Just Enough Madness - Payal Ramchandani
Dance City and GemArts present
Just Enough Madness - Payal Ramchandani
Date: Sat 22 Nov 2025
Time: 8pm
Venue: Dance City, Temple Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4BR
Tickets: £15 / £12 concessions
Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Age: 6+
What happens to a woman when the world calls it joy, but her body whispers something else? When the womb becomes a house - sometimes full, sometimes hollow-and the mind becomes its own battleground?
Just Enough Madness is a bold new dance-theatre uses the fluidity of the Indian classical dance style of Kuchipudi to explore the silences surrounding motherhood, miscarriage, and mental health. Through poetic text, ritual, and a striking live musical score, the piece navigates the thresholds of unbecoming, and becoming an ‘almost’ mother, where joy meets rupture, and identity flickers between who she was and who she’s expected to be.
Fireflies shimmer as fragments of the self.
She is tethered, by love, memory, by burden,
What once connected now confines.
Two heartbeats become one, one becomes none.
Lullabies welcome her, yet she moves through the house of motherhood as a guest, not its inhabitant.
Shifting between presence and absence, memory and loss, the performer moves alongside live musicians in a raw and haunting confrontation between inner grief and outer judgment. At the heart of it is a quiet, urgent question: when the strings are pulled, who truly holds them?
This is a story of what we carry, what we lose, and what we dare to reclaim.
This is Just Enough Madness.
Just Enough Madness is funded by Arts Council England, supported by Dance City, GemArts, The Lowry, Bradford Arts Centre, Pagrav Dance Company and produced by Moving Art Management.
Credits
Concept, Choreography and Performance: Payal Ramchandani
Percussion: Prathap Ramachandra
Flute: Vijay Venkat
Vocal: Ramya Tangirala
Music Composition: Bhagyalakshmi Guruvayur
Sectional Compositions Contributed by: Prathap Ramachandra, Vijay Venkat, and Ramya Tangirala
Rehearsal Director & Dramaturg: Debbie Fionn Barr
Initial Music Composition: Supriya Nagarajan, Duncan Chapman, Hari Bhaskar, Naomi Paraera, Praveen Prathapan, Prathap
Ramachandra
Technical Manager: Matthew Carnazza
Sound Engineer: Camilo Tirado
Set & Costume Designer: Sandhya Raman
Poetry: Payal Ramchandani
Voice-over: Dr. Agam Bhatnagar, Payal Ramchandani
Folk Song Resource: Shilpa Mudbi & Madhav Ajjampur
Producers: Moving Art Management
Reviews:
‘Ramchandani’s hold on the subject is reflected in the ease with which she translates this extremely complex and layered psychological state into dance, clearly the culmination of immense thought, dedication and hard work’- Resolution Reviewer
''...her ability to move between emotions keeps the viewers on the edge of their seats. I watched the dance three times and each time my understanding and admiration for the artist grew' - Sanjeevini Dutta, Pulse (on '..of love and lament')
‘’The conflicting experiences of gendered, cultural and psychological trauma are powerfully evoked in this narrative, which often pulls its character in contradictory societal, spiritual and theatrical directions’’- Sarah- Mace Dennis
| Date | Saturday 22nd November 2025 |
| Time | 8:00PM |
| Duration | 70mins |
| Cost | £15 / £12 concessions |
| Venue | Dance City |
| Address | Dance City, Temple Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4BR |
| Booking Details : https://www.dancecity.co.uk/booking/?event_id=287300/ 0191 2610505 | |
