ROWDIES IN LOVE is a rousing dance-work choreographed by 2024 Guggenheim Fellow Hari Krishnan, set to a global soundscape by UK based award winning composer Niraj Chag.
Eight male dancers blaze through an inspired and inventive movement vocabulary queering Bharatanatyam (South Indian classical dance), and contemporary dance from global perspectives. ROWDIES IN LOVE explores the beauty of technical rigor and queer intimacy, burning through cliches of hyper-masculinity, by fluently shifting gender and contemporaneously shedding archaic cultural stereotypes, to reveal one’s true self, as is, in the here and now.
ROWDIES IN LOVE is a transformative political act in response to the prevailing homophobia and anti-gay legislation that continues around the world, especially India and Singapore where Krishnan has roots. The piece is encouraged by the recent repeal in Jan 2023 of Section 377a, a British colonial law in Singapore and India that condemned homosexuals to life-long prison terms. However, in October 2023, India’s highest court rejected the legalization of same-sex marriage. Against this complex socio-political landscape, the work uses dance to resist the continued oppression of queer people here and around the world.
Describing the work, Krishnan says, “Working with eight technically brilliant dancers, ROWDIES IN LOVE manifests an original movement vocabulary merging my technically rigorous Bharatanatyam dance training inflected with a strong contemporary and aesthetically queer global sensibility; it is a sound, well-honed, fresh choreographic framework that infuses classical Indian dance traditions into the contemporary and queer dance landscape.”
Land acknowledgement: land of the Quinnipiac
Estimated artist fee: $12,000-15,000 per in-person performance plus hotel, per diem, and local ground; $5,000-7,500 per virtual performance plus live streaming costs; $25,000 for week residency including one performance plus hotel, per diem, and local ground.
