Support South Asian arts programming! Aangan 2023

Our Story

Barkha Patel and Shachi Phene are friends, collaborators, and co-founders of Aangan. As professional dancers in New York City, both were acquainted with the hustle of being South Asian artists and found themselves craving stronger community, better platforms and resources for their work, and more knowledgeable conversation around South Asian art.

After months of conversations during car and subway journeys, Aangan: South Asian Center for Art & Thought was born!

Aangan’s mission is to serve South Asian art, artists, and aesthetes of all backgrounds. We seek to build community by fostering learning and dialogue across art forms and creating spaces for artists to convene, collaborate, present, and reflect on their work.

In April 2022 we launched a three-part series that re-imagines how we gather around our art.

Event 1:

The first event was called “Re-Imagining: Traditional Narratives.” This was a lecture and discussion by Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai, Asst. Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College, on her work Many Mahabharatas. Dr. Pillai introduced the history and numerous versions of the classic epic and discussed how artists could collaborate with academics when using traditional narratives as source materials for their work. You can learn more about the event and watch it back here: Re-Imagining: Traditional Narratives

Event 2:

The second event was called “Re-Imagining: The Dance-Making Process.” This work-in-progress dance salon was an intentionally-curated forum for discussion around six artists’ work. We had 60 audience members in attendance who offered the dance-makers constructive and critical feedback to further develop each artist's ideas and pieces. Attendees included artists, curators, and students from across the South Asian art space, including contemporary, classical, and commercial dance, as well as curious art enthusiasts. Aangan also received its first donation of $500 at the event.

Event 3:

Our third event, “Re-Imagining: Our Welcome to the Arts World,” will be an opportunity for kids to attend immersive workshops led by South Asian artists of various disciplines and dive into hands-on projects in a fun and interactive way. While we received a great response to the curation for this event, we had to postpone it to 2023 due to low registrations.

We recognize that we did not have the necessary resources to market this event as early and robustly as needed for it to come to fruition. We hope that with your support and additional planning, we can host it in Spring 2023! Workshop descriptions: Re-Imagining: Our Welcome to the Arts World

Call to Action:

Aangan is currently run entirely on a volunteer basis. Since its inauguration in January, we, the founders, have contributed a cumulative 700 hours, while our volunteer staff (2 team members + additional event helpers) have donated approximately 75 hours.

Aangan is seeking to raise $10,000 to:

Testimonials and Responses to Programming

I had an absolutely wonderful time collaborating with Aangan for the Re-Imagining: Traditional Narratives lecture in May of 2022. The work Aangan is doing to create spaces for academics and artists to come together and share their expertise is immensely vital and important. I am honored to have played a role in one of Aangan’s first events and I cannot wait to see what comes next. - Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai | Asst. Professor of Religion, Kalamazoo College | Speaker for Event #1

It was a praiseworthy effort and the first of its kind, if I am not mistaken. The attendees were thoroughly engaged and the feedback to practitioners must have been immeasurably valuable. I hope Barkha and Shachi continue with this kind of work and enable individual dancers to prove their seriousness as well as receive feedback on their work. It was a thought provoking event that needs to be developed further and should receive the NYC dance community's enthusiastic welcome. - Maya Kulkarni | Choreographer & Scholar | Attended Event #2

Woof. You all really did the thing. You all saw a need, and you're filling it. That is admirable on many counts. Our NYC South Asian dance community has been splintered in all kinds of directions, having us miss out on the benefits of having intergenerational conversations about the work we are making. Not only that, but we have separated ourselves from each other in unobvious and misdirected ways. Holding each other up and accountable is a sign of love, and you all made the space for that. We desperately needed a place to offer kind feedback and reflection to the INCREDIBLE work the artists so openly shared. Thank you for facilitating. Counting down to the next one. - Brinda Guha | Artist & Choreographer| Attended Event #2

I was just checking out the 5 Nov event you are hosting at Aangan. It looks absolutely fantastic. The curation is superb. I hope you will have many such events in the future. - Mihir D. | Parent

Funding for Aangan up until this moment has been donated entirely by the founders through their work as independent working artists. We hope to continue building our organization and expanding its programming as a community, with the support of all of you! We hope you will consider making a donation today.

Thank you,

Barkha Patel & Shachi Phene

Aangan Co-Founders

https://www.aangannyc.org/