A virtuosic solo performance mixing storytelling, live music and Bharatanatyam dance, Belvoir St Theatre presents the world premiere of Nayika: A Dancing Girl this May.
A chance remark by an old friend in Sydney takes a woman back to her teenage years: living alone, by the sea in Chennai. She’s preparing for her debut dance recital, her Arangetram. She’s falling in love too!
But when young love begins to unravel, the memories flooding back take on a power of their own… Nayika: A Dancing Girl is a play about the profound ways indelible trauma shapes you, and the hope and defiance of taking back control.
A breathtaking solo performance melding storytelling, live music and Bharatanatyam dance, made for the unique talents of Helpmann Award-winning Vaishnavi Suryaprakash (Counting and Cracking, Galileo, Sami in Paradise), Nayika is story as survival. It is dance as resistance. It is a new type of heroine: one we have yet to imagine.
“Vaishnavi is another treasure of the Belvoir stage, and this piece will enhance her reputation as a performer of skill and nuance, I’m sure,” said Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack.
“It’s astonishing how this work can be simultaneously rhapsodic and confronting. The dance is hypnotic, the music is spine-tingling, and the story is haunting and profound.”
Co-created and co-directed by Nithya Nagarajan (Assistant Director of Jungle and the Sea) and Liv Satchell (The Grief Trilogy) this coming-of-age story of love and resistance is filled with joy, moments of melancholy and a whole lot of heart.
Sound Designer and Composer Marco Cher-Gibard (Malthouse Theatre’s K-BOX) and renowned Indian-Australian Violinist Bhairavi Raman will accompany Vaishnavi on stage as her exceptional talent as both a trained Bharatanatyam dancer and actor captivates audiences.
Nayika: A Dancing Girl
Belvoir Theatre, Belvoir Street, Surry Hills
Season: 4 – 19 May 2024 (previews: 30 April – 3 may)
Information and Bookings: www.belvoir.com.au
Image: Vaishnavi Suryaprakash stars in Nayika: A Dancing Girl (supplied)