Motherhood meets migration

Two Indian classical dance productions, Amma and Migration Of Form, bring stories of motherhood and migration to the stage in March.

- Srinidhi Ragavendran

Amma is a bharatanatyam production choreographed by senior company dancer Priyadarshini Nagarajah from Bhaskar's Arts Academy, a local institution for Indian performing arts. The work centres on the struggles women face on their journey to and during motherhood.

In Migration Of Form, Raka Maitra, founder of Chowk Productions, a local odissi dance company, blends classical odissi with elements of folk, pop and improvisation. She reflects on her own migration from New Delhi to Singapore some 20 years ago, proving that urban sensibilities can coexist with a traditional dance form.

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AMMA: RECLAIMING THE MATERNAL EXPERIENCE

After getting married in 2023, motherhood has been on Priyadarshini Nagarajah's mind.

"It doesn't begin just when you have a child. I think it begins the moment you believe you want to be a mother," she says.

It led the 31-year-old, who does not have children, to pull on this thread when conceptualising her first full-length production, turning to social media for inspiration.

She created Amma, which translates to "mother" in Tamil, foregrounding different stories of women in narratives about motherhood she has been seeing on social media.

"I was inspired by all of them, not just about the relationship between mother and child, but also about the struggles that women go through in order to attain motherhood," she says.