UCLA MFA Upstarts Series 2026: Nazarbazi

Nazarbazi asks: Is desire dictated by space? Grounded in the concept of nazar—a gaze so potent that being seen becomes conflated with being touched—the performance reimagines urbanity as an affective and spiritual system that shapes lived experience. Through interactivity, materiality, and spatial reconfiguration, the work explores how bodies become politicized by place.

Transforming the theater into a four-cornered street intersection, Nazarbazi stages collisions between binaries—public/private, divine/trash, virtual/corporeal, destiny/failure—that cannot hold queer, diasporic, and minoritarian experiences. Drawing on superstition, digging, and multicultural dance practices, the work invites audiences to inhabit space alongside the performers, opening toward noisy intimacy, discovery, and collective presence.

Presented by the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, UCLA, as a part of the MFA Upstarts Series. Supported by the Asian Cultural Council.

Friday, May 1 at 7:30PM &

Saturday, May 2 at 7:30PM

Kaufman Theater, UCLA

Note: This is an immersive performance with limited capacity (50 audience members). Admission is free, so we kindly ask you to RSVP mindfully and only reserve a spot if you plan to attend, helping us hold space for others. If you have any access needs please reach out to us at [email protected].

About the choreographer: Moodzi (Abhijeet Mudgerikar) is a performance artist and scholar whose work unfolds at the intersection of social dance activism, gender experimentation, cultural geography, and interactive systems. Their practice investigates how bodies become politicized through place, and how embodied practices negotiate and reshape social hierarchies, urbanity, and transnational flows.

Their research is informed by their undergraduate training in architecture and sustained engagement with queer Black social dances in India, through which they draw connections among space, migration, and cross-cultural interaction. They are currently pursuing an MFA in Choreographic Inquiry at UCLA to study the etymology and cultural circulation of nazar—translated as gaze, perception, or the “evil eye”—from its Arabic origins to its regional transformations across South Asia. This inquiry informs their capstone performance, which traces their migration from Ahmedabad to Los Angeles and critiques binaries that fail to account for queer minoritarian experiences.

Please consider a donation to help fund our event and support our student creators. A donation, in any amount, will be greatly appreciated and help make this show a reality.

https://gofund.me/dab5a48e

UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance acknowledges the Tongva peoples as the traditional land caretakers of (Los Angeles basin, So. Channel Islands) and are grateful to have the opportunity to work for the (indigenous peoples) in this place. As a land grant institution, we pay our respect o (Ancestors), (Elders), and (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging."

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Host or Publisher UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance