Ankita Sharma: dhoka/Betrayal/

With a heady, erotic pulse and an invocation of androgyneity from pre-colonial times, dhoka/Betrayal/ offers a challenging look at religion being used as a tool for nationalist propaganda in India. This intimate South-Asian dance-theater duet drops audiences into a temple where Kali’s bloody tongue rots at the hands of her worshipper, and her image is fetishized into one of pure destruction. The work lives at the fringes of reality and genre, letting the epic and human dance together: a physical exploration of embodied colonization and corrupt worship in a political world trending right.