Presented by Nandini Sikand in Partnership with the Theater at the 14th Street Y, RIYAAZ/PRACTICE is a collaborative production that brings together four east coast contemporary dance companies, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company, Courtyard Dancers, Sattriya Dance Company, and Sakshi Productions. After a successful run at the Facing East Festival in Philadelphia, Riyaaz/Practice takes the stage at the Theater at the 14th Street Y for a limited engagement Friday, November 15 - November 16. 

Using bharatanatyam, kathak, odissi and sattriya as foundational training, these companies will present duets, trios and group pieces that embody the notion of intentional, daily practice. Riyaaz is about our lived experiences. It disciplines the body and the mind and habituates us to movements, words, expressions. Riyaaz, an Arabic word, is foundational to the practice of dance and music in India.  It is about entering more deeply into communion with the body, with the self, with other bodies, and communities around us. It is ultimately about the constant process of polishing and stripping away of the unnecessary, including the ego.

The vision of D.C based, Dakshina/Daniel Phoenix Singh Dance Company is to explore and present dance in its complexity and multiplicity, celebrating tradition while constantly creating new vocabularies in movement and dance. Dakshina means “offering” in Sanskrit and Dakshina offers artists and communities the unique opportunity to experience dance as a movement that links the arts, cultures, and social causes.

Courtyard Dancers is a nonprofit community-centered arts organization (with branches in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Kolkata) interested in developing the art of Kathak as cultural literacy and empowerment.  It is a collective for whom dancing is a form of civic engagement connected to the traditional arts of India but within contemporary aesthetics and progressive politics.

Sattriya Dance Company is a labor of love for sisters-in-law Madhusmita Bora and Prerona Bhuyan. The Philadelphia-based company’s mission is to promote, document and spread awareness about Sattriya. The company has performed in festivals such as World Music Institute, Battery Dance Company's Erasing Borders and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

Founded in 2008, Sakshi Productions is a neo-classical Odissi and contemporary dance company based in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Sakshi performances center personal histories, gestural vocabulary and evocative images, the dance as a lived experience of performer and witness.