Explore the rich themes of Karma Dance Diminished in my review. Experience the profound connection of dance and emotion.
“Dancing is food for the soul.” I grew up believing that — and Diminished, by Karma Dance, reminded me exactly why.
As soon as the first notes of the sitar intertwined with the jingling of ghungroos (bell-like anklets worn by Indian classical dancers) inside Northern Ballet’s Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre, I was back in India — in a white anarkali dress, a young girl tying her ghungroos before stepping onto stage.
It’s rare for a performance to feel both real and confronting at once — to be so personal yet so universal. Diminished does just that. While one half explores domestic violence and control, the companion piece, Isolation with my iPhone, reflects on Deaf experience, connection, and the vibrations of silence.
Fusion is everywhere these days, but some fusions feel forced — others, you simply devour. Zoobin Surty’s work is the latter. His choreography isn’t about novelty; it’s a conversation. The still postures of Bharatanatyam and the spins of Kathak meet the fluid elasticity of contemporary dance in a way that feels organic, not ornamental. It’s not something you see come alive every day.
All the performers — Jacob Gale, Amari Webb-Martin, Tishainy Constancia, Kasia Kuzka, and others — came together seamlessly, their collective energy leaving the audience in awe.
The live musicians, Luke Reddin-Williams and Anuraag Dhoundeyal, weren’t background accompaniment. They were living, breathing parts of the performance. Their dialogue with the dancers gave the movement its emotional heartbeat. The music’s rhythm reminded me of home, even as it made me fall in love with how Hindustani classical sound can carry a contemporary story. There was something profoundly grounding about hearing those tones in Leeds — the echo of home, the echo of heritage, reinvented in real time.
Diminished: Love, Power, Survival
In Diminished, the storytelling isn’t linear — it’s emotional. The movement shifts from softness to fracture, from surrender to resistance. It’s not just about domestic violence; it’s about how power inhabits the body. The dancers move as if caught in an invisible current, pulled and pushed by something larger than themselves.
One moment still stays with me — a woman moving in circles, faster and faster, as though trapped inside her own echo. The light tightens around her until only her breath remains visible. It’s uncomfortable and beautiful at once. That’s where the truth lives — in the tension between grace and breaking.
Isolation with my iPhone: The Movement of Silence
The second piece, Isolation with my iPhone, changes the air completely. Suddenly, we’re in a quieter, more introspective world. Zoobin’s recent journey into deafness shapes the work in ways that feel deeply personal yet completely relatable. The absence of sound isn’t empty — it hums. The dancers respond to vibration, light, and the subtle pulse of their devices.
It’s profoundly moving to watch them communicate through touch and timing, through stillness that feels full. It made me think about how we all reach for connection — through screens, through messages, through motion. The piece doesn’t romanticise isolation; it sits with it, honestly and gently.
Both works ask us to listen — not just with our ears, but with our bodies. Karma Dance exists in that rare space where art becomes activism, where movement becomes care. As a Mental Health & Trauma CIC, their mission isn’t abstract; it’s felt in every gesture. You can sense it in how the dancers move together, in their generosity, in the way they let the body speak when words fall short.
I left the theatre thinking about resilience — not as triumph, but as rhythm. The rhythm of getting up again, the rhythm of breath after silence, the rhythm of still being here!
Zoobin Surty has created something both intimate and expansive. His artistic language carries the precision of classical training, the urgency of contemporary expression, and the vulnerability of lived experience. It’s not performative vulnerability — it’s embodied truth.
Watching Diminished reminded me why I fell in love with dance in the first place. It reminded me that movement can hold memory, that sound can become sensation, that silence too can move. As someone who’s grown up between cultures and between rhythms, this performance felt like home — not a fixed place, but a feeling of belonging that lives in the body.
When the curtain fell, I didn’t feel like clapping right away. I just wanted to sit in that afterglow — to breathe it in, to let the last vibration settle. Because sometimes, the best art doesn’t end when the performance does. It lingers. It asks you to stay a little longer.And Diminished does exactly that — it stays!