Ahalya Satkunaratnam is a scholar, dancer, and Associate Professor of Humanities at Oakton Community College in Illinois. Her interests lie in the relationships between arts, embodied practices, and local and global politics. Ahalya’s first book Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practicing Bharata Natyam in Colombo, Sri Lanka, is now available from Wesleyan University Press. It is the winner of the 2021 de la Torre Bueno® First Book Award presented by Dance Studies Association.

As a dancer, Satkunaratnam’s choreography draws on an array of movements and compositional styles, including her primary training in Bharata Natyam. Over the past 10 years, she has created a series of works on the Global War on Terror as it transforms and transports itself over time. Her dance work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Illinois Council for the Arts. 2022 marks the release of Ahalya’s dance film, Agni.

Ahalya earned her BA in Political Science at Loyola University Chicago and her PhD in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Ahalya presents AGNI as a part of the Digital Performance Screenings on Friday, June 17th.

About AGNI: In this dance film, three dancers personify the deity of Agni, the Vedic God of Fire, investigating his continuous duality as both giver of life, and tool of dispossession, war, and death.

Drawing on the languages of Bharata Natyam and modern dance, AGNI invites the audience into witnessing a shared journey: The rise of dawn; the dilemmas we reconcile with difficulty; and the long and daily era of global conflict and warfare.

REGISTER