Choreographer

Touring _onion 2025

Choreographing, dancing and touring with VierXVier “peeling my purple onion” with 12 performances around the Netherlands with Ciro M. Goudsmit from 2024-2025.

_hourglass at Soul session extended, Oslo

In _hourglass, Amisha Kumra and Gloria Lucia Isabella navigate their movement within the male-dominated house dance cultures.
Reflecting on their journeys as students of predominantly male mentors, they delve into questions of identity, strength, and authenticity based on the research_peeling my purple onion by Amisha Kumra.

Through movement, they seek to uncover what it means to express their perspective on stage.

This piece invites the audience into their exploration, as they play with rhythms from kathak and roots of house dance.

Choreographer: Amisha Kumra
Movers/Researchers: Amisha Kumra and Gloria Lucia Isabella
Production: Soul Session Oslo

_peeling my purple onion

Guest choreographer at Theater aan de Rijn Arnhem, Netherlands for VierXVier choreographer with own creation “peeling my purple onion”.

In “_peeling my purple onion” together with researcher Ciro M. Goudsmit, Kumra explores the navigation between taught and ancestral movement, 2024 .

They communicate with each other through chakra frequencies and the rhythms of kathak, hiphop and house. Join them on a journey where the awareness from the breathing techniques pranayama is the driving force between live music and dance.”

Concept, researcher, choreographer: Amisha Kumra
Musician and researcher: Ciro Goudsmit
Production: Theater aan de Rijn

Production: Lieve van Boer
https://www.theateraanderijn.nl/productie/seizoensopening-vier-x-vier-premiere/

_first layers

In _first layers, Amisha Kumra transforms her 2023-2024 journey through Brazil, India, Paris, the Netherlands, Germany, and Oslo into a 40-minute sensory experience. Inviting the audience to remove their shoes and taste cleansing fennel seeds, she leads them into a dark, smoke-filled room, scattered with rice, incense, and hanging Indian fabrics, while low frequencies pulse through the space. Using a live loop station and microphone, Kumra layers soundscapes from her travels with kathak bols and hip-hop beats, merging movement and memory. Through this immersive setting, first layers blurs the line between performer and audience, creating a shared journey of cultural memory and connection.

Concept, researcher, choreographer: Amisha Kumra

Music: Amisha Kumra

Production: Lieve de Boer

Year: 2024

In _first layers, Amisha Kumra transforms her 2023-2024 journey through Brazil, India, Paris, the Netherlands, Germany, and Oslo into a 40-minute sensory experience. Inviting the audience to remove their shoes and taste cleansing fennel seeds, she leads them into a dark, smoke-filled room, scattered with rice, incense, and hanging Indian fabrics, while low frequencies pulse through the space. Using a live loop station and microphone, Kumra layers soundscapes from her travels with kathak bols and hip-hop beats, merging movement and memory. Through this immersive setting, first layers blurs the line between performer and audience, creating a shared journey of cultural memory and connection.

Concept, researcher, choreographer: Amisha Kumra
Music: Amisha Kumra
Production: Lieve de Boer
Year: 2024

“_fr3quency”

Performed and choreographed “fr3quency”, a trio based on artistic practice in Oslo, Norway.
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In “Fr3quency” we communicate with a Hertz scale between 128-972 which is awakening specific chakras in our body.
The awakening of the chakras creates a conversation between the body and frequencies which echoes into a groove in the bodies mass. Three hiphop heads explore the echoes of an internal vibration and conversation with the hertz frequency while relating to echoes of another mass in time and space”.
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Concept, researcher, choreographer: Amisha Kumra
Movers: Amisha Kumra and MoseyMozz
Music: CruisingNino and Ciro Goudsmit
Production: Soul session Oslo and Rommen scene
Year: 2024

Artist Residency in Cologne

2024: Residency Barnes Crossing Cologne to develop artistic practice “peeling my purple onion”.

Orkla awards 2024

Orkla Awards 2024 choreographed by Amisha Kumra:

Dancers: Amisha Kumra, Dhruva Patil, Alankrita Kaur, + ShowdeVida.

2022: Adios, National Ballet and Opera of Amsterdam

Choreographed and performed in National opera and ballet of Amsterdam "Adios is about the ambiguity of alienation. Departing from personal accounts of feeling alienated from groups, what the makers found was that this feeling of unbelonging was not clearly negative or positive. Some had experienced it as a form of empowerment.

For them, falling outside the logic of social dynamics had revealed just how absurd it would be to comply with them. The critical distance of alienation had offered them a way out of these constrictions.
Others, on the other hand, felt that it had been lonely and stated that psychological effects of being an outsider had left them wanting more than anything to fit the mold and belong.In the opera, we follow an individual who is faced with the internal struggle between these two sentiments.

Finding himself alienated from a group, he embarks on a reaction on whether to find a way to adapt or see the experience as liberating.
When, finally, he decides to try and join the group he is confronted with the necessity to leave something behind in the process of belonging."

“Meg til Deg” Solo newcomer winner, Germany

Meg til deg is a solo created in 2020 and performed in spring 2023 in the Barnes Crossing Soloduo competition.
This solo is based on a choreographic algorithm focusing on specific body parts, hands, feet, expressions and katha (story telling).
The dramaturgy is built together with the music and with the movement simply expresses me to you on its rawness and purity of the moment.
The aim is not to portray different styles of dance but rather share what comes in the moment with the algorithm.

Decolonisation of the mind

Concept and research: Amisha Kumra
Movers and researchers: Mélie Favre, Izabella Maduro, Kelly Sheila Bigirindavyi, Hamiro Lee Joannes, Isabel Nguyen Dao, René Twizeye Mungu Bizimana, Tim Brügger,Musicians: Shana Raine Brown, Leonardo LucibelliVideographer and edit: Charlie Smeets
Powered by: Das research funding "Decolonizing the mind to me means to deconstruct thoughts, preferences and values by addressing, understanding, confronting, re-experiencing patterns in all types of scenarios.
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In this process we researched how moments from our childhood are still present in our day to day decision making and how that reflects our decisions while moving.
Together with movers with different cultural background, heritage, social environments, ages, genders and languages we planted a small seed in how this movement research can be developed further.
We were busy with recalling memories regarding communication in relations from our childhood.

How did our parents talk to us? How did they compare us or punish us if we did something wrong? What music did we listen to as children? How did these influences create certain realities and colonial ways of thinking?

The goal was not to create a healing therapy, but rather find a new engine to a movement vocabulary which comes from within as a part of the _peeling my purple onion research.
We had a beautiful process together and it was captured by Charlie Smeets, parts of it has been edited into a short documentary."

“Meg til Deg” Solo newcomer winner, Germany

Solo choreographed by Amisha Kumra.
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My grandfather born in 1934 fled from todays Pakistan to todays India during the partition in 1947. The British colonizers created war between hindus and muslims to show their power and this resulted in a huge war dividing the country.
This solo is based on the stories of my grandfather who was only 13 years old. The performance embodies the train travel and the frustration of leaving a whole life behind to arrive in a space while a soundscape is created in the background.
The expression plays with the awkardness of sitting on a train by interacting with the audience, activating the sensorial through smells of incent, live music from kathak bells in the dark and movement vocabulary of kathak and contemporary.
Creation and premiere: February 2022 Amsterdam
Music: Original audio, created live on stage with loop station and with old recordings of OPT
Perfomance and choreography: Amisha Kumra

Mohe raang do laal kathak solo

Mohe raang do laal expresses the love between Krishna and Radha in hinduism. Laal is the nickname of Krishna and also means the color red in hindi , which signifies love.
The mudras and movements expresses Radhas desire singing “color/paint me red” reffering to the love from Krishna while being executed to advanced traditional kathak foorwork with bells.
It also has a reference to the hindu color festival holi which celebrates the beginning of spring season and is a sign of flowers blossiming and the nature coming to life after the winter cold.
Creation: December 2017-January 2018
Premiere: February 2018 Black box theater, Oslo
Perfomance and choreography: Amisha Kumra
Music: Mohe raang do laal- Pandit Birju Maharaj and Sherpa Goshal

Oslo fashion week and Bollywood festival

2014-2017: Choreographed opening of Oslo fashion week and the Bollywood festival opening.

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