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thursday

Arlington-based choreographer Asha Vattikuti’s most recent work appears on the Kennedy Center’s Millennium stage thanks to the Local Dance Commissioning Project, but the performance itself is much more cosmopolitan than the name of the program that financed the work would suggest. Vattikuti has studied Kathak—an ancient North Indian dance often used in telling the tales of deities and royals—since childhood and is an expert in the form. Vattikitu’s work Gul-E-Bakawali is adapted from a work by Urdu poet Pandit Daya Shankar Naseem and tells the story of Prince Taj-Ul-Muluk and the fairy Princess Bakawali through movement. Although Kathak is Vattikuti’s main medium, she brings in Laurel Victoria Gray, artistic director of Silk Road Dance Company, to add Persian and Egyptian elements—which give the locally grown production an even wider scope and more worldy feel. The performance begins at 6 p.m. at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage, 2700 F St. NW. Free. (202) 467-4600. (Sarah Godfrey)