Saturday, November 5. Lowell Lecture Hall. 8 p.m. Tickets to “Kalpanam: Classical Imaginations” are available at the Harvard Box Office.

This weekend, South Asian cultures—both old and new—will converge upon the Harvard stage in the production, “Kalpanam: Classical Imaginations.” The program’s dance performance pieces not only typify traditional Indian dance styles—dancers will perform lively Kuchuppudi folk dances and classic Bharathnatyam dance narratives about Hindu gods—but are also accented with bits of modern flair.

In fact, Co-Director Rohini Rau-Murthy ’08 choreographed a classical and emotionally involving dance drama specifically for the second half of the show, and in her creative process, Rau-Murthy temporally embodied the theme of the production: the fusion of old and new South Asian cultures. Co-Director Aditi Mallick ’08 echoes the sentiment and says that she was first drawn to direct the production because of the project’s fearlessness in putting “a new spotlight on the sometimes-forgotten classical dance.”

Mallick promises audiences that this revival of a once-annual Harvard performance will complexly offer the campus a valuable new “novelty” experience by giving students the chance to appreciate Asian relics of the past with modernized appeal. Mallick furthermore advises that audiences should leave their pre-conceived expectations at the door because, “Kalpanam offers something that hasn’t been done before.”

—Vinita M. Alexander