Blue13 Dance Company

For the first time ever, Mutual Dance Theatre brings guests Blue13 Dance Company (Artistic Director, Achinta S. McDaniel) from Los Angeles to Cincinnati. Blue13 is rhythmic, charged, and moody, like nothing you’ve ever seen before and drawing often from Indian art forms.

Blue13 will perform “100 Seconds to Midnight,” a new contemporary dance work by Achinta S. McDaniel. The three-part performance draws inspiration from the infamous Doomsday Clock. Made famous by J. Robert Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and other concerned scientists, the clock measures how close the planet is to global catastrophe, signified by midnight. McDaniel turns the metaphor inward to examine the notion of doom as it pertains to South Asian communities. Repeatedly erased, but resilient, these communities often grapple with cyclical trauma and the unrelenting anxiety of impending loss. Through a triptych of movements, “100 Seconds to Midnight” confronts misogyny, unpacks the generational effects of colonization, and scrutinizes the expectations placed upon women regarding duty, tradition, and assimilation.

“My new work, 100 Seconds to Midnight traverses three different times, the 16th Century, the year 1947, and present day. It investigates threats to women in particular and goes a step further to interrogate our historic duty to country, to male figures like gods, fathers, and husbands.”

— Achinta S. McDaniel