Nayikas Dance Theater Co's Presents 'GLOW 2006’ April 14 - 16 2006 @7.00pm Light House International The Sol and Lillian Goldman Building 111 East 59th Street New York NY 10022-1202 $ 30 - Performance ( $20 concs.) www.nayikas.org

‘Glow’ is Nayikas multimedia, experimental dance theater project. It uses traditional dance with Indian cinematic, comic book, and calendar art images to aid in visually mapping elements of popular culture to abstract classical aesthetic forms. It exposes ruptures in traditional understandings of text and philosophy while exploring spirituality and sensuality through the dancer's body.

The simple act of women adorning themselves ‘glows’ with the pulse of the feminine divine, as does the graceful movement of hips swaying, of feet reverberating. A new sense of woman, of body, and of the spiritual is realized when Gods defy gendered classification, the demonic divine coexists with the sensual feminine, and luminescence is not restricted to form.

ABOUT NAYIKAS

Nayikas is New York's first resident Indian Odissi dance theater company, and one of the only classical, contemporary and progressive dance ensembles in the South Asian Diaspora. Nayikas modernizes comprehension of the aesthetics of Odissi, India's oldest classical dance form, dating back to 2nd Century B.C. Creating potent and theatrical dance pieces, the Nayikas (‘heroines’) tell stories that both privilege and resurrect the often neglected voices of women.

Nayikas draws from feminist iconography in Indian history & mythology. Thus preserving the essential spiritual core of the dance form while envisioning gender equality & promoting diversity of imagination in the often-patriarchal religiosity of these traditions. The Nayikas are Aditi Dhruv, Pavithra Vasudevan, Kirti Srivastava, Shrooti Singh and Myna Mukherjee. Visit www.nayikas.org for more information.