Courtyard Dancers

“Asunder” is a search for what once was and never shall be again: an undivided India.   A dance theater, using Kathak dance, poetry, Thumri and Baul songs, it evokes a landscape of nostalgia, loss, and longing for a homeland that was broken asunder during “desh bhagh” (partition of India).

Concept and Choreography Pallabi Chakravorty
Tabla:  Aqeel Bhatti, Chandan Patra (recorded)
Vocal recorded: Sudakshina Manna, Bhakta Baul
Dancers: Courtyard Dancers ensemble

Courtyard Dancers is a nonprofit dance company interested in developing a socially engaged community of artists and audiences who experience the arts as the building blocks of community. Their dance-theaters juxtapose the beauty of the classical Indian dances with pedestrian movements, everyday gestures, utterances, and text to create new collages of life. The company draws on the expressive power of dance and music to narrate stories of the under-represented and the unusual, the quotidian and the mundane, to evoke dramatic and powerful images of ordinary life. Through their dance works, workshops, and speaking engagements, the company strives for sustainable and pluralistic communities that can acknowledge and bridge differences.