"Pipaashaa: Extreme Thirst" is the first piece of a trilogy created by Ananya Dance Theatre exploring issues of environmental injustice. Working collaboratively with leaders in the environmental justice movement, Cecilia Martinez and Shalini Gupta of the Center for Earth, Energy and Democracy at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, the dancers and artistic collaborators in this piece have researched issues of arsenic poisoning, industrial dumping, and other phenomena that have resulted from environmental racism and disregard for the integral relationship of human and natural resources. Pipaashaa has evolved from our responses to this research and from the understanding that communities affected by environmental destruction still try to resist injustice and labor to create hope and life energy.