inDANCE: ROWDIES IN LOVE
Friday, December 6, 2024 at 7:00pm
CFA Theater
BUY TICKETS$8 general public; $6 senior citizens, Wesleyan students/faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students, youth under 18
Saturday, December 7, 2024 at 7:00pm
CFA Theater
$8 general public; $6 senior citizens, Wesleyan students/faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students, youth under 18
"[inDANCE’s Hari Krishnan], the maverick gadfly is aggressively iconoclastic [and] a very naughty boy [who] scoff[s] at tradition, turn[s] things upside down and shake[s] out all the cobwebs”--The Toronto Star
“..most successful choreographic unions…intriguing work performed as scorching side-by-side duets that explored inDANCE’s affinity for hybridization…a raucous blend of classical steps, both Western and Indian.”
--The New York Times
inDANCE will perform the world premiere of the work ROWDIES IN LOVE by award-winning choreographer Hari Krishnan, Professor of Dance, Global South Asian Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Krishnan was awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship under the Choreography category.
In the rousing dance work ROWDIES IN LOVE, eight male dancers blaze through an inspired and inventive movement vocabulary, queering Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance from global perspectives. The work is a transformative act that uses dance to resist the continued oppression of queer people, created in response to the prevailing socio-political context in parts of Asia, especially India and Singapore, where Krishnan has roots. In 2023, the countries had initially repealed an antiquated colonial anti-gay law that would have condemned homosexuals to life-long prison terms, but India’s highest court rejected the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The piece is set to a global soundscape by United Kingdom-based composer Niraj Chag, winner of an Asian Music Award.
Performers include Eury German '16, Spenser Stroud '22, Demetris Charalambous, Robert Ciszak, Henry Leef, Elijah Mack, and William Pettigrew. Lighting Design by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance Chelsie McPhilimy. Rehearsal Director is Jennifer Kjos. Company/Stage Manager is Anna Adams Stark. Costume/Visual Design by Rex.
The performance of ROWDIES IN LOVE will be followed by the world premiere of The Jewel Thief.
Read Wesleyan Faculty, Alumnus Awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in Choreography, Theatre in The Wesleyan Connection.
ROWDIES IN LOVE is supported by a production grant from the National Dance Project and was developed as part of a Jacob’s Pillow Lab residency.
Hari Krishnan’s choreographic work explores postcolonial complexities in Indian dance as well as queer themes from a global perspective. He is among the pioneering generation of choreographers of South Asian origin who began to explore the intersections between traditional and contemporary South Asian dance forms from within the North American diaspora. With a speciality in Bharatanatyam, his body of work arises from a critical awareness of this particular form’s capacity to fuse with other dance styles to unfold postmodern, queer, anti-racist, and anti-caste social critique. He is also the Artistic Director of inDANCE (indance.ca), which he founded in 1999, and has been on faculty at Wesleyan University since 2001.
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