Deepa Mahadevan
Performance Studies
Deepa Mahadevan is a classical Indian dancer and the Founder/Artistic Director of Tiruchitrambalam School of dance, Union City,CA. She is interested in examining the role of gender, caste, sex, class and religion in the form and content of the dance form Bharatnatyam, a South Indian neoclassical dance form. Her research interest proceeds to delve into the transmission of this dance to second generation immigrant students, especially in the context of the North American Diaspora. She is specifically interested in the ways in which these students reclaim a sense of agency within the frame work of a received notion of ‘tradition.’ As a running theme, her research interest explores the ways in which these students of Bharatanatyam engage with social media as an interface during the different stages of assimilating and embodying this art form.