for Presenters
Blue13 is a fiery confluence of the contemporary and the classical, honoring while departing from the cultural art legacies of the Indian subcontinent to create a new vision of American dance.
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booking information
touring & repertory
“The Three E” Approach to Booking
Blue13 is your partner in Equity, Engagement and Enlightenment. We are committed to working with you and your community to provide engagement beyond the public staged performance, with necessary cultural education and understanding at the center. Blue13 creates meaningful and lasting impact where it is needed most across the U.S. and abroad, making visible that which has been largely ignored in American performing arts: the multifaceted Indian American diaspora. As a woman-founded South Asian American company, Blue13 represents multiplicity, empowerment, and belonging to your community.
Partner with us to invite new audiences to your space, to show your community you value complex diversity and inclusion at the highest levels, and to increase accessible programming to those who do not often see or hear from artists of color.
A Blue13 performance may include a contemporary interrogation of identity, a thrilling and colorful Bollywood work, and a semi-classical solo en pointe with ankle bells. We are here to engage your audience beyond the single performance. Contact us today to discuss live and virtual residency opportunities, including Indian dance classes, lec-dems, and live streaming roundtables and town halls. Our “three E” approach goes hand-in-hand with our ABIDE initiative, which centers Access, Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity at every turn.
our work
For both virtual and live stages, a taste of our collective repertory and style, from bollywood to contemporary
Please contact us to request full pieces or to commission new work.
Recent Works by Achinta S. McDaniel include “Shaadi” immersive experience and “1947.”
The deft blending of such a myriad of pieces – movement styles, colors, light, music and costume is the hallmark of an organization that not only dives deep into study, but knows how to make choices that deliver a punch. I want to see them again. You need to see them.
repertory
Terpsichore in Ghungroos
World Premiere: February 21, 2020
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.
Run Time: 38 Minutes.
Music: Paul Livingstone, Alma Cielo, Enrique Lara
Projection Design: Sean Cawelti
Costumes: Nimmi Singh, Achinta S. McDaniel
Available with live music.
Description:
A contemporary triptych amplifying the oft erased, multifaceted voices of the Indian diaspora. The work is Achinta S. McDaniel’s interrogation of the insidious gender-based and racial inequity, bigotry, violence, and terror perpetuated today by our neighbors. In a multisensory experience of dance, live music, and projection, Blue13’s work builds to rhythmic crescendo through driving Kathak inspired footwork amplified by Ghungroos, ankle bells.
Ghungroos & Whistles 2020 {Virtual}
Run Time: 30 Minutes
Book with other virtual works to create a residency or full program.
Music: Multiple Hindi Soundtrack Hits, Rights Required.
Costumes: Sadhana Barma, Pamella Kapoor
Diya aur Toofan
{Live/Virtual}
Run Time: 18 Minutes
Music: Multiple Hindi Soundtrack Hits, Rights Required.
Costumes: Pamella Kapoor, Nimmi Singh, Sadhana Barma
F*ck Fusion V.2, or How to (or not to) be Adequately Indian {Live}
Music: F*ck Fusion by Chris Webb
Costumes: Rita Shrestha, Nimmi Singh
...but by others’ seeing {Live/Virtual}
Run Time: 5:46
Music: Aromale (My Beloved), Alphonse, Rights Required
recent projects & works in development
Firebrand Sway
Born of the collaboration between award-winning photographer and director, Saam Gabbay and Blue13’s Achinta S. McDaniel, the film shoots in March 2021, and is based on string theory and the helical solar system model, bringing together contemporary western movement with classical Indian Bharatanatyam and Kathak in an unconventional outdoor landscape.
Premieres in 2021.
Run time: 4 Minutes
Original Music: Elias by Saam Gabbay
Here’s to You
YouTube Premiere
Dec. 13, 2020
Choreographer Achinta S. McDaniel makes her directorial debut with "Here's to You," a contemporary Bollywood music video shot in December 2020, designed to bring joy and catharsis during the pandemic. Pair with other pieces to build a full virtual program or residency.
Run time: 4 Minutes
Music: Chhote Chhote Peg by Yo Yo Honey Singh.
Part Two premiere: Winter 2021
shaadi
An audience-immersive and site-specific work, "Shaadi" is Blue13's choose your own adventure style dance experience which premiered September 17 at Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles, with subsequent performance on September 18, both at 7:30 p.m. Spectators become participants in an Indian wedding ("Shaadi" in Hindi) and join the dancers frolicking through the grounds and 19th century mansions of this LA landmark.
Run time: 90 Minutes
Music: DJ Sandeep Kumar, live music by Alma Cielo, Enrique Lara, and Dhol Nation
Soliloquy
Part One: Live immersive dance work, funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Premieres May, 2024.
Part Two: A series of solos filmed in an urban edifice, exploring perception and reality, the self and the creation of self for the public, as superimposed by the pandemic. Dancers’ voices read poetry and spoken word interspersed with urban soundscapes and sparse instrumentation.
Run time: 20 Minutes Film, 90 Minutes Live
1947
Augmented by a soundscape rife with stories of survivors and their children, this piece investigates the transnational and transgenerational effects of the India-Pakistan partition which took place in the year 1947. Inspired by Blue13’s 2014 LA/Islam Project, Doris Duke Foundation site-specific residency at Grand Park Los Angeles, “Shine the Light.” This piece has been workshopped by McDaniel for the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance's LA Debut at The Wallis Annenberg in April 2022.
Run time: 15 Minutes
six Fifteen and Everything Senseless
Originally premiered on stage in 2005, this reimagined work explores the sudden death of a young woman and the immediate and long term consequences for her family, based on the events surrounding the tragic death of choreographer, Achinta S. McDaniel’s sister in 2003.
Run time: 30-60 Minutes.
Music: Pancha Nadai Pallavi, Shankar, Zakir Hussain
...90 minutes of the real deal: a rich evening of variegated works created by a single artist. And it was something to behold. The voice is female, it is strong, it is wildly theatrical, and it has dance bursting at every seam.
Debra Levine
Access, Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity (ABIDE)
Yes, we love our acronyms. Follow Blue13’s lead, or join us wherever you are on your journey to ABIDE.
Blue13 is woman-founded dance company, BIPOC organization with a diverse cast, board, and staff, committed to Artistic Director’s A.B.I.D.E. vision. When you work with us, you center BIPOC ARTISTS as the important voices and movers of our generation. Blue13’s repertory and residency activities foreground the Three E’s: Equity, Engagement, Enlightenment, increase your community’s cultural knowledge, and amplify complex diversity and representation, thereby increasing access to programming for those who do not often see or hear from artists of color at this level. Read: new butts in seats, new respect from your community.
Your partnership with Blue13 additionally amplifies the multifacetedness and excellence of Indian diasporic artistry, and amplifies an important advocacy voice field-wide. As we all know, it is time to go deeper than simple tokenism to check a box, and time to go deeper than a single performance to increase understanding and deepen access and belonging for all. Let’s break down the walls. Give us a call to discuss.
touring history
The contemporary Indian dance troupe stomped belled heels into the ground with vigor and darted between tree-lined platforms with abandon, like sprightly revelers on a midsummer’s eve...magical.
Educational Activities & Audience Engagement
Community engagement and education are woven deeply into the company’s vision and activities of nearly two decades. Experts in audience engagement with an emphasis on Bollywood, Indian, and contemporary western instruction and choreography, Blue13 artists uniquely engage communities through classes and workshops, audience “flash mobs,” and interactive public dance events with DJ’s and drumming, additionally providing lecture-demonstrations, talkbacks, and impactful roundtables and community discussions for audiences of all scales and locales.
masterclasses
Masterclasses, workshops and lec-dems in classical, folk, and Hindi film dance forms for a multitude of audiences, children through adults, beginners through professionals.
discussions
Deepen the audience’s experience with meaningful virtual or live talk backs, Blue13’s “talk the talk” roundtable with Artistic Director Achinta S. McDaniel and the entire company of dancers, with Q&A encouraging dialogue and curiosity.
flip the script
Blue13’s social media interview series comes to your city and enlivens your audience with a series of brief but exciting exchanges between key artists and figureheads in your community and the Artistic Director of Blue13, discussing topics relevant to your locale, our A.B.I.D.E. approach, and the upcoming engagement. All in a fun and accessible format.
upcoming engagements
works in progress los angeles
Informal works in progress showing and audience discussion and Playdate! This event will be featuring new work which will premiere at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on May 12, 2023, and some classic works that are being restaged.
$25 Suggested Donation
$10 Suggested Student Donation
No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Drop us a line if you need an accommodation.
las vegas residency
Blue13 performs two shows in Las Vegas this November, with excerpts of Bollywood and contemporary works including the critically acclaimed "Terpsichore in Ghungroos" and the World Premiere of "Pan Pastoral."
casa romantica
Join us at the beautiful and Historic Casa Romantica in San Clemente, California for a Site-Specific Experience overlooking the ocean.
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blue13 dance company
mission statement
to drive a substantive shift in the perception and practice of american dance through performance, outreach, and education
