Barkha Dance Company Premieres icchā, a New Solo Kathak Work, at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center This September
Barkha Dance Company presents the world premiere of icchā, a new interdisciplinary solo kathak work by choreographer and Artistic Director Barkha Patel, at BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers Street in Tribeca. Performances take place September 25 and 26, 2026, presented through a residency at BMCC as part of the CUNY Dance Initiative.
Rooted in Hindu philosophy, icchā — meaning desire — takes as its starting point the concept of vasanas: unfulfilled longings that survive the death of the physical body and are passed down through bloodlines as living, present desire. The work follows barkha, a daughter whose life has diverged sharply from her lineage, who is visited in a dream by her maternal ancestors. They choose her to express, release, and fulfill their desires — born from survival, loss, intimacy, violence, and the denial of dance and embodied selfhood. Conceived as a somatic shraadh, a form of ancestral reverence, icchā confronts the body as a site of ancestral history. Formally, the work weaves together original music, film, set design, and Gujarati folk form garba alongside classical kathak to create a portrait of what Patel calls “unnamed matriarchs” breathing again through the living body.
Barkha Patel is a touring kathak artist, choreographer, educator, and Princess Grace Dance Award recipient based in New York City. Her work has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Little Island, 92Y, Chelsea Factory, Dance Theatre Harlem, the Joyce Theatre, and Lincoln Center: Out of Doors, among others. She is a 2023 Juried Bessie Award recipient and a former Harlem Stage WaterWorks Fellow. In 2025 she completed a six-city India tour in collaboration with Canadian-based kathak artist Tanveer Alam. She currently holds the Special Projects Grant from the Princess Grace Foundation, through which icchā is being developed.
With icchā, Patel brings one of the most decorated careers in contemporary South Asian dance in New York to one of its most personal and formally ambitious works yet — a reckoning with inheritance that asks what in our bodies might be someone else’s unfinished reaching.
Event: icchā — barkha dance co.
Performances: September 25 – 26, 2026
Venue: BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007
Tickets: tickets.tribecapac.org
Presented by: CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI), in residency at BMCC Tribeca PAC
Artist website: barkhadance.com
Instagram: @barkha_dance
CDI info: cuny.edu/danceinitiative
Support: Major support from The Howard Gilman Foundation, George S. Kaufman Charitable Foundation, and The Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Additional support from the SHS Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Harkness Foundation for Dance. CDI is spearheaded by The Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College. Additional artist support from the Princess Grace Foundation Special Projects Grant.
SEO Title Tag: Barkha Dance Co. Premieres icchā at BMCC Tribeca PAC NYC Sept 2026
Meta Description: Barkha Dance Company premieres icchā, a new interdisciplinary solo kathak work by Barkha Patel, at BMCC Tribeca PAC on September 25–26, 2026, via CUNY Dance Initiative.
Keywords: Barkha Patel, iccha desire, barkha dance company, kathak New York, BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, CUNY Dance Initiative, contemporary kathak, South Asian dance NYC, Princess Grace Award dance, world premiere dance 2026
