Parijat Desai is a Lester Horton Dance Award and Fulbright Scholar Award–winning artist and director of Parijata Performance Projects, based in Lenapehoking / Washington Heights / NYC,. She is intrigued by the interplay between our inner landscape, the political realities that plague us, and the natural world. Parijat builds aesthetic bridges across conceptual and political borders, by creating hybrids of contemporary, Gujarati folk, and Indian classical dance; martial arts; and experimental theater. She works across diverse forms to challenges the idea of cultural purity that underlies nationalism, and to find possibilities for healing. Through Dance In The Round, Parijat teaches garba/raas, circle dances from Gujarat, India, reframing her ancestral practices to be inclusive across age, ability, gender, and caste, and to support community well-being and activation. She leads circle dance experiences for intergenerational and age-specific groups and has taught for London School of Contemporary Dance’s MA in Communities, Participation, Activism. Her chapter, “Dance In The Round: Embodying Inclusivity and Interdependence through Garba,” will be published in Music and Dance of Everyday South Asia (Oxford UP). In 2024, PPP are creating O Ghostly Ancestor, a participatory performance /community ritual of honoring and releasing: Roosevelt Island (September 14); Inwood Hill Park (October 19/20, rain October 26/27); OutFront! Festival (January 7–13). In 2023, Parijat choreographed Elyria, a play about Gujarati immigrants (Atlantic Theater) and taught circle dance, somatics, and choreography at Bennington. In her 2022 Soham Dance Space residency she developed an outddoor participatory dance series with Chicago-based dancers and Chicago Night Out at the Parks. Parijat has received commissions from Danspace Project, Harlem Stage, and
Grand Performances/LA, and her work has been presented at La MaMa, Asia Society, Queens Museum, BRIC Arts Media, CPR (NYC); Skirball Cultural Center, California Plaza, Getty Center (Los Angeles); Asian Art
Museum, ODC Theater (San Francisco); The Denver Art Museum; The Dance Centre (Vancouver); and National Centre for the Performing Arts (Mumbai). Parijat began PPP in 2000 in LA, and moved to Brooklyn in 2004.
