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

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.

Kaustavi Sarkar is an assistant professor in the department of dance at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her writing on practice-based research has been published in journal articles in Research in Dance Education, Journal of Dance Education, Choreographic Practices, Performance Research, Dance Education in Practice and South Asian Dance Intersections.