Dancing Worlds | Great River Learning

Dancing Worlds

ISBN

9781680757668

Edition

2019

Product Format

GRLContent

Price

$84.52

Overview

Dancing Worlds invites students to explore dance as a dynamic global practice shaped by culture, history, identity, and human experience. Through the study of diverse dance traditions, students examine how movement reflects the values, beliefs, and lived experiences of communities across time and place. The text begins with the essential question, “What is dance?” and expands students’ understanding beyond performance technique to consider dance as a form of communication, storytelling, knowledge-making, and social connection.

Across multiple units, students investigate how dance emerges from cultural traditions, rituals, social movements, migration, technology, globalization, and artistic innovation. By examining choreographers, performers, and dance practices from around the world, students explore how bodies carry histories, preserve cultural memory, negotiate identity, and create new possibilities for expression. The text highlights the relationship between aesthetics and context, encouraging students to understand that every movement is connected to particular communities, environments, and moments in history.

From classical forms to contemporary practices, from indigenous traditions to diasporic expressions, Dancing Worldsreveals dance as both an artistic practice and a reflection of humanity’s diverse experiences. Students analyze how dancers and choreographers respond to questions of belonging, representation, power, tradition, and change. Through embodied exploration and critical inquiry, the text encourages students to see dance not only as something to watch, but as a way of understanding the world and imagining new ways of connecting across cultures.

Author

Sarkar, Kaustavi

About the Author
Kaustavi Sarkar

Dr. Kaustavi Sarkar is a professional Odissi soloist, performing and touring the eastern Indian traditional art form for the past two decades. She is an Associate Professor of Dance in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Department of Dance and the Regional Director for Mid Atlantic: American College Dance Association. She founded the journal South Asian Dance Intersections as well as the Odissi Odyssey conference held annually at UNC Charlotte as well as Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata. Her K-12 project combining dance, music, and drama has been recognized by National Dance Education Organization as well as National Association for Music Education, providing much needed credit, recognition, and appreciation for South Asian arts in mainstream arts education contexts in the United States.

Sarkar investigates virtuosity in dance-theater as fostered in traditional Indian aesthetics through her research on choreography and creative processes. She has commissioned works from female choreographers Dr. Ananya Chatterjea, Rohini Dandavate, Aruna Mohanty, and Maya Kulkarni to research and write about the creative process in South Asian aesthetics. Her research institute, “Dance and Community,” brings artists, educators, and scholars together towards systemic change and has been recognized by ACDA as an integrative medium for diasporic artists.

She holds advanced academic credentials in dance and performance studies and has been formally trained in multiple movement systems, integrating classical Indian dance vocabularies with contemporary analytical frameworks. Her interdisciplinary training includes study in anatomy, kinesiology, and somatic awareness, which informs her pedagogy and research on the dancing body. This strong foundation enables her to approach performance not only as an expressive art form but also as a site of critical investigation, cultural transmission, and embodied philosophy.

Sarkar holds a Ph.D. in Dance Studies (focus on Digital Humanities) from The Ohio State University (2017). She also holds an M.S. in Economics with Minor in Finance from Texas A&M University (2006).