Pallabi Chakravorty

Pallabi will produce Celluloid E-motions, an evening-length dance theater piece using classical Indian dance, Bollywood dance, and Urdu poetry to explore spiritual, aesthetic and commodified emotions. This artistic work will showcase the power of emotions within an increasingly disembodied global culture, articulating life’s challenges within the context of contemporary urban America. Pallabi will draw upon elements from her own experiences in India and as part of the South Asian American Diaspora to question cultural authenticity and essentialism, challenging hierarchical categories of ‘classical’, ‘folk’ and ‘commercial’ in the discourse about Indian cultural heritage.

Pallabi will develop and perform a new choreographic work titled Replaced Rituals, which focuses on the South Asian community in Philadelphia. Created through ritual enactments from migrant communities, the piece deals with memory and identity and explores how memories imprinted in our bodies evolve in a new context. Pallabi will create a new vocabulary of movement through the cross-pollination of two different classical forms (Kathak, from Islamic courts in India, and Bharatnatyam, from Hindu temples in South India) to craft an identity that is contemporary. As a South Asian woman who has lived in Philadelphia for 13 years, Pallabi feels this piece will explore her own tensions while also giving voice to marginalized communities.