Community ACCESS provides subsidized off-season rental opportunities for Danspace Project community members.

WE SINFUL WOMEN is a new work by Janaki Patrik, Founder & Artistic Director of The Kathak Ensemble & Friends. Patrik seeks to give voice, through melody and movement, to the words of the female Urdu poets Ishrat Aafreen, Kishwar Naheed, and Fahmida Riaz.

Protesting the suffocating repression in their physical and emotional lives, these poets courageously wrote with both confrontational anger and ecstatic lyricism. First published in 1990 in Lahore, Pakistan, and in 1991 in London, the ground-breaking collection of poetry, WE SINFUL WOMEN (edited by Rukhsana Ahmad), gave a glimpse of the situation in which women had few rights, and their dance and poetry were considered blasphemous.

This production embodies the outrage and tenderness encapsulated in the concentrated language of poetry and dance.

The performance on Friday, March 3 will be followed by a Q&A with the artists.

Choreographer: Janaki Patrik with the Dancers
Composer: Kiran Ahluwalia
Female Vocal: Kiran Ahluwalia
Male Vocal: Samarth Nagarkar
Sarangi: Pt. Ramesh Misra
Tabla: Nitin Mitta
Bansuri flute, clarinet & saxophone: Steve Gorn
Rubab: Quraishi Roya
Frame drum: Rich Stein
English recitation of poems: Manoshi Chitra Neogy
Dancers: Aditi Dhruv, Kanushree Jain, Megha Kalia, Romanee Kalicharran, Bharathi Penneswaran, Saloni Somani
Consultants in Urdu Language & Literature: Professor Tahira Naqvi, Professor Frances Pritchett
Lighting designer: Kathy Kaufmann
Costume designer: Anna-Alisa Belous
Assistant in sourcing materials from India: Rani Khanam