Defining a Pose is an immersive evening of performance and demonstration centred on the underground dance form of Waacking, led by performer, artist, and actor Mekhola Bose, accompanied by Dalia Chowdhury and Solanki Rahaman, within the First Floor Gallery of TRI’s heritage building. 

The evening moves through Waacking’s roots, a dance style born in the underground punking scene of 1970s Los Angeles, shaped by Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQIA+ communities who transformed the disco floor into a space of joyful defiance and radical self-expression. Through sharp arm movements, dramatic poses, and an intimate dialogue with music, Waacking comes to TRI not as a performance to be watched, but as a history to be felt. 

Structured as a fluid sequence of staged vignettes and guided demonstrations, Defining a Pose moves between choreography and conversation, drawing participants into the work through call-and-response exercises that extend the movement vocabulary of Waacking into the room. Held in dialogue with ADDA: The Third Space, TRI’s winter season exhibition by St+art India Foundation, the evening offers every visitor, whether they step forward to move or choose to witness, an encounter with a dance tradition that has always insisted on the right to be seen.