Digging Deeper: Kali, Queen of Love, Chaos, and Rock Music

Co-choreographer and Metcalf Program Artistic Direction Intern, Dainty Smith reflects on Nova Bhattacharya’s powerful performance of Metal Queen at The Festival of New Dance in Newfoundland:

A first glance, the artforms of burlesque and Bharatanatyam don’t seem like they have anything in common. One of these dance styles is generally seen as low brow entertainment, that is highly sexual and titillating. And the other is a traditional dance form that has deep spiritual and religious meaning. What commonality could burlesque, and Bharatanatyam possibly have with each other?

We arrived at the Festival of New Dance in Saint John’s Newfoundland, at the Majestic Theatre to show the lovely folks of Saint John’s what a collaborative dreaming of these two very distinct dance styles can look like.

Metal Queen is a performance collaboration between myself, the Metcalf Artistic Direction Intern for Nova Dance and the Artist Director of Nova Dance Nova Bhattacharya . It is a meeting of the intersection of these two seemingly oppositional dance styles and a presentation of art being the center of what binds us together.

Bharatanatyam and burlesque are strange mirrors of each other’s forms. In the world of dance and storytelling, they are surprising ‘’sisters’’ to each other. Both dance styles offer theatricality, expression, comedy, satire, storytelling, over the top costumes and elements of seduction. Nova’s performance was an embodiment and celebration of the Goddess Kali, the Goddess of death, time and destruction, the divine mother of the universe, the Black mother.

Under the bright lights of the Majestic theatre’s stage, Nova brought together both artforms fearlessly and unapologetically in a performance that defiantly celebrates how beautiful femininity and sensuality and standing in your divine power can be.