When the Sun Rises Program
Letter from the Directors
Dear Audience,
The title of this program comes from something we kept returning to throughout this process: the idea that dawn has to be waited for, and that the night has to be endured until it arrives. There is a moment just before sunrise when the sky holds both darkness and light at once, and that threshold is where this work lives. It is where we have been living too.
Our collaboration began with just the two of us. We found a fast friendship and an easy trust, and we knew early on that we wanted to do something larger together, something that would bring our communities into genuine connection. When Navatman offered BAILA Society a residency in their studio, we imagined that proximity was enough to start. We pictured our communities warming to each other the way neighbors do, slowly and without pressure. For a long time, that was exactly what it looked like. We waited politely in the hallways for each other's classes to finish, rarely exchanging more than a hello.
Then, at last year's production, Roots of Resilience, we made one piece together. We called it The Seed. It was an attempt to find the common ancestor, the thread running underneath both of our traditions before history pulled them apart, and to follow that thread toward something new. It felt like a beginning.
And it was. But our beginning was not easy. We started this work during a political moment that was making the world feel smaller and more frightened, and something of that atmosphere found its way into the studio with us. Matrix emerged from that time, a piece about how innocent curiosity, when fear is introduced, curdles into suspicion and magnifies what separates us.
This year, a full-length production built almost entirely from fusion work seemed audacious even to us. We decided to take the chance all the way.
What followed was hard. We discovered that our communities carry different burdens and face different demands on their time, their bodies, and their finances. The art forms we love have been shaped by different relationships to commercialization, to recognition, to who gets to be the center of the room. Bringing them back together required more patience than we expected and more grace than we sometimes had. At the hardest point, we realized we could do this better alone. Our separate traditions have long found their own ways to survive, to thrive, to fill a room.
The world outside was giving us every reason to stop. There are forces, economic, political, and social, that seem almost designed to keep people like us too exhausted and too afraid to find each other. Each day required a renewed decision to hold on to why we wanted to do this in the first place. We chose this anyway.
To our cast: you chose it too, and that means everything to us. This was never the easy option. You made real sacrifices to be here, sacrifices of time and money and energy that this work does not automatically repay. You believed anyway. You showed up with discipline and generosity. Your willingness to reach toward each other and solve things together is the real work we set out to do. It has grown into something larger than this production, and it will live beyond this stage.
To our families, friends, and ancestors who have held us through all of it: you are the earth beneath our feet, the ground that holds the roots through the long night. We reach for the light because of you.
What you will witness tonight may seem like it is in its final form. For us, it is not finished. We will keep doing the harder thing. We will keep trying to understand each other, not by becoming the same, but by learning to recognize what is genuinely different between us and letting that recognition transform us all.
With love and gratitude,
Ahtoy & Sahi
Directors & Co-Producers
The title of this program comes from something we kept returning to throughout this process: the idea that dawn has to be waited for, and that the night has to be endured until it arrives. There is a moment just before sunrise when the sky holds both darkness and light at once, and that threshold is where this work lives. It is where we have been living too.
Our collaboration began with just the two of us. We found a fast friendship and an easy trust, and we knew early on that we wanted to do something larger together, something that would bring our communities into genuine connection. When Navatman offered BAILA Society a residency in their studio, we imagined that proximity was enough to start. We pictured our communities warming to each other the way neighbors do, slowly and without pressure. For a long time, that was exactly what it looked like. We waited politely in the hallways for each other's classes to finish, rarely exchanging more than a hello.
Then, at last year's production, Roots of Resilience, we made one piece together. We called it The Seed. It was an attempt to find the common ancestor, the thread running underneath both of our traditions before history pulled them apart, and to follow that thread toward something new. It felt like a beginning.
And it was. But our beginning was not easy. We started this work during a political moment that was making the world feel smaller and more frightened, and something of that atmosphere found its way into the studio with us. Matrix emerged from that time, a piece about how innocent curiosity, when fear is introduced, curdles into suspicion and magnifies what separates us.
This year, a full-length production built almost entirely from fusion work seemed audacious even to us. We decided to take the chance all the way.
What followed was hard. We discovered that our communities carry different burdens and face different demands on their time, their bodies, and their finances. The art forms we love have been shaped by different relationships to commercialization, to recognition, to who gets to be the center of the room. Bringing them back together required more patience than we expected and more grace than we sometimes had. At the hardest point, we realized we could do this better alone. Our separate traditions have long found their own ways to survive, to thrive, to fill a room.
The world outside was giving us every reason to stop. There are forces, economic, political, and social, that seem almost designed to keep people like us too exhausted and too afraid to find each other. Each day required a renewed decision to hold on to why we wanted to do this in the first place. We chose this anyway.
To our cast: you chose it too, and that means everything to us. This was never the easy option. You made real sacrifices to be here, sacrifices of time and money and energy that this work does not automatically repay. You believed anyway. You showed up with discipline and generosity. Your willingness to reach toward each other and solve things together is the real work we set out to do. It has grown into something larger than this production, and it will live beyond this stage.
To our families, friends, and ancestors who have held us through all of it: you are the earth beneath our feet, the ground that holds the roots through the long night. We reach for the light because of you.
What you will witness tonight may seem like it is in its final form. For us, it is not finished. We will keep doing the harder thing. We will keep trying to understand each other, not by becoming the same, but by learning to recognize what is genuinely different between us and letting that recognition transform us all.
With love and gratitude,
Ahtoy & Sahi
Directors & Co-Producers
Program
Invocation
Madhya Laya
Rumba, Son y Mambo
Shyamalambike
Pianissimo
Indian Salsa
Krishna/Elegua
Matrix
Taken
I Woke Up With A Dream
Shiva/Chango
Matriarchy
Madhya Laya
Rumba, Son y Mambo
Shyamalambike
Pianissimo
Indian Salsa
Krishna/Elegua
Matrix
Taken
I Woke Up With A Dream
Shiva/Chango
Matriarchy
Production
CREATIVE CIRCLE
Sahasra Sambamoorthi, Ahtoy Juliana, Edwin Tolentino, Jessica Ho, Isabel Freiberger, Brandon Grant, Cielo Gonzalez.
MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS
Andrea Chavarro, Katherine Ocampo, Daniela Serna, Ayamey Bell Torriente, Juan Pulido, Radhika Krishnaraj, Shraman Sen, Sanjay Natesan, Ucchal Banerjee, Manuel Marquez (Compositional Consultant), Sahasra Sambamoorthi (Musical Director)
STAGE MANAGER
Stephanie Matthews
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Mark Fortunato
SPECIAL THANKS
Sridhar Shanmugam (Co-Founder Navatman), Aadtihya Prem, Aashutosh Mukerji, Alysa Chen, Andrew Yu, Ankita Khanna, Annam Hussaini, Hana Martinez, Laila Zubair, Lavanya Jagirdhar, Moneesha Kumar, Nila Natarajan, Pavan Kumar Ananth, Prachi Ghera, Guru Prashant Shah (Kathak Dept. Head Navatman), Sahana Gupta, Sahana Kumar, Wenly Liparanon, and All Our Volunteers
Sahasra Sambamoorthi, Ahtoy Juliana, Edwin Tolentino, Jessica Ho, Isabel Freiberger, Brandon Grant, Cielo Gonzalez.
MUSICIANS AND COMPOSERS
Andrea Chavarro, Katherine Ocampo, Daniela Serna, Ayamey Bell Torriente, Juan Pulido, Radhika Krishnaraj, Shraman Sen, Sanjay Natesan, Ucchal Banerjee, Manuel Marquez (Compositional Consultant), Sahasra Sambamoorthi (Musical Director)
STAGE MANAGER
Stephanie Matthews
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Mark Fortunato
SPECIAL THANKS
Sridhar Shanmugam (Co-Founder Navatman), Aadtihya Prem, Aashutosh Mukerji, Alysa Chen, Andrew Yu, Ankita Khanna, Annam Hussaini, Hana Martinez, Laila Zubair, Lavanya Jagirdhar, Moneesha Kumar, Nila Natarajan, Pavan Kumar Ananth, Prachi Ghera, Guru Prashant Shah (Kathak Dept. Head Navatman), Sahana Gupta, Sahana Kumar, Wenly Liparanon, and All Our Volunteers
Cast
Navatman Cast:
Aadithya Prem, Anvitaa Sekhsaria, Janani Bhagat, Laila Zubair, Lekha Wood, Maya Kaur Gill, Navya Prasad, Nitya Govind, Pavan Kumar Ananth, Pratibha Ayengar, Rewa Verma, Ruchi Tandon, Saara Wood, Samantha Manoharan, Sanjana Moudgalya, Sisira Veerapaneni, Suhani Prasad
BAILA Society Cast:
Alexa Ramos Seda, Alicia Raquel Morales, Alla Bronskaya, Alzahraa (Zizi) Ahmed, Andrea Hernandez, Carmel Bendit-Shtull, Christianna Pepingco, Cristina Timotei, Claire Watanabe, Claudia Sol Hinojosa, Devorah Shubowitz, Dina Goodger, Elvis Collado, Erick Martinez Jr, Eugene Serban, Gabriel Alatorre, Haley Collins, Hana Martinez, Isabella Lee, Jazzlyn Diaz, Jenny Lin, Jillian Pacheco, Kay Powers, Laura Eguia, Lea Leventhal, Lisa Mammano, Linda Yu, Lynn Ortega-Smith, Natasha M. Alexis, Neyda Colón-DiMaria, Nicole Arriaga-Bell, Ronniel Munoz Betances, Ryan Bisumber, Sam Marcillo-Gomez, Samhita Krishnan, Sara Kunkel, Seanley Feliz, Shrestha Vatsala, Veronica Aranov, Veronica Polanco, Yasmine Rodriguez
Aadithya Prem, Anvitaa Sekhsaria, Janani Bhagat, Laila Zubair, Lekha Wood, Maya Kaur Gill, Navya Prasad, Nitya Govind, Pavan Kumar Ananth, Pratibha Ayengar, Rewa Verma, Ruchi Tandon, Saara Wood, Samantha Manoharan, Sanjana Moudgalya, Sisira Veerapaneni, Suhani Prasad
BAILA Society Cast:
Alexa Ramos Seda, Alicia Raquel Morales, Alla Bronskaya, Alzahraa (Zizi) Ahmed, Andrea Hernandez, Carmel Bendit-Shtull, Christianna Pepingco, Cristina Timotei, Claire Watanabe, Claudia Sol Hinojosa, Devorah Shubowitz, Dina Goodger, Elvis Collado, Erick Martinez Jr, Eugene Serban, Gabriel Alatorre, Haley Collins, Hana Martinez, Isabella Lee, Jazzlyn Diaz, Jenny Lin, Jillian Pacheco, Kay Powers, Laura Eguia, Lea Leventhal, Lisa Mammano, Linda Yu, Lynn Ortega-Smith, Natasha M. Alexis, Neyda Colón-DiMaria, Nicole Arriaga-Bell, Ronniel Munoz Betances, Ryan Bisumber, Sam Marcillo-Gomez, Samhita Krishnan, Sara Kunkel, Seanley Feliz, Shrestha Vatsala, Veronica Aranov, Veronica Polanco, Yasmine Rodriguez
