“African and Indian idioms began to look like different skins on the same muscles and skeletons. When the two threads finally twine together, they do so on common ground.”
--Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel
Full Review
"[The dancers] looked like silhouettes in the sunset, like figurines at a holy site and like images out of dreams.
--Rohan Preston, Minneapolis
Star Tribune
Full Review
Wordance brings together two exceptional dance companies, renowned for culturally-based traditional and contemporary dance works, in a groundbreaking, cross-cultural performance. This collaborative project draws viewers in, inviting them to recognize, compare, and contrast the underpinnings of form and style in Indian and African dance. Performed in stunning traditional costumes and set to the hypnotic, pulsing rhythms of live music, Wordance culminates in a striking work in which over ten dancers from both companies share the stage with live drummers and vocal percussionists, interweaving the intricate, linear movements of Ragamala’s Bharatanatyam style with the bold, circular patterns of Ko-Thi’s African dance.
Wordance premiered in 1999 at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, supported by a National Dance Project Grant from the New England Foundation for the Arts. Wordance had its Minnesota premiere in 2002 at O'Shaughnessy Auditorium (The College of St. Catherine) in St. Paul, Minnesota, supported in part by a Creativity Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
