Hari Krishnan

Hari Krishnan is a dance artist, scholar, and educator specializing in Bharatanatyam, queer dance, and contemporary dance from global perspectives. He explores postcolonial complexities in Indian dance and queer themes. He is among the pioneering generation of choreographers of South Asian origin who began to explore the intersections between traditional South Asian and global contemporary dance forms in the North American diaspora. His extensive body of work arises from a critical awareness of Bharatanatyam, fused with contemporary global dance styles and postmodern, queer, anti-racist and anti-caste social critique. His choreographies are designed to challenge stereotypes and enable minoritized communities to reclaim control over narratives of sexuality, religion, and culture in a global arts world. He is Professor of Dance at Wesleyan University and also artistic director of inDANCE. His monograph, Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam (Wesleyan University Press, 2019) won a special citation from the 2020 de la Torre Bueno© First Book Award Committee of the Dance Studies Association. The book has been hailed as “an invaluable addition to the scholarship on Bharatanatyam.” He recently received a Jacob’s Pillow Lab Residency (2024), Wesleyan’s Provost Research Award (2023) and a National Dance Project Grant (2022).