Latest Publications

Contemporary dance scholarship has increasingly turned toward decolonial perspectives, yet much of this work continues to operate within conceptual frameworks that separate theory from practice and aesthetics from embodied experience. This paper addresses this limitation by revisiting the Nāṭyaśāstra as an Indic framework for understanding methods in dance education.

Learning the 108 karaṇas, codified dance units from the ancient text Nāṭyaśāstra, offers new possibilities for embodied training, creative exploration, and pedagogical renewal in Bharatanatyam. As a Bharatanatyam dancer, I engage these possibilities through a practice-as-research (PaR) lens. Structured training in karaṇas revealed significant pedagogical potential: enhancing kinaesthetic alignment, enabling both expressive and abstract choreography, and fostering aesthetic integrity.

Blurb: The paper examines the disappearance of Tulare Lake (California) and the Aral Sea (Central Asia) - where river diversions for irrigation destroyed millennia-old lakeshore societies - as emblematic cases of global lake desiccation due to over-exploitation, silting, and waste dumping. It is pointed out that lakes, ponds, and other waterbodies would play an increasingly important role in recharging underground aquifers and offering a relief on a planet under stress due to climate change.