Dancing the Gods - Night One: Mythili Prakash

Dancing the Gods - Night One: Mythili Prakash (Bharatanatyam)

Co-Presented with World Music Institute

Night One | Mythili Prakash - Jwala (Rising Flame) | Solo Bharatanatyam with Live Vocals, Percussion & Violin

An annual festival of Indian dance in its fourteenth and final year, Dancing the Gods is curated by Rajika Puri, acclaimed dance storyteller, and co-presented with the World Music Institute. This year’s festival features three accomplished artists highlighting dance forms from across India: Mythili Prakash (Bharatanatyam), Parul Shah (Kathak) and Bijayini Satpathy (Odissi).

Night One features Mythili Prakash in a stunning Bharatanatyam solo with live music, JWALA (Rising Flame): an intimate and resonant work exploring loss, hope, life and death in our current global moment.

Mythili is joined by musicians Ananya Ashok (vocals), Rohith Jayaraman (vocals), Rohan Krishnamurthy (percussion) and Sruti Sarathy (violin).

Mythili Prakash
Mythili Prakash’s innovative vision as a choreographer, combined with her powerful conviction as a performer, distinguishes her as one of the most respected young Bharatanatyam artists today. Her work is unique - while rooted in the intricate and nuanced language of Bharatanatyam, it confronts the socio-political global world we live in today.

Mythili is incisive in her approach, questioning cultural and social norms, while pushing the boundaries of her practice of the art form, particularly around femininity and aesthetics. Her creative introspections acknowledge and draw fodder from her experiences as a mother and a first-generation child of immigrants, as well as the complexity of her identity as a dancer of caste privilege in India, while simultaneously a female artist of color in the US.

She has toured her own solo productions throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, United Kingdom, Europe, India, and Singapore, and had the honor of working with director Ang Lee in the award-winning film Life of Pi, cast as the wife of the title character. In 2019, Mythili was nominated by celebrated dancer/choreographer Akram Khan as “Choreographer of the Future” for UK-based Dance Umbrella’s Four by Four Commissions, premiering her solo work HERE and NOW at their festival that year.

Mythili is a recipient of the “Creation to Performance” grant from the Irvine Dance Foundation and “Artistic Innovation” grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation. She has received numerous accolades from premiere institutions of dance and music in India as well. In 2021, she received the National Dance Project touring grant from NEFA for She’s Auspicious, which premiered in Hamburg at the Reflektor Festival, curated by  Anoushka Shankar.

JWALA (Rising Flame)
First created in 2015 after the passing of my father and the birth of my daughter, Jwala explores fire as a symbol of loss, hope, life and death. As destructive as it is vulnerable and illuminating, the flame embodies the contradictions and complexity of humanity. Today it has become more literal, fire has destroyed our homes and our lives in unimaginable ways; and yet, in every moment of hope or prayer, we light a candle. We rise and rest in movement around the most undeniable thing in the world - the Sun; And yet, what prompts every moment forward in life, is the flame burning unseen within us.

For the last few years, I have immersed myself in the creation of work that reflects on and challenges contradictions in social values- past and present- through mythology and cultural practices, particularly those centering around femininity. Finding the language to do this through the aesthetics of Bharatanatyam (classical Indian Dance) which are rooted in beauty, harmony, and upliftment, has required a re-imagining and re-framing of form and performance.

But alongside the instinct to embody the rage, violence, marginalization and hypocrisy of our extremely divisive world, sits the desire to reconnect with the things that unite humanity. How easy it is becoming to forget that!

Creating Jwala was one of the first times in my artistic journey that I wasn’t negotiating a cultural narrative and how to make it accessible to international audiences; It was an opportunity to dance my personal story and know that love, loss, release, and hope needed no translation.

This new iteration is reimagined for the current moment and our ever present world, leading to interpretations that reimagine the contradictions inherent in our humanity.

Rajika Puri - Festival Curator
RAJIKA PURI, an exponent of Bharatanatyam and Odissi, conceived of and named Dancing the Gods, Festival of Indian Dance. Well-versed in the dance world of India, and herself an exponent of Bharatanatyam and Odissi, she personally contacts fellow dancers in India - soloists and groups - and is involved in curating the programs they present. Rajika is also known for her particular brand of onstage pre-performance slide lectures - often with demonstration - on a subject connected with the dance forms being presented. (photo by David Rauch)

Doors: 7 PM | Celebration of Festival Founder Rajika Puri 7:15 PM | Performance:  8 PM

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