In person at the museum
Celebrate Pride Month with innovative and progressive performers who use ancient dance styles to create new works highlighting LGBTQ+ characters and perspectives
In celebration of Pride Month and our local LGBTQ+ community, we feature performers of Indian and Cambodian dance traditions who challenge assumptions about gender roles in dance and recontextualize traditional dances for the 21st century. Gender fluidity is an age-old concept: in Buddhist texts, bodhisattvas transcend gender distinctions; depictions of Asian deities are often androgynous; and on the stage, performers in many Asian traditions play both genders.
Prumsodun Ok, founder of Cambodia's first gay dance company, considers the inherent queerness in the sacred art of Khmer dance. His work revitalizes and brings global attention to an art form that was nearly wiped out with the majority of its practitioners in the Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 1970s.
If ancient South Asian statues came to life, how would they express the queer stories that seem to exist in these cultures? Ishami Dance Company explores this idea, celebrating the marginalized stories of those who were once part of a precolonial mainstream.
In person at the museum
Celebrate Pride Month with innovative and progressive performers who use ancient dance styles to create new works highlighting LGBTQ+ characters and perspectives
In celebration of Pride Month and our local LGBTQ+ community, we feature performers of Indian and Cambodian dance traditions who challenge assumptions about gender roles in dance and recontextualize traditional dances for the 21st century. Gender fluidity is an age-old concept: in Buddhist texts, bodhisattvas transcend gender distinctions; depictions of Asian deities are often androgynous; and on the stage, performers in many Asian traditions play both genders.
Prumsodun Ok, founder of Cambodia's first gay dance company, considers the inherent queerness in the sacred art of Khmer dance. His work revitalizes and brings global attention to an art form that was nearly wiped out with the majority of its practitioners in the Khmer Rouge genocide of the late 1970s.
If ancient South Asian statues came to life, how would they express the queer stories that seem to exist in these cultures? Ishami Dance Company explores this idea, celebrating the marginalized stories of those who were once part of a precolonial mainstream.
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