Sarah Morelli

🪔 About

Dr. Sarah Morelli has studied India’s performing arts since 1992 and is active as a kathak performer, scholar, and educator. She was blessed to receive much of her artistic training from two legends of North Indian classical performance: renowned kathak master Pandit Chitresh Das and maestro Ali Akbar Khan, from whom she studied vocal music and the sarod, and from their disciples Dr. George Ruckert, Gretchen Hayden, Steve Oda, and Pt. Rajeev Taranath. Her dance is infused with a rich musicality and understanding of kathak’s past and present. One of the co-founders of the Leela Dance Collective, her recent performances have included traditional kathak solos, collaborative works, and Leela Dance Collective productions Ardhanari, En Route: From Calcutta to California, Pragati, Pilgrimage, and Son of the Wind, in which she performed the role of Sri Ramachandra. Sarah received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in Ethnomusicology under the mentorship of Prof. Kay Kaufman Shelemay. She is currently an Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music and Chair of the Department of Musicology and Ethnomusicology. Her book, A Guru’s Journey: Pandit Chitresh Das and Indian Classical Dance in Diaspora, is an ethnographic examination of Pandit Chitresh Das’s contributions to kathak dance and the development of the “California gharana.”