Shabari Rao
Performance artist, Educator, Researcher
Shabari Rao is an artist and academic from Bangalore, India. Her work is rooted in practice based research and engages with education, mental health, gender, and the environment. The body plays a central role in her process, which is located within social, cultural and political contexts. Her work is collaborative and emergent in nature and takes the shape of performing, directing, curating, teaching, writing, and more recently, experimental film and audio work. Over the last 20 years her work has been presented through conferences, festivals, residencies and publications, in cities across the world such as Sydney, Shanghai, Kathmandu, Singapore, London, New York and several cities in India. Her current projects include piloting Bheetar Bahar which is a training program at the intersection of performing arts and mental health, and working with Justice Initiative, using performance to tell the stories of women in prison in Karnataka, India.
Shabari is a founding faculty member at RV University where she heads the Performing Arts program in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She holds a BA in Kathak and Choreography (Bangalore University), a Professional Diploma in Dance Studies (Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, UK) and an MA with distinction, in Dance and Education (Royal Academy of Dance, UK). Currently she is a Doctoral scholar at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
