dr. kaustavi sarkar
Kaustavi Sarkar is a professional Odissi soloist, performing and touring the eastern Indian traditional art form for the past two decades. In a recent review of a February 2025 performance in New Delhi, India, critic Ashish Mohan Khokar wrote that in her dance “one saw clarity of poses and emotional range.” Sarkar investigates virtuosity in dance-theater as fostered in traditional Indian aesthetics through her research on choreography and creative processes. She has commissioned works from female choreographers Ananya Chatterjea, Rohini Dandavate, Aruna Mohanty, and Maya Kulkarni to research and write about the creative process in South Asian aesthetics. Sarkar has published journal-length inquiries in International Journal of Screendance, Choreographic Practices, Journal on Dance Education, Performance Research etc. Her book Dance Technology and Social Justice: Individual and Collective Emancipation Through Embodied Techniques (McFarland, 2024) has been featured in Dance Studies Association’s 2024-2025 Reading Seminars. She is working on another monograph, Shaping S Curves: Choreographic Process in Odissi, which is currently in contract with University of North Carolina Press. Sarkar is a leader in her field and serves as a Regional Director for the American College Dance Association (ACDA) mid-Atlantic region. Her research institute, “Dance and Community,” brings artists, educators, and scholars together towards systemic change and has been recognized by ACDA as an integrative medium for diasporic artists. She is the founding member as well as business manager for the journal South Asian Dance Intersections. She is also the founder of the Odissi Odyssey conference held annually at UNC Charlotte, which is the largest gathering of Odissi artists outside India. Sarkar holds a Ph.D. in Dance Studies (focus on Digital Humanities) from The Ohio State University (2017). She also holds an M.S. in Economics with Minor in Finance, Texas A&M University (2006).
abstract
Pedagogy of Focus: Diaspora in Motion
Research Talk
What connections can there be across movement and language? How can dance address linguistic divides? This research project centers the idiom of Abhinaya, translated as the medium that carries a message across, in dance. It is a dramaturgical method that is practiced across an array of traditional dances of South Asian descent. By connecting movement and language, the expressive dancing provides an opportunity to convey literary, dramatic, philosophical, as well as choreographic meaning. The project investigates how the craft of Abhinaya has the potential of operating not just across linguistic divides but also instill deeper philosophical import through a spectrum of materialist and phenomenological registers. The project argues how movement across sensate and cognitive areas of operation create a pedagogy of focus that activate diasporic bonding.