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PETTEE : storybox

Deepak Unnikrishnan & Karthika Naïr

In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi for the presentation of PETTEE : storybox devised by Deepak Unnikrishnan.

Ideas of living and leaving, of sharing real and surreal stories weaved together through movement, music and flight, the performance PETTEE is about marrying these ideas and conversations together.
Dancers and fabricated landscape lead the audience into an immersive world of movement where bodies unbend, lunge and soar to unseal and unpack years of youth, where multiple futures, each magical, seemed possible.
“Pettee” in different languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi… has multiple meanings, but one that everyone recognizes instantly: container. “Pettee” can also shift shape to become box, briefcase, casket, coffin, in all the forms, colors or materials that the human brain and hands have made possible. Similar to “petit” which can also mean insignificant, young but also humble, unknown, mean, poor… petty.
It is a word that is our spirit animal for all of us with rootlessness, with displacement, in our blood. All of us who inherited shoots instead of roots, feet instead of home.
Containers we carry. Containers that contain us. Containers that make us dream of flight.

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About the artist

Deepak Unnikrishnan

In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi for the presentation of PETTEE : storybox devised by Deepak Unnikrishnan.

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Karthika Naïr

In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi for the presentation of PETTEE : storybox devised by Deepak Unnikrishnan.

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About the partner

Exterior view of the Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi

The Arts Center - NYU Abu Dhabi

In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi for the presentation of 3 shows for the season 2024-2025 and presents as well a Brown x Soulier program of the Trisha Brown Dance Company.

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