Jiva Dance’s The Four Horsemen premiered on March 7 at the Dixon Place in NYC.
The Four Horsemen is an innovative Indian classical dance production, exploring symbolism from the story of the apocalypse through Indian classical dance, music and Sanskrit poetry. Jiva Dance is an award-winning dance company based in NYC, under the Artistic Direction of Sonali Skandan.
The premiere was followed by a post-show talkback on March 8 with the choreographers Maya Kulkarni and Sonali Skandan, moderated by NYC Indian classical dance veteran and curator Rajika Puri.
The dance production’s work centers around four vignettes of life and death through four female protagonists who stand for universal human experience. The stories - a woman shackled to the life of a courtesan (conquest), a woman reminiscing the night she spent with her lover who is at war (war), a mother searching for nourishment for her child in the midst a sandstorm (famine), and finally a woman at the end of her life recalling memories that span youthful joy to hardship and loss (death) - are touchingly timely. The new work challenges the notion of Indian classical dance content and technique and moves beyond the traditional to incorporate a cross-cultural analysis of female experience.
The project is supported by funds from the inaugural Dance/NYC Dance Advancement Fund, and the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs.
