This Seattle Dance Festival Explores Family, Immigration

Feb 25, 2025

IMGE Dance, which blends contemporary genres with Indian dance traditions, will perform at Seattle International Dance Festival Winter Mini Fest, which runs Feb. 28-Mar. 9. (Jim Coleman)

Cyrus Khambatta didn’t intend for his dance festival to echo the headlines. But coming only three weeks after the new presidential administration began deporting Indians by the planeload, the personal themes of family and immigration at this year’s SIDF Winter Mini Fest couldn’t be more timely.

An outgrowth of Seattle International Dance Festival, this year’s Winter Mini Fest (Feb. 28-Mar. 9 at Seattle Central College’s Broadway Performance Hall and Erickson Theatre) features Seattle-based Khambatta Dance Company — a contemporary dance group dedicated to cultural exchange — joined by New York-based IMGE Dance (pronounced “image”), and will feature two different programs. Each company will perform its own work on the first weekend; on the second weekend, they will combine to premiere a new collaborative piece developed during the intervening week.

IMGE Dance first performed at SIDF in 2019, and Khambatta says they have become an SIDF audience favorite, most recently performing “Therapy’s Expensive” in 2023.

“Cyrus and I have also shared heritage to India, which has always been a place of mutual connection because we both push the boundaries between tradition and contemporary work,” said Ishita Mili, founder and director of IMGE Dance.

The daughter of a Bengali immigrant who arrived “from Kolkata in 1989 with $20 in his pocket and big dreams,” Mili blends contemporary genres with the Indian dance traditions of bharatanatyam and mayurbhanj chhau. Khambatta’s American Midwestern mother and Parsi father shared a commitment to racial equality and social activism but soon discovered deep cultural differences.

“I think in their domestic culture that created a lot of tension for them. So they divorced pretty quickly,” said Khambatta. “I’m the product of the aspirations and hopes of two cultures coming together in these people.”

He began work on “Family Tide,” which will premiere at the festival, after his father’s death in 2020. While acknowledging trauma, Khambatta says the piece exploring family dynamics also draws lighthearted energy from the music of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” and contains a lot of humor.

Khambatta Dance Company, a contemporary dance group dedicated to cultural exchange, will perform at Seattle International Dance Festival Winter Mini Fest, which runs Feb. 28-Mar. 9. (Adam Lu)

“We have a lot in common in this country. It’s just we don’t necessarily see that. So I was thinking about what the meaning of family is and also what it means in the American context,” said Khambatta.

IMGE will present Mili’s work “Three Sisters.”

“’Three Sisters’ is a deeply personal piece that follows the evolving relationship between an eldest, middle and youngest sister as they grow together and apart in responsibility, independence and purpose. As an eldest sister myself, I bring the harsh realities and pressure of being the first to forge the way,” said Mili. “Each of the cast are genuinely a chosen family with parallel dynamics to those in the show. Each of us brings our own family’s history of immigration, from Poland to India. Each of our families had to work incredibly hard to make a place in this country, and we inherit those unfair dynamics and carry them through all our relationships. I feel myself fighting to pave the way, so my little brother doesn’t have to.”

During the week, hosted by Seattle- and Los Angeles-based Rangeela Dance Company, Mili will be teaching classes open to dancers of all levels and backgrounds, in addition to choreographing the second program with Khambatta. The two have already started developing ideas.

“We’ve been talking a lot about perspective, and how something can look strange or foreign from one point of view but then normal and ordinary from another. Our companies have really different kinds of artists that come from a variety of perspectives, so I think we’re going to discover a lot of new dynamics between symbiosis and juxtaposition,” said Mili.

This emphasis on perspectives is central to the festival’s intercultural purpose.

“I think our role is to bring people together. There’s all of these different paths, but these dynamic, dramatic, intense histories also have a commonality. Our stories, they’re all immigration stories. And like families, we all are really stuck with each other,” said Khambatta.