December 17, 2021
The National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron (NCCAkron) presented Dancing Conversations by South Asian Experimental Dance Artists featuring dance artists Lionel Popkin (Los Angeles, CA), Hari Krishnan (Middletown, CT / Toronto, ON), Meena Murugesan (Los Angeles, CA), Parijat Desai (New York, NY), Pramila Vasudevan (St. Paul, MN), and Sujata Goel (Harrisburg, PA). join a space for diasporic dance artists of South Asian descent, discuss shared and divergent artistic processes, and disrupt representations of South Asian bodies.
The cohort met virtually over the course of a year to create a support network among the artists and further conversations of how performance can frame individual expression and cultural transmission within the South Asian community. During these monthly exchanges, the cohort discussed the assumptions, expectations, and limitations of experimenting with contemporary movement while also being judged by the classical aesthetics of traditional Indian performance.
