Performing Culture: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Dance through History, Society and Embodiment

This course is presented by Shreya Nagarajan Singh Arts Development Consultancy. It is an online interactive lecture series from 12th July to 21st September 2025 (3-month online course with classes on alternative weekends each month | Time - 6:30 – 9:00 AM IST)

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This course envisions an investigation of connections between the universe that dancers

create through rhythm, body, and skill, as well as the society, knowledge systems, and larger

global concerns.  It creates ways of understanding the embodied archive of cultural memory

and nostalgia, political expression, and social identity. The aim is to create a practice and

theory interface for dancers and dance scholars and provide them with tools to understand

and reshape the world around them, reflecting and refracting histories and power

structures.

The course invites practitioners/researchers on Indian dance with specializations in various

disciplinary backgrounds—be it dance history (of a specific form of Indian classical dance,

anthropology, performance studies, history, or sociology. The curriculum is relevant in

todays dance ecology and will be interactive and generative. It will open space for

interdisciplinary dialogues that situate dance as an art form and a dynamic site of academic

and praxis-based inquiry and critique. To create a scholastic and contemporary discourse, it

will introduce essential texts to help the course participants strengthen their appreciation

and knowledge of multiple aesthetics, histories and pedagogies of Indian classical dances at

the intersections of caste, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, regionalism, and national

identity formation. The meaning of classicism will be interrogated through critical readings,

archival engagement, and bodily practice. 

The participants will be encouraged to think about the entanglement of the artistic, social

and cultural in shaping local and global dance environments. Their readings will prepare

them for asking what it means to embody "classical" forms in contemporary times; What

hierarchies, exclusions, erasures, or possibilities are produced through these embodiments;

And what is dance in todays time and space. The course hopes to situate dance within its multiple functions and polysemic meanings: ritual, resistance, memory, performance,

pedagogy, protest, and identity.

Authors and Speakers:

Dr. Urmimala Sarkar - Dance scholar, choreographer, and anthropologist. Former Professor and Dean at JNU, New Delhi. Her research focuses on identity, body, and cultural practices. Author and editor of several key books in dance studies.

Dr. Pallabi Chakravorty - Kathak dancer, choreographer, and visual anthropologist. Professor at Swarthmore College, USA. Founder of Courtyard Dancers. Author of Bells of Change and This is How We Dance Now, with expertise in Indian dance, media, and feminist studies.

Dr. Yashoda Thakore - Performer of Kuchipudi and Devadasi Nrityam. Chair of Kuchipudi at Aria University. Author of Kaivalya and co-editor of Nritta Ratnavali. Works to revive Kalavantalu traditions and community engagement through dance.