Srishti Dances of India will collaborate with The Spilling Ink Project to present "Samudra: Churning Oceans."

Indian dance often is revered for its ornate costumes, highly stylized steps and routines steeped in rich religious references.

But for Srishti Dances of India, an Odissi/Indian classical dance company founded in 1997 in Pittsburgh, the art form is more than just a museum piece.

"We're moving away from the exotic aspect of it to thinking of it more as a rich vocabulary for contemporary expression," says artistic director Sreyashi Dey.

Her troupe of six dancers, now based in Ann Arbor, Mich., will challenge audiences to find the here and now in the dance style's history with "Samudra: Churning Oceans," which has its world premiere this weekend at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater as part of the East Liberty venue's 2011-12 "KST Presents" season.

'Samudra: Churning Oceans'

Where: Kelly-Strayhorn Theater, East Liberty.

When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday

Tickets: $25 in advance, $30 at the door, $20 for residents of 15206 and $15 for students and artists. 1-800-838-3006 or http://www.kelly-strayhorn.org.

Information: A pre-show mixer will be held at 7 p.m. both evenings. A post-show talk with artists will follow Saturday's performance.

Regulars at the Kelly-Strayhorn may remember Srishti Dances of India from its performance in fall 2010. This time, the group will collaborate with The Spilling Ink Project, a Washington, D.C-based classical Indian dance company founded in 2007 by Carnegie Mellon University graduate Vijay Palaparty. Next weekend, they'll perform together in Washington, D.C., and hope to tour the piece more widely in the future, Ms. Dey says.

In "Samudra," dancers tap historical Indian dance forms to present a choreographic collection of personal narratives, highlighted with multimedia projections.

"You can think of the whole thing as a journey where we explore our own personal journeys as dancers, as artists, as human beings [and] also as people who have at some point ... migrated from one country to another," says Ms. Dey, who moved to the United States from India about 25 years ago.

Costuming will be more contemporary than what is typical for classical Indian dance.

"We want to focus more on the ideas and on the journey and the personal identity and issues like that rather than leading the audience to focus more on the heavy cultural aspects in terms of the very traditional jewelry and heavy makeup," she says.

Music for the production was recorded in India and in Washington, D.C., and weaves together the traditional and more modern aspects of the different types of Indian dance audiences will see.

"The objective of the performance isn't to compare and contrast the two styles," Ms. Dey says. "It's focusing more on the synergies and the combined expressions of these ideas."

Audiences do not need to be familiar with any of the styles to connect with the program.

"What we are trying to do is reach a larger audience," says Nalini Prakash, co-artistic director of The Spilling Ink Project. "We try to go just beyond the storytelling aspects" of gods and goddesses.

"I would say the main thing would be to not think of the classical dance forms from only a cultural perspective, to not think of them as these exotic dance forms with pretty costumes," Ms. Dey says. "That's not what we would like people to come away with. We would like people to think of it as a medium of expression."

First published on February 24, 2012 at 12:00 am

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Srishti Dances of India reflects on personal stories in 'Samudra'