Pillow Lab:
Aakash Odedra

Pillow Lab:
Aakash Odedra

This Pillow Lab has been postponed to the Fall 2023

Aakash Odedra will be working on a new piece titled MEHEK, a work about Odedra’s abiding dream to dance, one day, with his idol and one of Kathak’s great exponents, Aditi Mangaldas. Mangaldas and Odedra are clear that this invented narrative, while acknowledging the weight of social expectations on both men and women, must seek to explore and celebrate the inner worlds of the lovers, their individual desires and doubts, the arc of a love that has its own life, fierce and vibrant, however long it lasts.

It is just the beginning, but watching them at work and play, in this stage of exploration, watching the birth of movement and emotion, the viewer is, turn by turn, electrified, beguiled, shattered, and soothed. By shadows that meet and meld, by the cursive drawn by an index finger all the way down a tremulous back, by the ferocity and grace of rhythms imprinted by bare feet across a dance floor. These moments will be eclipsed, inevitably, as the piece evolves, as other, more refined sequences find voice, but for now, we plunge into riveting discussions and small epiphanies around staging the various colors of desire.

A contemporary dancer with roots in the classical Indian dance styles of Kathak and Bharatnatyam, Odedra is known for his mesmerizing agility and “ecstatic joy in dancing” (The New York Times).

Additional support for this residency is made possible by the Vivienne Jones Endowment Fund at Jacob’s Pillow created by Christopher Jones, President of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Board of Trustees and his wife, Deb McAllister in honor of Jones’s mother. The Fund was established to enhance the reach of the Pillow Lab by supporting a residency for a company based outside of New York/New England.

Watch Aakash Odedra on Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive:

• Constellation from 2017