Charlotte Professor Of Dance Receives Grant From National Endowment For The Arts
Kaustavi Sarkar, assistant professor of dance, has received a $10,000 “Grant for Arts Projects — Dance” from the National Endowment for the Arts” for the project, “ShilpaNatyam: Creating a New Vocabulary in Indian Dance,” in partnership with New York-based choreographer Maya Kulkarni.
For this project, Sarkar and Kulkarni will work together to build bridges and integrate elements of two very distinct Indian dance techniques, Odissi from Eastern India, and Bharatnatyam from Southern India.
Sarkar, an Odissi dancer/choreographer, first met Kulkarni, a Bharatnatyam dancer/choreographer, in 2020 over Zoom while seeking feedback for a project she was working on with another choreographer, Rohini Dandavate. They began working together as choreographers on the project, “Tridha: Three Parables,” which was performed for the 2021 Faculty Dance Concert at UNC Charlotte.
Their most current collaboration is “Impossible Romance,” a solo work that Sarkar first danced in December 2022 in New Jersey. It will become part of the longer program in development and will be performed at the 2023 Faculty Dance Concert, Jan. 27-28.