Born in Kolkata and based in Sydney, Urban Kali creator and performer, Rakini Devi, is renowned for her work that challenges notions of race, culture, social issues and new technologies.
Urban Kali explores themes of female ‘shame’, a concept prevalent throughout Indian society and many other cultures. Through performing iconography of the Hindu Goddess Kali, Devi creates a mythical persona to protest misogynist attitudes and atrocities.
Drawing on her Kolkata origins, classical Indian dance forms and visual arts practice, Devi showcases the female form as both ritual and artefact.
“My new work seeks to retain the beauty and mystery inherent in sacred Hindu culture, while also ‘un-picking’ traditional frameworks so as to relish, explore and stretch the tensions between sacred and secular intercultural performance,’ explains Devi. ‘Urban Kali celebrates the divine feminine in the context of contemporary intercultural dance by transforming Kali iconography to create new, mythic, contemporary paradigms of female identity.”
Urban Kali is the fourth dance production by Devi to focus on the goddess Kali following Kali Yuga, which was presented at Riverside Theatres in 2004. Devi’s solo performances have been presented in the US, Mexico, Canada, Japan, India, Europe, Indonesia and South Africa as well as nationally throughout Australia. Urban Kali is Devi’s doctoral presentation as part of her thesis at UOW titled Urban Kali: From Sacred Dance to Secular Performance.
Creator and performer: Rakini Devi | Sound and film designer: Karl Ford
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