ABC a bollywood company at Shoonya Dance Centre

SANGAM

संगम

A village without water, and a child who belongs to no one.

Saturday7 Nov 2026 · 19:30

Sunday8 Nov 2026 · 15:00

Tickets · €20 Details

Madhubani-style painting: an all-female village on parched earth, a river running through it, and a boy standing on the green far bank.

Imagine a village that has never seen water. Not a river, not rain. Never.

And then a child arrives. A child who belongs to no one.

The village has to choose: keep him, or give him away. A queen who has to make that call. A wind that carries every plea nobody answers. And somewhere out there, a mother who is a river.

We’re not going to tell you what they choose. That’s why you come.

The Story

SANGAM takes its name from the place where two rivers meet.

Set in a village of women shaped by ritual, rhythm and inheritance, in a land that has never held water, SANGAM gives voice to a child who arrives belonging to no one, and to the community that must decide what to do with him.

Danced in Indian folk, Bollywood and semi-classical forms, the work holds drought against abundance, the human against the divine, and what a village keeps against what it is willing to give away.

It asks what a community owes to the one it does not recognise.

Please note: no children under 8.

DatesSaturday 7 November 2026 at 19:30
Sunday 8 November 2026 at 15:00
Add to calendar

VenueShoonya Theatre
Shoonya Dance Centre
Stapelplein 41, 9000 Gent

Tickets€20

Running time70 minutes plus a 20-minute interval

Travel10-minute walk from Gent-Dampoort station
Paid street parking nearby

BarThe bar opens 30 minutes before each performance. This is not entry to the auditorium.

The Company

SANGAM is danced by ABC a bollywood company, the Belgian Indian dance company founded and led by Swapnil Dagliya.

Photos © Stijn Dejonckheere & Joëlle Verbeeck

Why I made it

“Every dancer on that stage came to Indian dance from somewhere else. Different countries, different mother tongues, different reasons for walking into a studio in Ghent. None of them grew up with this. All of them chose it.

So a story about what a village does with someone who doesn’t fit, I had to make it with them. They are the village. They were also, once, the stranger.”

Swapnil Dagliya