As many of you may know, it has nearly been a month since I staged “Displaced”, a
production that conveys the global refugee crisis through the use of dance and storytelling.

The idea for “Displaced” came from a school project called the Personal Project. This year-long endeavor required students to create a product on a topic that they were passionate about. When I was introduced to the project, I knew I wanted to do something with dance. I have been learning an Indian classical dance style called Bharatanatyam for over 10 years, and I wanted use dance in combination with some of my favorite aspects of study: international relations and language. The question was: how?

After some thinking, I realized that I could actually use dance as a language to convey a global issue that strongly cared about: the refugee crisis. When I  first began brainstorming, I was aiming to make a video, in which I would spread awareness through dance. However, as part of my research process, I decided to volunteer with an organization called GirlForward, that mentors high school aged refugee girls in Austin. My summer with GirlForward was a truly amazing experience. I made friends with girls from Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and El Salvador, and was inspired to do something more. With this, my idea for a simple homemade video spiraled into a large scale production. Overtime, I was able to fully formulate and establish the idea for “Displaced”, which was staged as a fundraiser for GirlForward. The videos of the production can be found in my blog.