Navtej S Johar

Navtej Singh Johar is a dancer and choreographer, scholar, yoga exponent, and urban activist.  A recipient of the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Contemporary Choreography in 2014, his work—within all fields of his varied interests—remains consistently body-centric. It merges practice with critical theory and social action, traverses freely between the traditional and the contemporary, and rigorously engages both the philosophical and the sociological discourses of the body. 

He was trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra Foundation, Chennai; yoga at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Chennai; and Dance Studies at the Department of Performance Studies, New York University. Johar has performed and showcased his choreographic works extensively, both nationally and internationally, and has collaborated with artists, musicians, dancers and choreographers from all across the world.

He is the founder and director of Studio Abhyas, New Delhi, and a fellow at the “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, Freie University, Berlin. His work today examines the “idea of the body”, the “Indian body”, in particular, and how this may influence the practice, presentation, and the history of both Yoga and Indian dance, as well as the envisioning and (un)making of body-insensitive Indian cities.