Priyadarsini Govind:The Dr. Sunil Kothari Honorary Lecture

Priyadarsini Govind is an influential dancer in the world of Bharatanatyam, one of the eight classical Indian dances. For the fourth annual Dr. Sunil Kothari Honorary Lecture presented by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the Library for the Performing Arts, Govind presents and performs around Bharatanatyam, showing how universal human emotions are interpreted and transformed through the lens of classical dance.

Born on December 20, 1933, in Mumbai, Dr. Sunil Kothari was an accountant before turning to the study of Indian dance forms. He authored more than 20 books on the subject of Indian dance forms, including Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Chhau, Kathak, Kuchipudi, and photo biographies of Uday Shankar and Rukmini Devi Arundale. As a dance scholar, Dr. Kothari held the Uday Shankar Chair in Rabindra Bharati University and taught in the Dance Department of New York University as a Fulbright Professor. Dr. Kothari died in 2020, and to honor his life and work, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division presents the annual Dr. Sunil Kothari Honorary Lecture on Indian Classical Dance by a visiting scholar. Past Dr. Kothari lectures have included Bijayini Satpathy in 2022,  Malavika Sarukkai in 2023, and Alarmél Valli in 2024.

SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested. Check-in line forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 minutes before start time. Five minutes before the advertised start time, all seats are released, regardless of registration, to our patrons in the stand-by line. If you arrive after the program starts, you will be seated at the discretion of our front-of-house staff.

STANDBY LINE | If registration is sold out or has ended, do not fret! We welcome you to come to the Library regardless of registration status and wait in our standby line, which forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Five minutes before the program starts, all remaining seats are released. While this is not guaranteed, we will do our best to get you into any of our programs.

ASSISTIVE LISTENING AND ASL | ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing [email protected].

BRUNO WALTER POLICY | Please note that any unoccupied seat will be released five minutes before the show begins and holding seats for anyone beyond that is prohibited. There is no food or drink allowed inside the venue.

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