on the city’s largest outdoor dance floor, under a shimmering 10-foot disco ball) curated by the iconic DJ Rekha, a social dance party (with lessons from folk dance expert Heena Patel and live music by Ujjval Vyas Musicals), mindful movement workshops led by dancer and yogi Minila Shah, and dance performances by the internationally-acclaimed troupes Ragamala Dance Company and Aakash Odedra Company.
India Week’s lineup of events is wonderfully and purposefully diverse. The multigenerational performers and presenters come from not only the U.S. and India, but also Canada, China, England and South Africa. Shanta Thake, the Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, told Observer she hopes the widespread Indian community will be able to see themselves reflected through the diverse programming. “But it’s equally important,” she added, “to bring folks from outside of the Indian community into this world and be able to celebrate this culture that actually does influence all of us. And it’s important for people to be celebrated in our communities, and not just tolerated.”
As for the two dance companies selected to perform, Thake was drawn to them because they are both informed by the history of their classical dance forms, but also very contemporary. “These are artists that are in conversation with the past and the present and the future, and I think that’s important for us to constantly be thinking about. Being rooted in traditional forms, but always looking forward, always figuring out how to make this a bigger tent.”
On Wednesday, July 10, Ragamala Dance Company will perform Avimukta: Where the Seeker Meets the Sacred at Damrosch Park. The hour-long work is a new adaptation of the large-scale stage work, Fires of Varanasi: Dance of the Eternal Pilgrim (2021), which was selected to open the Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary celebration and then The Joyce Theater’s Fall 2021 season. That piece had an extensive, white set. “There........