Choreographer/dancer Parijat Desai creates hybrids of contemporary and Indian classical dance, theater, martial art, and other forms. She seeks beauty, but also to grapple with the pressing disconnects of our time. Current projects include JustLikeThat, a dance theater work combining movement, script, live music, and newspaper, to explore the interaction between news language and state power; and O.O.F. (studies in the opposite of fear), an evolving movement practice exploring micro and macro cycles, and attempting to cultivate an alternative emotional state to the anxiety of our current political moment (first created and performed with composer Manjunan Gnanaratnam). Parijat has also collaborated with various members of Brooklyn Raga Massive to create scores for dance, and, as a Fulbright artist, developed site-based performance in modernist and Islamic architectural spaces in India. As a social practice, Parijat offers Dance In The Round, workshops for people of all backgrounds/abilities based on circle dances of Gujarat, India. She will be teaching contemporary dance at Mark Morris Dance Center beginning December 2017.
