"Dancing in the Field" talk

Entering into the Kuchipudi village in Telugu South India as both a trained dancer and ethnographer, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath found that participating in dance became the primary way of forming relationship with her interlocutors. In this talk, Kamath analyzes the intersections of kinesthetic empathy and dance in the context of ethnographic fieldwork. In her presentation, Kamath asks: what does it mean for the ethnographer to put her “body on the line” through dance?