Aakash Odedra Company will presents Shiamak: Winter Funk¸ 100+ dancers in high-energy evenings of Bollywood Dance at Harrow Arts Centre on 13 November and Warwick Arts Centre on 21 November, solo show Rising at Birmingham Hippodrome on 17 November and Watermans Arts Centre, Brentford on 19 November and a sSpring tour of Little Murmur, adapted for children, opening at The Spark Festival 8–11 February.
An exhibition of photography and archive material at De Montford University until 31 October tracks the development of the company and celebrates its 10th anniversary.
For Winter Funk, Aakash Odedra Company continues its relationship with Shiamak Davar International, the international Bollywood dance academy. It is a high-energy evening of Bollywood dance from Bolly Hop to Bolly Sass and beyond, performed by dancers of all ages and abilities (100 in London, 200 in Warwick).
Odedra will dance his solo show Rising at Birmingham Hippodrome, where it premiered in 2011, and at Watermans Arts Centre. featuring works by three of contemporary dance’s biggest stars—Akram Khan, Russell Maliphant and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui—alongside Odedra’s own creation.
The company has joined forces with Spark Arts for Children to develop a new version of Odedra’s 2014 show Murmur based on his own experiences of dyslexia for audiences of 7+ and their families. Visual design and technology combine with dance and humour in a performance about the challenges of living with dyslexia.
Odedra said, “this piece is about dyslexia but the essence of it is saying to the children that if you’re different it doesn’t mean that’s bad—different is special, different is beautiful.”
Little Murmur was created with two AOC apprentice dancers, Anaya Vasudha Bolar and Kalliirroi Vratti, and associate artistic director, Kesha Raithatha and is performed by Subhash Viman Gorania, premièring in Leicester schools in the Spark Festival 8–11 February 2022. An education pack supported by the British Dyslexia Association will be available.