A close-up of an Indian woman, wearing a red sleeveless shirt with her arms outstretched in a dance-like pose.
A Belvoir St Theatre Production

Nayika: A Dancing Girl

Co-Created and Co-Directed by
Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell

A breathtaking solo performance melding storytelling, live music and Bharatanatyam dance, Nayika is story as survival. It is dance as resistance. It is a new type of heroine: one we have yet to imagine.

A long shot of an Indian woman wearing traditional garb, standing in front of a blue background.

★★★★ “Belvoir St Theatre’s Nayika A Dancing Girl is that rare thing: a truly multidisciplinary performance where the edges between music, dance, and theatre meld in service of storytelling.”

Sydney Morning Herald

ABOUT THE SHOW

A virtuosic solo performance mixing storytelling, live music, and Bharatanatyam dance

A chance remark by an old friend in Sydney takes a woman back to her teenage years: living alone, by the sea in Chennai. She’s preparing for her debut dance recital, her Arangetram. She’s falling in love too! But when young love begins to unravel, the memories flooding back take on a power of their own…

This is a play about the profound ways indelible trauma shapes you, and the hope and defiance of taking back control.

The team behind the production, started working on Nayika during the harshest lockdowns in our lifetime. This means many women globally were locked down with their perpetrators, often without reprieve, for months on end. Violence against women is a shadow pandemic. There is a lot at stake when survivors speak their truth, and women do this at great danger to themselves.

The work assists audiences to try and understand how we are conditioned by culture and how, perhaps, we can in turn condition culture to strive for safer and more equitable worlds. A famous Bharatanatyam dancer, Mavin Khoo, once spoke of the Varnam as ‘an arc of hope’.

Told in first person, with direct engagement with audiences, Nayika is our collective effort toward an arc of hope: one that honours the ordinary extraordinary.

The silhouette of a woman dancing with musicians playing behind her in theatrical stage lighting.

REVIEWS

★★★★ “Satchell and Nagarajan’s script is moving, humorous and sensitive in its exploration of heartbreak and trauma.” - TimeOut

★★★★★ “Vaishnavi Suryaprakash is the unequivocal main attraction, with unassailable magnetism, steadfast energy and focus.” - Suzy Goes See

“Artful, cinematic and entrancing storytelling.” - Theatre Thoughts

“The fruits of their direction are best seen through Suryaprakash and her utterly spellbinding performance.” - State of The Art

“A story of trauma, hope and regaining control, Nayika: A Dancing Girl is soul-stirring dance theatre.” - The Conversation

“Nayika A Dancing Girl tells a story of recovery and triumph, through an confluence of western story telling conventions and the Indian classical Bharatanatyam dance.” - Disrupting Stages

A musician playing a stringed instrument behind a net-like background in theatrical stage lighting.
Musicians playing behind a net-like background in theatrical stage lighting.
A wide shot of a woman standing in yellow theatrical lighting. She is wearing a red sleeveless shirt and shiny blue pants.
A mid-shot of an Indian woman, wearing a red sleeveless shirt, standing in front of a net-like background.
A wide shot of a woman sitting on the floor, wearing a red sleeveless shirt and shiny blue pants. There are musicians playing behind her, and red lanterns on the ceiling.
A mid-shot of an Indian woman, wearing a red sleeveless shirt, striking a pose with her hands in the air.
The silhouette of a woman dancing with musicians playing behind her in theatrical stage lighting.
A mid-shot of an Indian woman, wearing a red sleeveless shirt. There are musicians playing behind her in theatrical stage lighting.

ABOUT BELVOIR ST THEATRE

"At Belvoir we gather the best theatre artists we can find, emerging and established, to realise an annual season of works – new Australian plays, Indigenous works, reimagined classics and new international writing. 

Audiences remember many landmark productions including The Drover’s Wife, Angels in America, Brothers Wreck, The Glass Menagerie, Neighbourhood Watch, The Wild Duck, The Diary of a Madman, Death of a Salesman, Hamlet, Cloudstreet, The Book of Everything, Keating!, The Exile Trilogy, Exit the King, The Sapphires, The Rover, Faith Healer, The Sugar House, The Dance of Death and many more. 

Today, under Artistic Director Eamon Flack and Executive Director Aaron Beach, Belvoir tours nationally and internationally, and continues to create its own brand of rough magic for new generations of audiences."

belvoir.com.au

Photography by Brett Boardman from 2024 Belvoir St Theatre production.

Ready to Tour

If you are interested in touring get in contact!

Arts on Tour
02 8038 1880
touring@artsontour.com.au