This June we investigate histories of rebellions and victories, queerness, and the violence of forced migration through two groundbreaking new dance works by pateldanceworks and Byb Chanel Bibene/Kiandanda Dance Theater.

to leave the land, a project of divisions the empire has sown by pateldanceworks is a call to understand past and present colonization through movement and storytelling, informed by the Partition of South Asia in 1947 and the lasting divides it has caused across sexuality, religion, caste, class, and gender.

The evening will include movement, storytelling, sonic landscape, and immersive experience, asking the audience to become part of the performance itself. With to leave the land we open conversations about past and present colonization to empower audiences to dismantle inequitable social structures. The violence endured within our lineages is part of these queer bodies and we seek to hold and heal these stories of lost homelands and lost lives.

Next, enter a visual voyage in time that paints the tensed stories of the Black bodies resisting slavery and seeking connection with the ancestral wisdom. [Re]member by Byb Chanel Bibene/Kiandanda Dance Theater connects Black bodies via their shared history, fight for liberties, and against slavery.

The work investigates the stories of the resistance and victories of captured Africans in the slave ships and the plantations during the Trans-Atlantic trade and slavery in the Americas, with a particular focus on the prowess of Nganga Nzumbi, a maroon leader who set free an entire community.