Ameera Nimjee

🪔 About

Ameera Nimjee is a Kathak dancer, ethnomusicologist, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Yale University. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Nimjee began her musical journey at age four with piano lessons, later majoring in classical piano performance at the University of Toronto. She discovered Kathak at 17 or 18, around 2006, during her undergraduate studies, drawn to its storytelling and rhythmic footwork. She quickly became immersed in the dance form, recognizing its aesthetic resonance within her. Nimjee trained under Joanna de Souza, a prominent student of the late Pandit Chitresh Das, and became a member of the Toronto-based Chhandam Dance Company. Her dedication led her to perform with de Souza's troupe within a few years of starting her training, where she also excelled in spontaneous composition and choreography. Nimjee holds a PhD and MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago and the University of Toronto, respectively. Her academic and dance careers are deeply intertwined; she views dance as a central part of her research methodology as an ethnographer. Her primary research focuses on citizenship, race, and gender in transnational South Asian performance cultures, with ongoing projects on creativity in contemporary South Asian dance economies and performance traditions of Muslim migration. She has contributed to various edited volumes and published in academic journals on topics including Kathak dance, Bollywood fitness, and South Asian American weddings. Prior to her appointment at Yale in 2022, Nimjee was an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Puget Sound. She continues to dance, taking lessons twice weekly with her teacher in Toronto and developing new choreography with her husband, Matthew DelCiampo.