The first event of the annual Rasa Festival 2023 brings an exciting evening of dance and music. We are delighted to bring you in-person performances in our festival after three years.
The evening will present the premiere of Sreyashi Dey’s innovative new dance-theater work, Shikhandi, and an enchanting Indian classical vocal music concert by India-based artist Anjana Kushari.
Saturday, September 23, 2023
6:30 – 9:00pm
Riverside Arts Center
76 N Huron St.
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
Ticket Info:
$20 general, $10 students
https://a2tix.com/events/rasa-festival-2023-9-23-2023
Shikhandi
A dance-theater performance by
Sreyashi Dey
Concept
Shikhandi is a performance piece by Sreyashi Dey, an exploration of gender and identity issues surrounding Shikhandi (pronouns they/them), one of the most overlooked characters of the Mahabharata. Shikhandi’s life is replete with twists and turns, gender ambiguity and fluidity, and injustices over two births.
The piece begins with a Sanskrit verse chronicling the liminal nature of their presence:
It was the ninth night of the war at Kurukshetra.
The exact midpoint of the legendary 18- day bloodbath.
Not the start, not the end, but the middle.
The war had been inconclusive.
Sometimes the Kauravas led by the old sire Bhisma had the upper hand, and sometimes the Pandavas led by the young Dhristadhyumna..
Shikhandi changed the course of the war, playing a pivotal role in establishing dharma, leading Arjuna to keep Bhishma suspended mid-air by Arjuna’s arrows, for neither the earth nor the sky would accept him.
But who was Shikhandi? A man or a woman?
Neither a man nor a woman.
—
Shikhandi represents an all-encompassing notion of queerness, from gays, lesbians, transgenders and hijras to bisexuals to hermaphrodites. In locating this story right in the middle of the war, neither here nor there yet of great strategic importance to the course of history, Vyasa gave voice to the non-heteronormative discourse of the ancients.
This performance, using techniques of Odissi, contemporary movement, music and spoken word, is not a mere re-telling of Shikhandi’s story. Rather, Sreyashi has conceptualized it in the form of three imagined monologues of Shikhandi with three pivotal characters in their life:
– Shikhandi (first birth as Amba) challenges Bhishma after she is rejected by all the three men
(Shalva, Vichitravirya, and Bishma himself), and asked to go back to her father.
– Shikhandi questions their father (second birth) about their place as his child since he wants both a female and a male child to accomplish his goals. Where does that leave Shikhandi?
– Shikhandi questions Krishna about being used by him and the Pandavas for their war strategy.
Is Shikhandi useful in the game of war only for their ambiguous gender, while in the socio-political arena they have no use?
The piece ends with Shikhandi in a disembodied dream state, transcending the construct of both the male and female bodies. This is akin to the Vedantic notion of pure consciousness beyond gross body (gender), subtle body (identity) and mind.
Artist Statement
My objective in creating this piece was to go beyond a mere re-telling of the familiar story of Shikhandi. I wanted to delve into Shikhandi’s mind to imagine and craft a response to the key turning points of their life over two births, responses to the key people in their life who used and manipulated them using their gender ambiguity and fluidity, and to social pressures, expectations and hypocrisy. Traditional texts do not give this agency and voice to Shikhandi to question these key characters, so I co-wrote the monologues with religious studies scholar, Prof. Jeffery Long. The original verses in Sanskrit will be written specially for this piece, as well as the music composition. In addition to this exploration of Shikhandi’s mind, my intent is also to work with the tension between Shikhandi/Amba being utterly dictated by the expectations and definitions of others, and the Vedantic philosophical aspiration for transcendence and complete freedom as the true nature of the Self.
With a strong belief that art is timeless, and that gender and inclusion issues resonate equally in today’s times, we aim to create an innovative performance and a film for today’s audiences in Michigan, the US, India and across the world. It will be an immersive arts experience that will be thought-provoking, critically questioning of traditional biases as well as accepting of non-heteronormative identities and lives. Through the performance that will include dance, movement, dialogues and music, we will narrate an ancient epic story of marginalization of a gender fluid person, highlight the injustices and also relate it to the current times. We will demonstrate through the arts how social justice, gender and inclusion are still battles that are being fought on a daily basis.
Credits
Concept, choreography and artistic direction: Sreyashi Dey
Script: Dr. Jeffery Long, Dr. Dheeman Bhattacharyya, Dr. Tathagata Mondal
Performers: Sreyashi Dey, Sarah Hebert Johnson, Kohal Das
Music: Monit Pal and Jaydeep Sinha
Hindustani Vocal Music concert
by
Anjana Kushari from Kolkata
accompanied by Hemant Babtiwale on Tabla and Anirudha Phatak on Harmonium.
Learn more about the artists here.
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