{Barkha Patel ☬ Faint Whispers}
Enjoy, learn, and participate in kathak dance
The essence of my dance is fluidity.
I am a kathak dancer and choreographer. My dances are about the disenfranchisement of women and the empowerment of women. They are about showing compassion to women in all of their conditions.
I create dance that explores dichotomies in Indian culture. We are praising women as the embodiment of the goddess, but we bind her. How can we as a community question culture and the condition of all of those who participate in the experience of being a woman, including transgender people?
How can the lives and teachings of women benefit all, regardless of gender? I want to invoke this kind of questioning in my own community.
Faint Whispers with Barkha
Kathak dance is percussive and narrative. Dancers convey emotions and story through bodily movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions.
Barkha created Faint Whispers especially for Time Medicine to help us to slow down and connect.
Slow Dance.
Barkha shares a slow version of Faint Whispers so that you can dance along with her, learn, and enjoy.
Kathak dance took root during the Bhakti movement in India.
Dancers travelled through towns telling stories with social messaging from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The Sanskrit word katha means “story.”
Kathak has a certain naturalness and uses gestures from everyday life. Within the forms of kathak, there is a lot of openness. Being thoroughly immersed in the forms of kathak, you can eventually express yourself through upaj: improvisation. ~Barkha Patel
New kathak styles used the musical syllables of tabla from which dancers created more structured forms of the dance.
The rule of the Mughal empire in North India brought kathak into the Mughal court. Contributions to kathak by both Hindu spiritual narratives and women from marginalized castes were minimized or erased.
About Barkha
Barkha Patel is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, and the Artistic Director of Barkha Dance Company based in New York. Her creative work is rooted in Indian kathak dance and framed by narratives of cultural suppression, personal transformation, and communal empowerment. Barkha is a touring artist whose live works have been presented at venues including Dance Theatre Harlem, the Joyce Theatre in New York as well as Chidambaram and Modhera Dance Festivals in India.