Sandra Chatterjee

🪔 About

Sandra Chatterjee is a choreographer, dancer, and scholar whose work explores the intersections of performance, dance, and the body with a focus on gender, postcolonial, and migration studies. She was initially trained in the classical Indian dance form Kuchipudi, completing her Rangapravesam (debut) under the guidance of Ranga Vivekanandan-Barth in Munich. She considers Kuchipudi her "first language" in dance. Her classical Indian dance training also includes Bharatanatyam, under the tutelage of Padmini Chari, Arup Ghosh, and Malathi Iyengar, and more recently, Odissi with Sharon Lowen. In addition to Indian classical forms, Chatterjee has studied Polynesian, modern/postmodern/contemporary European dance techniques, and yoga. Chatterjee holds a Bachelor of Arts in Dance (ethnology emphasis) from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa (1998), a Master of Arts in Dance from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) (2001), and a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA (2005). Her doctoral dissertation was titled "Undomesticated Bodies: South Asian Women Perform the Impossible." While rooted in classical Indian dance, her main artistic focus has evolved into contemporary choreography, often exploring critical theories and post-structuralist and post-colonial perspectives. She is recognized as a leading contemporary dancer of international repute. As a scholar, Chatterjee has held academic positions, including guest professor for Dance Studies at ZZT – Zentrum für Zeitgenössischen Tanz in Cologne (Wintersemester 2018/19) and instructor on the Rutgers Arts Online Faculty (2017-2022). She has taught interdisciplinary classes at universities such as UCLA, University of Salzburg, Kunstuniversität Linz, and University Mozarteum. She also conducts Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam classes in Munich. Chatterjee is a co-founder of the Post Natyam Collective, an internet-based network of choreographers and scholars, and is involved in CHAKKARs-Moving Interventions, an initiative dedicated to anti-discriminatory approaches to dance in Munich. Awards & Honours: Choreographic Award, Cultural Preservation Award.