Kritika Sharma - The Artists of "Invoking the River"

Kritika Sharma is a CDI Kathak Fellow and a dancer in CDI’s dance company Chitresh Das Dance. She currently lives in Washington, D.C. and performed in the premiere of “Invoking the River” on October 14-16 at ODC Theater in San Francisco.

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Shreya: What does “Invoking the River” mean to you?

Kritika: Invoking the River means an exploration of our individuality, especially as dancers who have, for so many years, been company dancers, where we’ve been doing choreography for over a decade. It really encouraged us to focus on our strengths as dancers, our own stories that take from our personal life and potentially, our cultural heritage, too, and put that into dance. It’s been an interesting process because each of us has come away with such a different final product – gravitating towards such different aspects of dance and what we want to portray.

Shreya: I would love to hear more about the river you chose to portray, and why you chose it.

Kritika: I chose the Alaknanda River, which is the biggest source stream of the Ganga, not mythologically, but volume-wise, by water. I didn’t have a strong reason for initially choosing it, but the more I looked into it, the more I was interested in it. This river is characterized by a really symbiotic relationship between itself and the villagers that live around it; it’s also a really holy site – so there are a lot of Hindu festivals celebrated by the banks of this river. I really liked the idea of portraying something relating to the environment, but about joy. Obviously, when we think about environmental changes, it’s not really a place with a lot of joy left, but I felt this story really represented my personality. I’m such a happy and joyful person, and that’s what I enjoy portraying as a dancer, as well. 

One thing recurring in this story is the way in which Kathak can capture beauty and power in one. As women, we’re often told that if we’re beautiful, we cannot be powerful, and Kathak knocks that to the ground; it’s what I love most about this dance form. The Alaknanda is such a beautiful river – it hosts river rafting, pilgrimages, the people around know to take good care of the river, and the river powers dams. I felt a lot of connection to the holiness and joyfulness of the river, as well as its beauty and strength in my own individuality. 

Shreya: From your research on Alaknanda, would you say there was anything that really surprised you?

Kritika: Honestly, nothing surprised me too much, aside from the fact that there was such a symbiotic relationship between the river and the people. Especially from hearing some of the other stories, I expected there to be a “but” – like “oh, it’s polluted now” or “it’s been neglected.” In recent years, there have been two major floods that caused destruction on the villages, but everything has been rebuilt. Other than that, both the river and people are doing great, and it was really different for me to see this story of joy that often doesn’t exist. 

Shreya: It’s interesting that you talk so much about the joy that the river brings, since a lot of the urgency we feel towards climate change is related to damage humans have caused. 

Kritika: Yeah, I agree. Years ago, I was on a call with Celine Didi, and she said, “Joy is resistance,” and that’s a phrase I keep coming back to. I never fully understood it the first time I heard it, but this piece makes me think of it. I can see how joy is resistance, because in some ways, I might be motivated more by seeing how happy we could be if we lived in harmony with nature rather than blaming each other for its destruction. 

Shreya: What did your storytelling process look like? How did you transform the story of your chosen river into a performance?

Kritika: My piece is slightly different from everyone else’s in that it doesn’t have a strong storyline. It mostly depicts these emotions through a pure dance piece. Honestly, the process gave us the freedom to do what we individually loved. I love strong, beautiful dance – I love footwork, compositions, and being a powerful dancer. I wanted to hone into that since I knew other dancers were doing more gat bhao. I gave myself the freedom to make that choice, and then was happy and confident in it. 

Another thing that has been cool about this show is that no one has tried to be like anyone else. Everyone took their piece and ran with it, and we weren’t afraid to show each other what we came up with, but we also embraced the fact that our pieces were fully different.

I also explored Ektaal in my piece, which is a taal I’ve never worked with. Exploring a new taal can be excruciating at times because you’re not used to hearing it, you don’t know where tihais land. Charlotte Didi gave me two compositions and I just made up a third, which is something I did in my solo a few years ago too. Finding that fun in dance and focusing on the things that make me happy helped me find my story, as well.

Shreya: Having your Guru sisters and this environment of openness seems to take some of the pressure off this performance. How have you leaned on your Guru sisters throughout the process?

Kritika: I think that’s one of the biggest things that make these shows incredible – both from the viewers’ side, but also internally. We’ve all danced together for over ten years, and we have both a very strong connection with each other as well as a strong sense of support for each other. That goes much deeper than anyone really gives credit to. None of us have any judgment about anyone else’s dance, or what their capabilities are, and we also understand each other’s strengths as dancers.

Practically how we’ve leaned on each other is bouncing off ideas in terms of what elements we have in our pieces (gat bhao, compositions, what kind of footwork are you doing, what does your music sound like). Also, being really open with each other during rehearsals is so helpful – we have constant communication and aren’t afraid to ask each other for help. We’ve never danced on piano music before, sometimes your ear doesn’t catch things whereas someone else’s does. Everyone is so supportive, and that’s honestly what gets us through the hardest rehearsals and longest weekends. 

Shreya: Coming back to the performance, what are you most excited about in the leadup to the show? 

Kritika: I’m most excited to see our pieces come together with live music. We’ve already had one weekend of live music rehearsals, but we’ve never really worked with an artist to this extent, where we have so much freedom and control over how the music is. Utsav is really easy to work with, and is really responsive, so it’s been really cool to see our visions come to life in an instant. It was so funny, Utsav said, “Oh, we have a month to prepare for this, that’s so much time! I usually get a couple of days.” From that perspective, I expect each of our pieces to keep evolving, ebbing, and flowing even in this week leading up to the performance. A lot of it is based on feeling – we try something out, and say, “how does this feel?” which has been a really interesting part of the process, and it’s really fun. I’m interested to see how those feelings change as we move our rehearsals to the stage and settle into our pieces in the theater. 

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Featuring choreography by Charlotte Moraga, music by Utsav Lal, multimedia & poetry by Alka Raghuram. Performances by Chitresh Das Dance Vanita Mundhra, Shruti Pai, Mayuka Sarukkai & Kritika Sharma and live music by Utsav Lal (piano) and Nilan Chaudhuri (tabla).

Shreya Khandewale is a Chitresh Das Youth Company alumni. She started studying Kathak at Pandit Chitresh Das’ institution as a child and continued to study for over a decade. She performed her graduating Youth Company Showcase in 2018 and is now a CDI Community Communications Contributor.