UCR Department of Dance

Dr. Anusha Kedhar 

Assistant Professor, Department of Dance, UC Riverside

Flexible Bodies: British South Asian Dancers in an Age of Neoliberalism 

(Oxford University Press, 2020)

Come celebrate the publication of Dr. Anusha Kedhar’s book with a distinguished panel of speakers:

Clare Croft (University of Michigan)
Judith Hamera (Princeton University)
Kareem Khubchandani (Tufts University)
Vanita Reddy (Texas A&M University) 
Suba Subramaniam (Akademi and Sadhana Dance)

Friday, May 14, 2021
9:00am - 10:00am PST
5:00pm – 6:00pm GMT 
9:30pm - 10:30pm IST

Zoom
Free and open to the public.

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqdumvqzgpEtTCbtGWDuEh5J2tC2qjyA57 
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about joining the meeting. 

Download the poster here.  

Feel free to contact Professor Anthea Kraut at anthea.kraut@ucr.edu 
with any questions about the event.

ANUSHA KEDHAR (She/Her/Hers)
Assistant Professor
Anusha Kedhar is a scholar and practitioner of Indian dance. She was born and raised in Southern California but lived and worked in London, UK for several years as a professional dancer. She attended University of California, Berkeley (BA), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (MS), and University of California, Riverside (Ph.D.) where she received her doctorate in Critical Dance Studies in 2011. Her research interests include dance in India and the India diaspora, global political economy, and ethnographic methods in dance studies.

Kedhar’s book, Flexible Bodies: British South Asian Dancers in an Age of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2020), focuses on British South Asian dancers and the creative ways in which they negotiate the demands of neoliberal, multicultural dance markets through an array of flexible bodily practices, including agility, versatility, mobility, speed, and risk-taking. Bringing together economic theories of flexible labor with embodied notions of flexibility in dance, the book re-frames flexibility as both a tool of labor exploitation as well as a bodily skill that dancers cultivate to navigate neoliberal multiculturalism. Kedhar is currently working on two new projects: one on yoga in India and the Indian diaspora and the other on gender, caste, and eroticism (sringara) in bharata natyam. Her writing on choreography, gesture, and Black Lives Matter protests has been featured in The Feminist Wire and The New York Times.  

Kedhar is an established performer and choreographer and has been a practitioner of bharata natyam for over 30 years. She has worked with various contemporary South Asian choreographers in the US, UK, and Europe, including Subathra Subramaniam (UK), Mayuri Boonham (UK), Mavin Khoo (UK), Johanna Devi (Germany), Cynthia Ling Lee (US), and Meena Murugesan (US). Her solo choreography has been presented at the Southbank Centre (London), Mediterranean Institute for Theatre and Performance (Malta), UCLA (Los Angeles), Colorado College (Colorado), and Gibney Dance (New York). Kedhar is a Fulbright Scholar to India and the winner of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award for dance scholarship. She previously taught at Colorado College and the University of Malta.

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