ACFNY SUPPORTED | BODHI PROJECT: BHAJ-TO BELONG TO
As part of the Battery Dance Festival, choreographer Josè Agudo and Salzburg-based dance company BODHI PROJECT initiate a journey of transformation connecting ritualistic movements that ascend into a trance. The Battery Dance Festival is New York City’s longest-running free public dance festival, drawing a combined audience of over 12,000 people each year.
’’BHAJ – to belong to’’ (U.S. Premiere)
The piece shows us as human beings with the power to grow and to transform. It shows us also people who wish to belong to someone or something. The master dancer and choreographer José Agudo, who is educated in the different dance styles of flamenco and the Indian Kathak dance, initiates with his new commissioned work for Bodhi project a journey of transformation, that connects with the power of ritualistic movement and ascends into a trance.
“Bhaj” is a verb in Sanskrit. The Sanskrit noun “bhakti” is derived from it, meaning “to deify a god” or “to serve”. Broadly “bhaj” means “to share, to possess,” and occupies a semantic field that embraces the notions of “belonging”. In that sense, “Bhaj” is a search for belonging. “Belonging” can be attached to the flesh, to space, to ideas, to other people, to a country, to a family.
“Moving and reaching out allowing us to examine our own lives and the way we live. Departing from personal stories we find universal experience.”
José Agudo
Direction & Choreography: José Agudo
Dancers: Fenia Chatzakou, Cristina Valdivielso Garcia, Elise Ludinard, Yun Liu, Bernat Macià Perez, Jun Wang. Music: Aaron Martin, Giuliano Modarelli & Bernhard Schimpelsberger
Music Production: Bernhard Schimpelsberger
Light design: Frank Lischka
Costumes: José Agudo in collaboration with Bodhi
Project Production: blackmountain, Salzburg (AUT), SEAD, Salzburg (AUT)
Duration: +/- 40 min
Premiere: March 25, 2019, Xchange Festival, SEAD – Josef Eckart Theatre, Salzburg (AUT)
Image Credit: Yoanna Blikman, 2019
VENUE
August 16th: 7PM-9PM | Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park
August 17th: 6PM-8PM | Schimmel Center