ODC Theater presents Sheetal Gandhi: Bahu Beti Biwi April 19, 2013

April 19-20 at 8pm; April 21 at 7pm

With powerful dance, stirring vocalization and percussive text, Sheetal Gandhi's magnetically rhythmic Bahu-Beti-Biwi (Daughter-in-law, Daughter, Wife) wraps North Indian music traditions and family characters into a contemporary tour de force that glides between humorous portraiture and active resistance. Gandhi, a multidisciplinary choreographer and performer whose work has taken her to Broadway and beyond, mines the text and subtext of centuries-old North Indian women's songs with a contemporary lens to reveal the complex tensions around freedom and compromise, desire and longing, duty and love.

A "pop-locking" bird transforms into an endearing auntie who nurtures through (over)feeding. The whining of an Indian-American teenage girl evolves into the slippery melody of a North Indian classical raga.

Sheetal Gandhi is both a musician and a dancer. Using complex syncopation and theatricality, she has crafted a virtuosic and evocative physical/vocal vocabulary. In both form and content, the work reflects her love for tradition with her equally urgent desire to break from it.

Official Website: http://www.odctheater.org/