Choreography Award Holder 2020: Parbati Chaudhary

What does this opportunity mean to you and what do you expect to develop during this period of time at dx?

Goodgirl is a work that has been brewing in my heart for a few years now, which seeks to determine the impact of cultural expectations and conditioned assumptions on choices of partner and the sex lives of British-Asian women. The dx Choreography Award would support its making into what would be my first full-length choreographic work, acting as a major milestone in my creative practice. I envisage Goodgirl as a dance-theatre work, following a script based on real stories and dramatised fiction – I’m eager to see how this text will mould the crafting process. I’m also looking forward to connecting with a new community of South Asian women and girls who would feed into its development. As well as making an entertaining, quirky show, I hope this work will give expression to

Tell us about you and your company

Parbati Chaudhury is a maker-performer-teacher pushing the creative potential and reach of kathak. London-born and based, she trains with Urja Desai Thakore. In-depth research and collaboration are central to Parbati’s work, echoing the narratives she encounters, whether personal, political, historical, mythological, envisaged or dreamed, with generous doses of abstraction to keep things finely balanced.

In 2017, she was awarded an Akademi Choreography Commission, establishing her pathway as a dance maker. 

In 2018-2019, Parbati undertook her first residency with Kala Sangam, over which she delved into the beginnings of Goodgirl. Earlier this year, she became a member of ReRooted Dance Collective, and was selected for Space Clarence Mews’ Year of Making programme to begin developing another work-in-progress, Acts in Alchemy. Parbati was delighted to recently learn that her piece, Fader, has been chosen for The Place’s Resolution Festival 2020. She also regularly features in Pagrav Dance Company and Akademi productions, and leads kathak classes across the city.

If you could collaborate with any artist in the world right now who would it be?

Dancer-choreographer Bijyani Satpathy

Show directors Smyth and Lyall

Your first dance experience?

I started learning Kathak at the age of eight when my parents took me to The Bhavan, London to introduce me to Indian classical dance. Til then, my experience of dance consisted of sweet Bengali folk with a north London community group, boogieing to pop with my two brothers in our living room, and school’s Let’s Move club! On that first impression, I took to the meditative atmosphere which I found in Sushmita Ghosh’s (my first teacher) Kathak class as the group warmed up. Sushmitadi became a compassionate role model who instilled a strong sense that dance and music are profound forms of expression.