by Jasmine Yadav
19 June, Friday | 6:30 pm | Shreeram Lagoo Rang Avkash, Pune
Deviant Octopus
You are invited to witness the emergence of a shape-shifting creature. A body that is part human, part animal, part monster. This creature is at times crooked, bent, curled inside. At times the creature is spread open, large and spacious.
“Deviant Octopus” looks at how female experience of one’s own body and desire finds manifestations through movement. In the choreography, desire comes alive and a sensorial/animal body takes over. The dancer surrenders herself to a raw urgency – questioning decency, control, censorship and respectability. The dancer does this through a movement language discovered through clothing – which involves slipping into and out of clothes. Getting stuck. Wearing and removing shame. Encountering fear. Shedding it. Hiding some parts and revealing some. In this hide and seek the desire is to reveal something raw, unashamed and alive.
The work seeks to stretch the imagination of what a body can become. As the dancer devotes herself to desire and appetite, the psyche begins to crack open. What is usually hidden- the terrible, the frightening and shameful…slips out and becomes visible.
A world is constructed where the monstrous and the tender can co-exist in one body. The creature that emerges here is unstable, excessive. She exists in service of deviance, which is another way of saying she exists only as she stretches the limits and capacity of her heart and spirit.
Content Notes
Partial Nudity On-Stage
Credits
Choreography and Performance:
Sound Design:
Artistic Collaboration:
Costume Styling:
Light Design:
Dramaturgical Inputs:
Creative Contribution:
Supported by:
Community Support and Rehearsal Space:
Residency Support:
Jasmine Yadav (she/her)
Surbhi Mittal (Pale Blue Dotter) (she/her)
Mandeep Raikhy (he/him)
Srishti Aneja (she/her)
Bharavi (he/him)
Saido Darwin, Lim How Ngean
Akanksha Kumari, Denis Barwa, Parinay Mehra, Manju Sharma, Meghna Bharadwaj
Prakriti Foundation
Khuli Khirkee
Collectif FAIR-E/CCNRB and Dance Nucleus
Director’s Note
Deviant Octopus is my first solo choreography. In this work, I discovered a body which was dangerous. I use the word dangerous because this is the first time I felt the full force of my being. I discovered a body untrained even by language. The dance tells a story of restraint, courage, desire and transformation. I realised that my body wasn’t able to neatly fit into any category, standard or label. I wondered what it would take to devote myself to this truth, to a constant becoming and unbecoming? Instead of forcing myself into a narrative, shape, aesthetic or way of being, I decided to explode, strip and shed all of it. The dance embraces shape shifting. It embraces the silences that come with accepting your whole self.
In the dance, I invite the parts of me that are sexual, sensual, hungry, angry, grieving, falling, shaking, leaking and making a mess. The dance also invites a surrendering and deep trust. I spread and let myself be seen. I am not so interested in what the audiences think, but much more what they feel when they watch this work.
Director’s Bio
Jasmine is a dance practitioner based in New Delhi, India. She started her dance training in Bharatnatyam. She has also trained in Yoga, Shaolin Kung fu, Belly dance and Contemporary dance techniques. In 2020, she completed her master’s in Performance Practice (Dance). She also teaches yoga and is in training to be a dance movement therapist. Jasmine received the Prakriti Excellence in Contemporary Dance Award 2024 for her work “Deviant Octopus”. She premiered this full-length solo work in March 2026 in Bangalore. She has performed at the Tanzplan Dance Education Biennale at Kampnagel 2020 in Hamburg, Serendipity Arts Festival Goa 2022, 2024 & 2025, Camping Asia Taipei 2023 and Da:ns LAB Singapore 2024 among other platforms. Additionally, Jasmine is an active member of Khuli Khirkee, an independent artist community-run space in Delhi.