Dance Project FRAGMENTS
Post-performance Academic Discussion: “Embodied Departures in Kathak: Diaspora, Identity, and the Performative Body”
A postdoctoral research-performance project, “fragments”, investigates diasporic identity through evolving Kathak practices. It draws on ethnographic fieldwork in the UK, Australia, and South Africa, as part of the project “Shifting Identities and Changing Artistic Representations: Transformations of the Kathak Dance Tradition in South Asia and Diasporic Spaces”, and is further informed by earlier research (2017–2020) among Kathak communities in central northern India and the performer’s own experience as a Kathak practitioner.
Using personal narratives, neo-classical Kathak vocabulary, and contemporary performance aesthetics, the dance functions as an embodied archive, exploring notions of belonging, cultural memory, hybridity, rupture, and resistance. It opens space for dialogue on:
- Embodied departures and trajectories: reinterpretation and authority over tradition
- Embodied memory and the diasporic body: cultural knowledge and somatic memory
- Liminality and cultural hybridity: performance in “in-between” spaces
- Transforming the performative body: migration, hybrid identity, and intercultural exchange
- The role of practice-as-research: generating knowledge through artistic practice
Moderated by: Assoc. Prof. Dr Deimantas Valančiūnas
Panellists: Prof. (HP) Dr Audrius Beinorius, Prof. Urmimala Munsi Sarkar, Prof. Dr Victor de Munck, Dr Debanjali Biswas, Assoc. Prof. Dr Sarah Morelli
The performance and discussion are part of a broader postdoctoral project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT, Agreement No S-PD-24-100).
📖 Read more here:
https://www.fsf.vu.lt/azijos-ir-transkulturini-studij-institutas/instituto-ivykiai-2/6878-dance-project-fragments
Visuals by: Gabrielė Vitkauskaitė and Natya Devi Dance Theatre
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