Visiting Artist - Traditional Arts
Visiting Artist - Dance

Rohini Dandavate

788 Harrison Street, Apt. #714
San Francisco, CA  94107-4212
Phone: (614) 354-6419
Email: dandavate2@gmail.com

I am a dancer and an arts educator. I perform and teach Odissi dance, a classical dance form from the eastern state of Orissa in India. My goal is to help audiences learn about and adapt to the diversity of world cultures through world arts. Besides conducting workshops and master classes in Odissi dance, my projects are designed to provide students and other audiences with a window to observe, explore, understand and relate to diverse cultures through the experience of artistic activities. In the Days of Creation Camps in Upper Arlington, Bexley, Westerville, and Worthington, and in Columbus Public School dance camps, I offered 3 workshops in each camp to enable participants to understand Indian culture through the classical and folk dance traditions through audio video presentations and power points. The children also gained movement experience by learning and presenting an Indian folk dance to their parents in their showing on the final day of each camp. My series of lectures in Kenyon College focused on helping students experience and explore Indian dance movement and also trace the evolution of the present popular dances of the Bollywood films by understanding how classical, folk dance traditions have culminated with other global dance forms through multi-media presentations and readings.

I look forward to sharing my work through performance, lectures, workshops and demonstrations. I believe that in the background of increasing globalization, the new challenge before artists is to help people in our communities build cultural understanding through the arts while preserving and evolving one's own sense of identity. I have offered courses, e.g. Ethnic Arts: A Means to Intercultural Communication, to undergraduate students at The Ohio State University, and a seminar on Dance and Ethnicity -- Indian Classical Dance in Context and Technique of Odissi Dance as a Visiting Faculty member at Denison University, Granville, Ohio (2001). I continue to learn and receive inspiration on world cultures through my travel, my interaction with diverse students, and collaboration with artists from different cultures.

I have been a practitioner and performer of Odissi dance for more than 35 years. I was an Arts administrator with the government of India for four years before I came to the United States. I received my doctoral and my Masters degree in Cultural Policy and Arts Administration from The Ohio State University. I received my BA in English Literature and Psychology from the Utkal University in Orissa, India. I hold a graduate degree in Odissi dance from Kala Vikash Kendra, College of Indian Dance and Music, Cuttack, India. I continue to offer dance lessons and courses in educational institutions.