Rogue Gestures is a bharatanatyam, experimental movement, and live music production that explores the labor and lived experiences of South Asian immigrant women in the US. Inspired by the oral histories of Indian nurses who arrived as a result of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, choreographer Nadhi Thekkek, and her collaborators explore the heavy and enduring work of immigrant women and the worlds they traverse between. Nava Dance Theatre will present performance excerpts and interactive discussions exploring how our contemporary immigrant histories can be a source for dancemaking, creative inquiry, and artistic exploration. 

Founded in 2012, Nava Dance Theatre is a bharatanatyam dance company which uses the south Indian dance form to navigate place, identity, and politics through the lens of lived experience. Led by Artistic Director, Dr. Nadhi Thekkek, Nava's work has delved into unheard refugee voices, the #metoo movement, and other social issues. Through our programs, we visiblize stories on the margins, connect our contemporary histories to today, and create intersections of culturally specific art, diaspora, and storytelling that are as layered as our collective experiences. Through new dance works, residency and commissioning programs, workshops, festivals, and cross-genre collaborations, Nava Dance Theatre examines the various ways that dance can support and reflect the communities we live in. Nava Dance Theatre is based in San Francisco, the unceded territory of the Ramaytush-speaking Ohlone people.

This event is presented in conjunction with The Materiality of Resistance, a two-day symposium exploring the artistic deployment of materials as tools to imagine, promote, and enact resistance to the status quo in American art and visual culture. The performance is funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series at CCA, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.