New York Diary
The Sa Dancers RISE Again In A Strong Performance.
Some things just get better with age. The Sa Dancers are one of them. Started in 2008 by Payal Kadakia Pujji, the Sa Dance Company came at a time when Indian immigrants and their children were still finding their bearings, long before all things Indian become cool. Payal, a spunky Indian-American brought contemporary Indian dance to the stage, often in mainstream settings. It celebrated all movements Indian from classical to folk to Bollywood and helped give them a space in the American landscape.
I had last written about the Sa Dancers 15 years ago, so it was a delight to see how, like fine wine, they had seasoned and matured. Payal has a parallel career in entrepreneurship with her highly successful company ClassPass. Her first love remains dance, and as she sometimes says, The Sa Dance Company was her first startup!
This latest production The Rise – A Journey Through Resilience, which premiered at the Alvin Ailey Theater, is the creation gestated all these years and through all her experiences as the child of immigrants. As Payal says, “RISE is a love letter to the grandmothers, aunties, and mothers who continue to show the way. With unwavering determination and limitless generosity, they empower each new generation of women to nourish and perpetuate the remarkable bond of sisterhood that unites us all.”
RISE is the celebration of the metamorphosis of the Indian woman from sheltered childhood to girlhood to womanhood, overcoming the expectations of society and narrow world views to finding her own courage and resources, and finding her true self, and her community.
Payal’s artistic roots lie in traditional Indian folk dance, when at the age of three she began training with her lifelong Guru, Usha Patel. Born and brought up in America, she also trained in jazz, contemporary, and ballet, bringing the dual aspects of her life together and shaping her choreographic language, pulling Indian movement out of Western technique and giving new meaning to contemporary South Asian dance.
Payal’s work has been featured at numerous events and festivals as well as in film and television productions, including The inaugural Diwali Celebration at the White House; Lincoln Center, SummerStage as well as performances for Disney, Art Basel, and New York Fashion Week.
Over the years dancers have come and gone. In the older stories from 2013, you can read the interviews I had done with the first dancers many years ago. All beautiful Indian-American women starting out in a new world. The company currently comprises of Roshni Badlani, Rashi Birla, Radhika Mehta Kirpalani, Nitya Srikishen Lakhi, Bhavika Kapadia Patel, Dhruti Patel, Neha Pathamanaban, Sharanya Mukhopadhyay Sekhri, and Manisha Nair Sokka.
Now comes a dance tour and a film about dance. SEEING SHAPES is a documentary film following The Sa Dance Company from rehearsals to a stunning performance at the Alvin Ailey Dance Center in NYC. Here is a clip of the upcoming film.
Seeing Shapes – an upcoming documentary about Sa Dance Company
Says Payal: “I think my eyes really opened of a new way to share who I was as an Indian American, and someone who has lived here for 40 plus years, and my parents, who’ve lived here for even longer than that, and really trying to create a dance, idiom, music, costumes that felt really authentic to who I was and my community was, and that was my goal.”
She mentions certain qualities which inspired the show and the documentary:
“I think there’s this this purity and innocence that people see in us, because that’s sort of what we were taught as little girls. But there’s this strength in us. And I always wanted to show people the power of any little girl out there. And at the same time, I wanted everyone to know how incredibly resilient women are, especially Indian women, the heritage I come from as an entrepreneur and someone who’s had a life outside of this for many years.”
Related Articles:
Sa Dancers: Bringing Bollywood to America
Indian Dance: SA Dancers Take You Home
