she/her/hers

Shalaka Kulkarni is a native of India, where she studied Bharatnatyam and Kathak. She is developing a new dance form that intersects with Indian Classical dance and Western theater, to present the undocumented or erased stories from Indian culture and the diaspora experience. In the act of abstracting dance and straddling lines between storytelling and presenting an idea, Shalaka aims to disrupt the unending expectations for women she detects based upon mythological ideas built around female-identified deities and monsters.

The Project

HCL is supporting Shalaka as a Fellow in the writing and final development for Nyra’s Dreams (working title), a solo dance theater piece envisioned with video and text inspired by the poetry of Maya Angelou and Sujatha Bhatt. In addition, the residency supports movement research for a project to be developed in 2024, and that builds on the new process Shalaka has refined in the making of Nyra’s Dreams. The anticipated premiere of Nyra’s Dreams is in late 2023. 

2022 Nyra’s Dreams

Shalaka Kulkarni performed her in-process dance solo at April 8 Open Labs. Then she discussed with the audience about her explorings between different movement forms, text, and new media.

Shalaka presented Nyra’s Dreams work in progress in Berlin during her 2022 Germany Residency.

2022 Germany Residency Work Excerpts

Collaboration with Visual Artist and object maker - Katrin Hanman 

Performance with percussive artists & Musicians Wulf-Udiger and Mathilde Helm

Past Work Selections

About the Artist

Shalaka Kulkarni is a 2023 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist finalist. She is founder of the collective SurTaal, whose members create dance derived from the contemporary narratives and ideas that surround current political events and happenings in Indian society.  She has performed her original work in India and at Props Thtr Chicago, for the virtual festival Mandala Makers produced by Mandala South Asian Performing Arts, and, most recently, in Austria and Germany. She is a teaching artist and dancer with Mandala South Asian Performing Arts. She holds an MFA in Arts and Media and a BA in Performing Art Management, minoring in Theatre, from Columbia College Chicago.

For more information, please visit Shalaka’s website.

Check Shalaka’s online dance classes.

Events with HCL

Fusion | Sunday, December 3, 2023