On March 7th, after a morning of conversation between award-winning scholars and artists Saidiya Hartman, Simone Leigh, and Okwui Okpokwasili, the Voice & Body research fellows led the public in an afternoon of shared practice.

Artist/Composer Samita Sinha led a vocal practice using sounds derived from North Indian classical and Bengali folk music, taken apart and put back together through each of our bodies, and our collective body.

Curators Okwui Okpokwasili and Judy Hussie-Taylor, and the full team at Danspace Project thank Samita for her vibrant presence throughout the Platform, for all the work that she holds with deep care, for opening up portals and leading us through. 

Video by Mariana Gongora.

Composer and vocal artist Samita Sinha combines experimentation and tradition (North Indian classical music, embodied practices, folk and ritual music in several languages) to create new forms of music/ sound performance and collaboration, and a language of voice and body. Her work has been commissioned by Asia Society, Performance Space 122 and Invisible Dog Art Center, the Rubin Museum and presented at the Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, Danspace Project, National Sawdust, and PICA, among others. She has collaborated with Ralph Lemon, Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born, Fiona Templeton, Sekou Sundiata, Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, and Robert Ashley, as well as Sunny Jain and Grey Mcmurray (with whom she is part of the “uniquely-aligned trio” (NPR) Tongues in Trees). Sinha teaches voice extensively.

http://samitasinha.com/