PARIJAT DESAI, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Parijat Desai (she / they) is an award-winning dance artist/educator based on unceded Munsee Lenape lands / New York, NY and on Arapaho, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Ute lands / Aurora, CO. Parijat holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology with honors from Stanford University (Fieldwork: Kathiawadi farmers’ raas dance companies; rural Gujarat, India). She holds an MFA in Choreography from UCLA.

Captivated by dance as an interdisciplinary medium, Parijat creates hybrid performance with Parijata Performance Projects, drawing on contemporary dance, Gujarati circle dance (garba / raas) and ritual, Indian classical dance (bharata natyam / kuchipudi), martial art, and experimental theater.

Critics have called Parijat’s work “a seamless blend of new and old” (New York Times) and proof “that dance can be a healing art” (LA Times).

As a performance maker, she is concerned with the interplay between our emotional landscape, political realities that plague us, and the natural world. Through blending form and her lived activism, Parijat expresses a hybrid South Asian American identity, defies notions of cultural purity, and stands against xenophobia and casteism.

Parijat’s choreographic influences include various American modern and postmodernist practices, and the Tamalpa LifeArt Process®, developed by iconic choreographer Anna Halprin and therapist/dancer Daria Halprin.

O Ghostly Ancestor is Parijat’s current project, and has received the 2024-25 MAP Fund, a 2025 NY State Council on the Arts Choreography Commission, Green Fund Grant from City Parks Fdn (NYC). In 2025, Parijat received space to develop and perform early showings of O Ghostly Ancestor at Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance. She began working on OGA as a Visiting Artist at Bennington College in 2023, and begin creating ensemble material through a Main Street Theater and Dance / Roosevelt Island residency (2024). She will be continuing work on O Ghostly Ancestor in Colorado in 2026 with production support from Control Group Productions and funding from Denver’s SCFD.

OGA is part of a suite of works Parijat has been developing since 2016 called How Do I Become WE. The works in the HDIBW suite incorporate participation and engagement with nature. Also employing hybrid choreographic and musical languages, ritual sourced from the Navratri rituals of Gujarat, plus a dose of trickster energy, these works explore how we might reconnect with the natural world, release hurt, and activate our collective energies.

Other honors include a Fulbright Nehru Scholar / Artist Award and Lester Horton Performance Award (LA), and Parijat has been Artist-in-Residence in the Gibney Dance-in-Process Residency (2022), BRIC Arts Center (Performance Residency, 2021), Center for Performance Research (2018), Movement Research (2016–2017), Tribeca Performing Arts Center (2009–2011), Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts (2009).

In 2023, Parijat choreographed Deepa Purohit’s intriguing off-Broadway play Elyria, creating contemporary and folk dance interludes, and producing Gujarati music, for the family drama.

As an educator, Parijat facilitates participatory-dance experiences through Dance In The Round, marshaling her ancestral circle-dance traditions, garba and raas, for community engagement, activation, and well-being. She has offered intergenerational and age-specific classes in studios, schools, community centers, and on Zoom; spontaneous participation at outdoor festivals, galas, parties, and protests. Through her somatic practice and circle dance, she supports reconnection with our bodies, expressing ourselves creatively, visioning, team-building, and experiencing the self as part of a larger whole.

RESUME (click to see resume)

Artist Statement (video 5 min)