Indra’s Web

Funding Sought!

Indra’s Web is a new touring dance performance that combines aerial silks, dance, and storytelling to explore ancestry and connectivity. Using knitted aerial silks, ancestral stories are woven directly into the fabric of the show, bringing these narratives to life in a unique, tangible form.

Indra’s Web is a metaphorical concept found in Buddhist and Hindu texts, symbolising the interconnectedness of all things. This cosmic web, extending infinitely in all directions, reminds us of our shared experiences: that we’re all connected!

The project is inspired by my own journey of reconnection following an unexpected reunion with my missing family in 2022, when I was reunited my mother’s father, her siblings, and 100 cousins—who all happened to be living in the same neighbourhood as me, Chapeltown in Leeds. This experience revealed our Nigerian heritage and connected us to a family tree spanning Nigeria, Brazil, and the UK.

In this Research and Development phase, Indra’s Web will combine storytelling, acting, aerial dance, and knitting, with plans to evolve through residencies and collaboration with a writer. We aim to craft a 60-minute touring show by 2025, inviting audiences to reflect on heritage, ancestry, and the universal web that connects us all!

Research and Development Objectives:

• Residency to test, develop, and write the script for a cast of one performer and an older actor.
• Writing retreat and research in Portugal, including the African Lisbon tour to explore connections between the slave trade, my family tree, and Brazil, with the aim of creating the show’s script.
• Research into knitting stories of Black elders in the UK and abroad.
• Workshops with knitters, inviting them to contribute a knitted square each, reflecting their cultural heritage, which will be used in the storytelling on tour.
• Building an online platform to document the creative process.

If you are interested in funding this project, please get in touch here