Blue13 Dance Company

15th century Indian poet Meera Bai inspires Blue13 Dance Company’s Vishwas, an inquiry on South Asian and Indian American feminine identity, agency, and duty. Choreographer Achinta S. McDaniel creates a provocative interpretation of Bai’s story to reveal a woman’s burden to uphold tradition while negotiating power and self worth. Vishwas reenvisions contemporary dance through a rhythmic diasporic lens, disturbing normative depictions of feminine beauty and Indianness, while subverting inherited notions of American concert dance. Further disturbing the term “classical”, South Asian American composer, Reena Esmail interweaves western orchestral composition with Hindustani raags and tabla.