Dance, Technology and Social Justice: Individual and Collective Emancipation Through Embodied Techniques - Paperback

by Kaustavi Sarkar (Author)

This book theorizes dance technique as the Greek techne translated as art, and shows how movement can inspire epistemic, philosophical, and cultural conversations in technology studies. Combining dance studies, religious studies, and technology studies, it argues that dance can be a technology of social justice bringing equanimity, liberation and resistance. It focuses on the eastern Indian art form Odissi and applied experimentations with motion capture technology, virtual reality (VR) gaming, and Arduino. It specifically examines tthe work of Ananya Dance Theatre (ADT), a Minnesota based contemporary Indian dance company that deconstructs Odissi towards social justice activism.

Author Biography

Kaustavi Sarkar is an assistant professor in the department of dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is an Odissi soloist and is the disciple of Guru Poushali Mukherjee, Guru Ratikant Mohapatra, and Guru Sujata Mohapatra. She has received two artworks grants from the National Endowment for the Arts among other state and regional grants and has published journal articles on practice-based research. She is the founder/ manager for the peer-reviewed journal South Asian Dance Intersections and convenor of the grant-funded Dance and Community Research Institute working on pedagogical, choreographic, and musicological interventions.