The sacred energy of fire bubbles over in dhoka/Betrayal/, a destructive dance-theater duet which entangles Hindu goddess Kali’s ultimate power with ethnonationalism. This fire is one that South-Asian artists and physical practitioners have harnessed since ancient times, acting as a reminder of one’s own power and as a tool of resistance. dhoka reclaims this heat to reimagine Kali’s mythology with the eroticism, androgynity, gore, and epicness that often gets written out of post-colonial South-Asian art. Audiences accompany Kali as her image is deified, westernized, and destroyed - a ritualistic transformation that invokes the manipulation of power structures through worship. With Kali’s ultimate power bathed in authoritarianism, dhoka traces the pathway from destruction to recreation using worship.

At its core, dhoka started as a scathing letter to ethnonationalism in India and an examination of my own mixed relationship to Hinduism, Islam, caste, class, the military, and the West. dhoka sits with the aggression of fire as an antidote to the padding of India’s upper-caste elite. And yet, this work is not made for India. It is made for India’s descendants who are sent abroad. It is made for the South-Asian diaspora, acting as a criticism of the dominant Hindu-washing Brahmanism that has seeped into the US diaspora’s politics, education, yoga classes, and Netflix series. Alongside this criticism is also catharsis for the diaspora’s pain and everything that is lost in translation. In a Hindu culture that is rapidly masculinizing itself amidst a weeping world of violence, dhoka invokes the feminine in one cathartic cry and a terrifying, bloodied tongue.

Performed by Eyner Roman and ankita.

Premiered thanks to JACK, NYSCA, and BAC at JACK in Brooklyn, NY.

WIP Showings while in residence at Base, GALLIM, Performance Project, MNE Emerging Choreographer Series, aangan NY Dance Salon, and at JACK’s Radical Acts Festival.

Currently seeking touring opportunities.