Presenting the world premiere of Reclaiming the Divine Feminine on March 1-2, 2024 at New York Live Arts, created and performed by Rachna Nivas, renowned kathak dance artist and Co-Artistic Director of Leela Dance Collective. This work takes audiences into the dark and mystical realm of tantra, hailing independent feminine power as the universe’s primordial energy. With live music, special lighting and prop design, Nivas embodies Kali – Goddess of Time and Death who epitomizes the paradoxes of feminine wholeness and illuminates a woman’s path to reclaiming her limitlessness. This performance promises to haunt, provoke, and enchant.

Tickets start at $32 for students and $42 for regular-priced tickets and are available online at https://newyorklivearts.org/event/independent-works-reclaiming-the-divine-feminine/.

According to Nivas, the tantric wisdom goddesses (mahavidyas) are some of the most radical yet invisible iconography of South Asian civilization. She says, “Tantra, which was birthed in tribal India, has been highly denigrated and stereotyped in the West to be about sex and freakish practices. It’s tragic how little folks know about this powerful paradigm, even in India itself due to its unorthodox departure from patriarchal structures and what we consider ‘wild’ and ‘horrific’ imagery of a woman.”