Jin Won at La MaMa's Drive East Festival Jin Won The South Korean dancer performing Kathak at La MaMa as part of the Drive East festival. On Thursday evening at Drive East, the festival of South Asian music and dance running at La MaMa, an exuberant South Korean dancer took center stage. Jin Won, that dancer and a resident of India for 15 years, specializes in Kathak, a form of classical Indian dance. But as a skilled tabla player, she's also as much a musician as a dancer. While that sense of rhythm would serve all dance, it's especially helpful in Kathak, which is greatly enhanced by the exchange of percussive beats and moving feet. Here, live music has a transformative effect. For her Kathak solo show, featuring accompaniment by Taalim Percussion, Ms. Won presented three works beginning with an invocation paying tribute to Ganesh (the remover of obstacles) and Shiva (the lord of dance). It was a mix of the traditional and the unconventional; as Ms. Won explored tales of the Hindu gods, Vincent Smith accompanied her on a wave drum, which lent the dance an eerie, underwater sensibility. The following work was wholly traditional; here Ms. Won took on another side of Kathak dance with an abhinaya, or expressive piece, in which she portrayed a woman full of emotions - from joy to anguish and back again - as she awaited her lover's return. Ms. Won possesses less dramatic depth than other Kathak dancers do, but there were moments to remember, as when she caught a tear from her eye: spinning it around her fingers like silk on a spool before cupping it in her palms, she tossed it into the air to show that her tears were no different from rain. The treasure was "Pradhanica," a premiere named for "head" or "leader." In this case, the ruler was Ms. Won for her mastery over rhythm. Percussion drove this work: along with Ms. Won's fleet-footed choreography, Pandit Divyang Vakil composed the music, which illuminated various Indian rhythms in enticingly offbeat ways: Mr. Smith was joined by the tabla player Michael Lukshis, while Kaumil Shah played the African djembe. This was also where Ms. Won's musicality transformed her dancing into something primal: while maintaining an elegant upright carriage, she burst into multiple rotations, sometimes involving briskly curving arms, which stopped on a dime. The tension between wildness and control was a hallmark of Ms. Won in "Pradhanica," and in the end she battled it out with her musicians, willing them to play faster and faster until her body became one vehement vibration. What fun.