In late 2019, NCCAkron and Lionel Popkin (Los Angeles, CA) curated and invited Hari Krishnan (Middletown, CT / Toronto, ON), Meena Murugesan (Los Angeles, CA), Parijat Desai (New York, NY), Pramila Vasudevan (St. Paul, MN), and Sujata Goel (Harrisburg, PA) to join a space for diasporic dance artists of South Asian descent, discuss shared and divergent artistic processes, and disrupt representations of South Asian bodies. 

The cohort met virtually over the course of a year to create a support network among the artists and further conversations about how performance can frame individual expression and cultural transmission within the South Asian community. During these monthly exchanges, the cohort discussed the assumptions, expectations, and limitations of experimenting with contemporary movement while also being judged by the classical aesthetics of traditional Indian performance.