I work as a dancer and choreographer with a special interest in decolonial practices and postcolonial aesthetics.
My choreographies have been programmed at the Centre National de la Dance Paris, ImpulsTanz Vienna, Spielart festival Munich, Ignite! Festival of contemporary dance Delhi, Singapore International Festival of Arts, Gothenburg Dance- and Theatre festival and at the Swedish biennial for performing arts. My work is also represented at the Performing arts museum, Dance museum in Stockholm and in the book Oxford Dictionary of Dance and Re-enactment.
Memory and archive is a recurring thematic in my work, firstly through a reconstruction of my inheritance of Kurt Jooss’ last choreography, Dixit Dominus, created for the Swedish based Indian dancer Lilavati, and later as a second order performance, a performance about the performance, Future Memory.
In An evening with Astad I performed together on stage with Astad Deboo, a pioneer of Indian contemporary dance and took a closer look at his early avantgard solos from the 1970-80s.
My latest work Memory Lab explores how the audience can embody other people's memories.
I’ve also participated in the curation of Ong Keng Sen in the Archive Box, an exchange between Japanese dance makers and artists of the Indian contemporary dance scene.
Guest teacher at SKH Uniarts, Stockholm Sweden
200 h YTT Yoga Instructor
Member of the art group Ful
Papers on my work
Elswit, Kate “Letters to Lila and Dramaturg's Notes on Future Memory: Inheriting Dance’s Alternative Histories” (with Rani Nair). In The Handbook of Dance and Reenactment (2017), ed. Mark Franko. New York: Oxford University Press, 177-214.
Cogne, Ingrid and Hedemyr, Marika; ed The Mob Without Flash (2016).
Elswit, Kate “Inheriting Dance’s Alternative Histories”. Dance Research Journal, 46.1 (2014), 3-22
Chatterjee, Sandra (2013). “Entangled Histories and Kinesthetic Connections: Memory, Heritage and Performance in Rani Nair’s Future Memory. In Nordic Forum for Dance Research/Society of Dance History Scholars, Conference Proceedings. Norwegian University Of Science And Technology (NTNU) Trondheim, Norway 2013: Published By The Society Of Dance History Scholars: 89-97.
Hammergren, Lena. 2009. “The Power of Classification.” In Worlding Dance, edited by Foster, Susan Leigh, 14–31. New York: Palgrave Macmillan