Socially Distant, Musically Intimate is a live network music and dance performance by musicians and a dancer in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and New York. The work emerged from the needs of socially-distant musicians at New York University, Abu Dhabi to find ways of making music during the pandemic. Having never performed physically together, they started developing a novel style of music, Hindustabic Electronica, that blends styles from their individual musical practices: Hindustani, Arabic, and electronic music. The performances consist of fully improvised music accompanied by beautiful dance movement sequences and live video manipulations of the Zoom stream generated by the performers. The group has been performing at NYUAD Social Distancing Music Festival weekly since its inception in the beginning of April 2020.
Kiori Kawai (Dance and video manipulation); Nandini Roy Choudury and Kaustuv Ganguli (Vocals); Jonathan Shannon (Oud, Rubab, and Cello); Leonid Kuzmenko (Wind Controller); Andy Eisenberg (Percussion); Tom Beyer (Live electronics); Carlos Guedes (Live electronics and sequencing).