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Bandhana

Honoring the Past, Embracing the Future

Delve into the past and explore the future through the immediacy of the present.

Bandhana pays tribute to lineage, legacy, and continuity by featuring selected excerpts from the repertoire of BAA’s late Artistic Director and Cultural Medallion recipient, Santha Bhaskar, an iconic pioneer whose intercultural vision continues to shape the identity of BAA and Singapore’s arts landscape.

In dialogue with these seminal works, BAA premiers bhāvabandhana, an ambitious new work-in-progress, choreographed by her daughter Meenakshy Bhaskar, the current Artistic Director and Young Artist Award recipient. Using the evocative imagery of the saree as an umbilical cord, bhāvabandhana explores the enduring connection between the Indian diaspora and its cultural roots, almost like a symbolic thread weaving identity and continuity across generations, binding the past to the present even as we move into the future.

bhāvabandhana, meaning “emotional bonds” in Sanskrit, encapsulates its central theme: inheritance – not only of artistic traditions, but also of values, visions, and the evolving vocabulary of intercultural expression. Drawing deeply from the emotional and creative legacy she inherited, Meenakshy continues to carry forward Santha’s ethos while charting her own distinct artistic path. With bhāvabandhana, she hopes to transform tradition into something alive, resonant, and profoundly contemporary.

Promising to provide an exciting dimension to Bandhana is prolific multimedia artist Brian Gothong Tan who will infuse his signature cutting-edge style, creating paradoxical juxtapositions along the way.

Be prepared also to be broken out of your echo chambers as scriptwriter and dramaturg A Yagnya puts forth compelling perspectives of emotional entanglements that connect us to our families, communities, and shared cultural memory.