Postdoctoral Scholar Sinjini Chatterjee
Ohio State Dance welcomes Postdoctoral Scholar Sinjini Chatterjee to the department in autumn 2024. Chatterjee holds a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside. Her research traces interdependence between Odissi dance (A South Asian ‘classical’ dance style) and other non-classical folk, tribal, and ritualist performance practices of Odisha. Chatterjee has trained for 15 years in Odissi dance under the guidance of Smt. Aloka Kanungo, and has performed widely in India and the United Kingdom.
Chatterjee’s research lies at the intersection of caste, class, gender, and performance politics in South Asia. In the past decade there has been significant scholarly work on Indian ‘classical’ dance that illustrates these forms’ relationship to the Indian state. However, there exists a lacuna in critiquing the category of ‘classical’ and on examining interconnections between classical and indigenous dance forms. Her research investigates inequalities, hierarchies, and epistemic violence in Indian dance practices, focusing on the vexed category of ‘classical’ which was formed at the nexus of Indian nationalism, colonial modernity, economic inequality, and caste-based violence. Indian Classical Dance exploits the marginalized folk and ritual dancer’s body in order to generate economic and cultural capital. Following this, Chatterjee’s ethnography and archival analysis based project studies contemporary choreographies of Odissi (a South-Asian ‘classical’ dance) choreographers who incorporate these marginalized dance-forms into their choreographies. Alongside, it traces the history of the marginalized performance practices of Odisha (a state in Eastern India) through oral narratives and movement repertoire of the underrepresented artist communities. In studying the history of the marginalized performances and the contemporary ‘classical dance’ choreographies which incorporate these performances, her dissertation reveals previously overlooked performance histories, highlights the contribution of caste-class oppressed artists in forming the cultural heritage of India, and strives to develop a theoretical framework of decoloniality with regards to Indian performance practices.
At the University of California, Riverside, Chatterjee has received multiple fellowships for her research, including the Dean’s Fellowship, multiple Gluck Program of the Arts Award, and the Department of Dance Graduate Fellowship, and the Dissertation of the Year Award. Chatterjee’s works have been previously published in the Dance Research Journal. Chatterjee’s works have been presented at various international conferences such as the European Association of South Asian Studies, Italy; Memory Studies Association, Spain; Goldsmiths, University of London, UK; King’s College London, UK; Annual Conference on South Asia at Wisconsin-Madison, USA; Odissi dance Conference, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; USA, and International Federation for Theatre Research, Philippines.
“I am extremely excited to join as the Postdoctoral Scholar in Dance at The Ohio State University. I am grateful to the faculty and students to give me the opportunity. I am looking forward to creating cross departmental exchanges and collaborations with the community residing there. One of my many goals is to think about the oral narratives, movement repertoires, and gestural repertoire of South Asian and other marginalized, minoritized dancers, focusing on how their oral and corporeal vocabularies negotiate with recorded nationalist histories.”
Administrative Associate Ray Fox
Ray Fox supports daily departmental administrative operations and provides a broad range of administrative support for the faculty and staff of the Department of Dance; provides executive administrative support to the chair, including complex scheduling and calendaring initiating and processing the chair’s travel, expenses and p-card transactions; manages department correspondence for the chair; assists chair in coordination and implementation of department initiatives, planning and special projects; manages all department calendars; serves as contact to faculty, staff and students on university, college and department policies and procedures; hires, trains and supervises student workers; provides administrative support for faculty recruitment efforts; assists with the schedule of rooms for department managed facilities for classes, events, exams in coordination with the academic program coordinator, external relations manager and production team. In partnership with the department chair and department manager, educate faculty and staff on university policy and procedures, including travel, purchasing, and other fiscal training.
Fox also works as part of a team to provide support to the department manager for all business operations and to initiate department fiscal transactions and provide guidance and consultation to faculty, staff, students, and guests on purchasing procedures in accordance with university guidelines; serves as a key coordinator in guest artist coordination; coordinates, initiates, and submits spend authorization requests, requisitions and reimbursements through Workday related to purchases and travel for faculty, staff, student and guests; assist new vendors through the vendor setup process and submit vendor maintenance request forms.
Nico Lawson (they/them) is a queer, disabled choreographer, educator, and performance artist who investigates the intersections trauma-informed, anti-racist praxis and the performance of grief as resistance. Their work emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration and includes interactive exhibitions, stage and site-specific performances, and dance film. Their current project Grieving Landscapes is an iterative exploration of the traumas of marginalized identity – including queerphobia, racism, and ableism – and liberation through the grieving process. Works in this project include the solo performances Wisteria (2023) and Wisterian Liturgy (2024) and the eponymous Grieving Landscapes interactive exhibitions hosted by Urban Arts Space in May 2023 and January 2024.
As a performer, Nico has worked with Charles O. Anderson, Kate Davis and the Continuum Collective, Carol Finley Dance Group, Renay Aumiller Dances, JOYEMOVEMENT Company, and SHRED Collective. As the artistic director of Nicole Lawson Dance Projects (2018 to 2021), their work has been presented throughout North Carolina, including the Greensboro Fringe Festival, the ADF Healing Parade, Tobacco Road Dance Productions, and independent productions in both Greensboro and Durham, NC. Since relocating to Columbus, OH in 2021, they have shown work through the City Dance Showcase, the Ohio State University and the Urban Arts Space Hybrid Arts Lab.
Currently based in Columbus, Ohio, Nico is originally from North Carolina, where they received their BA in Dance Studies and Spanish from Meredith College in 2016. They graduated from The Ohio State University with their MFA in Dance in 2024.
Assistant Professor Kym McDaniel
Ohio State Dance welcomes Kym McDaniel (she/her) to our faculty in autumn 2024 as a tenure-track assistant professor of dance film and digital technologies. McDaniel is an experimental filmmaker, multidisciplinary collaborator, choreographer, curator and educator. Her films have recently screened in solo and two-person screenings at UnionDocs – Center for Documentary Art (Queens, NY), Arts + Literature Lab (Madison, WI), Cellular Cinema (Minneapolis, MN), Rhizome DC (Washington, DC), and the Society for Disability Studies Conference, as well as in group exhibitions at Ann Arbor Film Festival, Slamdance, Experiments in Cinema, Antimatter, and the Whitney Humanities Center (Yale University), among others.
Her multidisciplinary research is informed by neurobiological theories of trauma, in addition to Crip Theory, Glitch Feminism, Queer Theory, and experimental technology, film and video. In her film/video work, she braids non-fiction personal narratives, often weaving fragmented bodies on screen, psychological and environmental landscapes, and invitations for the audience to become a part of the cinematic experience through voice, text or instruction.
She has been awarded grants from the New York State Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Mary L. Nohl Greater Milwaukee Foundation and is currently in residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. She has recently performed in the stacks at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, among bees at the Lynden Sculpture Garden (Milwaukee, WI) and on 16mm and Super 8 film for independent films and music videos. As a media artist, she has collaborated with choreographers, performers, and disability activists, including Petra Kuppers/The Olimpias, Brooke Thiele, Hannah Hamalian, Simone Ferro, Elisabeth Roskopf, Luc Vanier, Elizabeth Johnson, Rebecca Nettl-Fiol, and the Department of Theater (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) Department of Dance (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).
As a curator, she has programmed film/video events focused on the body, movement, disability and gesture. Most recently, she was the lead curator for the 2024 Screendance Cultural Tour at the Salt Lake Film Society, a dance film festival in collaboration with the Tanner Humanities Center and College of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. She also founded EXPS/SLC, a monthly screening series featuring films created by BIPOC, women and queer filmmakers.
She has an MFA in Cinematic Arts from the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from the City University of New York. She was formerly an Assistant Professor and Program Director for the Graduate Certificate in Screendance at the University of Utah. She has also held teaching positions within the Cinema Department at Binghamton University, the Department of Film, Video, Animation and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Department of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
'I am incredibly excited to join the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University and to contribute to the vibrant film, dance and disability communities in Columbus," says McDaniel. "My embodiment as a queer and disabled dancer informs my pedagogy and understanding of the body, camera and technology on screen and stage. I believe video can be a tool for somatic liberation, as well as an extension of memory, intuition and identity-formation. As Assistant Professor in Dance Film and Digital Technologies, one of my intentions is to introduce a multidisciplinary pedagogy where choreographic processes are translated to screen using sound, image, text and experimental film methodologies. I am especially looking forward to facilitating student involvement in underground film festivals and bringing my experience as a curator and community organizer to Columbus!"
