Event Details
icchā is a new interdisciplinary solo kathak work weaving original music, film, set design, and Gujarati folk form garba. barkha, a daughter whose path has diverged dramatically from her lineage, is visited by her maternal ancestors in a dream. They choose her to express, release, and fulfill their desires: born from survival, loss, intimacy, violence, and the denial of dance and embodied selfhood.
icchā is meant to be a somatic shraadh, an ancestral reverence. The work confronts the body as a site of ancestral history, creating space within it to welcome unnamed matriarchs to breathe again and to ask ourselves what in our body might be their unfinished reaching?
Barkha Patel is a touring kathak artist, choreographer, educator and Artistic Director of Barkha Dance Company. Barkha’s work has been presented at venues such as Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Little Island, 92Y, and Chelsea Factory among others. Barkha has been recipient of the 2023 Juried Bessie Award through which she received support from the New York State Dance Force in 2024, to tour a full-evening work ahaM | Maha.
Barkha was awarded the Princess Grace Dance Award ‘24, selected as a finalist for NEFA’s NDP Finalist ‘24, and was a Harlem Stage WaterWorks Fellow ‘24. She has been a recipient of residencies with Movement Research, NYS Choreographic Institute, and Topaz Arts. She completed her first India tour across six cities in ‘25 in collaboration with Canadian based kathak artist Tanveer Alam. Barkha currently is a recipient of the Special Projects Grant from the Princess Grace Foundation.