HARMATTAN THEATER OCT. 2, 2009

Harmattan Theater performed Mannahatta Yatra at Christopher Street Pier on October 2, 2009, Mahatma Gandhi's birthday.  The performance consisted of a group of performers walking from Christopher Street Pier south past Pier 40 to Tribeca, ending the performance with a ritual at the Port Authority Wind Tunnel.

Sea Salt, Hudson River Water, jute rope and the single stringed Indian peasant instrument the Ekhtara were the props in a performance of ecstatic walking.  The performance emerged out of a need to respond to the celebrations of the Dutch East India Company and the celebrations of Dutch heritage that invoked the Dutch East India Company and the insignia of the VOC, the corporation's acronym.  For New Yorkers hailing from former colonies of the VOC including NYC, the uncritical celebrations of windmills and dutch clogs without the full accounting of the Dutch East India Company's colonial violence inflicted upon the Mannhatans of Mannahatta, demanded a symbolic transition from September 2009, a month of Dutch reclamations of Manhattan, towards a period of cultural healing, symbolised by the Gandhi march.