BIBI RUKIYA'S RECKLESS DAUGHTER
Amina Khayyam Dance Company
About BIBI RUKIYA'S RECKLESS DAUGHTER
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A new Kathak dance-theatre from choreographer Amina Khayyam explores the conditioned patriarchy enforced by women, binding generations in a cycle of control.
Set in contemporary inner-city marginalised migrant communities, and loosely based on Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, the story follows Bibi Rukiya, a widow who confines her three daughters in response to societal pressure to protect her family’s reputation and secure their marriages. Her daughters react in different ways - one of them, driven by her own aspirations, challenges her mother’s motives and role as a woman.
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4 StarsPowerful, poignant kathak dance…sharply stylized. dramatically alert, thematically rich and ultimately moving
The List, (Donald Hutera) Yerma, 2015.
4 StarsPowerful and captivating
The Scotsman, Bird, 2023.
About the artist
A critically acclaimed, award-winning touring company, and nominated for the National Dance Awards 2022, the Amina Khayyam Dance Company (AKDC) makes touring work using the South Asian dance Kathak as the core narrative. It works in collaboration with those who are culturally least engaged, economically challenged and societally disenfranchised - with a focus on the marginalised female voice, not just from the mainstream but from within their own community - a place from where its founder and AD, the critically acclaimed dancer and choreographer, Amina Khayyam comes. The Company adds theatre, live art, and technology, striving to make relevant, engaging work through a process of collaboration, participation, exploration, and opportunities for creative and cultural expression- shaping a process that empowers women creatively as stakeholders. The work’s dramaturgy is explored through the sub-culture context of this process, and made to transpose to the mainstream audience, so that the targeted sector’s perspective, aspiration and voice is heard widely.
AKDC treats Kathak as a contemporary form thereby transcends any ‘classical’ or ‘modern’ precepts to its approach. It uses Kathak vocabulary to transpose it on a modern body dialogue, in the process subverting its many facets to carve out an emotion performed to a contemporary narrative. It believes the dance form is evolving with progressions demanded by the contemporary zeitgeist, in the same way it did so from the demands of the Mughals, the last time it took a major step forward. At its heart, AKDC emphasises Kathak as a storytelling form – an approach that has allowed it to use its uniquely placed and equipped vocabulary to tell new and urgent stories of global importance.
Based in the South East (Slough), the Company, since its formation in 2013 has made 15 pieces of work, performed over 175 shows in over 40 venues (incl outdoors) & digital platforms, nationally and internationally.
AKDC is supported as an NPO by Arts Council England.
Cast and creatives
Choreography | Amina Khayyam
Music | John Marc Gowans
Costume | Keith Khan and Abeda Begum
Video Projection Design | Matt Powell
Lighting Design | Andy Finn and Ryan Phillips
Associate Creative Producer | Jane Chan
Story Adaptation/Dramaturgy | Hardial S Rai
Dancers | Abirami Eswar, Sua Tsubokura Aguiriano and Amina Khayyam
Musicians | Debasish Mukherjee, Sohini Alam and Natalie Rozario
Credits
Arts Council England | Supported by Cockayne Grants for the Arts, a donor advised fund held at London Community Foundation