Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Announces 2023-24 Fellows

The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, an international research institute for scholars and artists of ballet and related arts and sciences, announced four Fellows for the 2023-24 academic year. The Fellowship program supports four individuals for the academic year whose projects focus on anthropology, disability arts, classical Indian dance, and performance studies. Bijayini Satpathy will receive financial support, academic resources, and space to create new work and further her research along with Aimee Meredith Cox, Jerron Herman, and André Lepecki. She joins the CBA as it enters its 10th year as a place to incubate new work, build collaborations, and develop new ideas.

NIRVIKALPA – transconceptual
During her fellowship, Satpathy propose to create a choreographic work titled NIRVIKALPA – transconceptual, in which she’ll meditate on the exact starting points from self to character and from the identity of one character to the identity of another, focusing on the relationship between the physical (Āngika) and the experiential (Sāttwika). The inquiry will focus on whether the mind leads the body, or the body leads the mind. When does the emotion lead the movement and when does the movement lead the emotion. And finally, at what point does this play of detachment lead to complete freedom.

As an extension of this project, She’ll propose to invite a ballet dancer, unaccustomed to dancing multiple characters in one choreography, to translate an existing choreography of an Indian mythological narrative dance with multiple characters into ballet vocabulary in order to experience the inner effects of such a process on their mind and self.