Akhila Vimal C

About

Akhila Vimal C is a dancer, and a Performance and Disability Studies scholar. She is a Fulbright Post-Doctoral fellow at UCLA. Her project at UCLA is to develop a practice-led dance pedagogy for blind and low-vision performers. She has a doctorate in Theatre and Performance Studies from School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU (2021). Her PhD focuses on disfiguration in the classical and ritual-healing performances of Kerala, namely, Kathakal̤i, Kūṭiyāṭṭaṃ and Tĕyyaṃ, under the rubrics of pain and affect. Akhila has been a fellow at the prestigious Mellon School of Theatre and Performance Research funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation at Harvard University in 2016. Parallelly, she is also learning Sanskrit and Indian Shastras traditionally under Abhinava Balanda Bhairava from Sarada lineage.

Employment

• University of California Los Angeles Fulbright- Nehru Post-Doctoral Fellow
  2022 - 2024

Education

• Jawaharlal Nehru University PhD in Theater and Performance Studies
  2014 - 2021
• Jawaharlal Nehru University M.Phil in Theater and Performance Studies
  2012 - 2014
• Jawaharlal Nehru University MA in Arts and Aesthetics
  2009 - 2012
• Mahatma Gandhi University BA in English Language and Literature
  2007 - 2009

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (8)

• Bleeding Foreheads: Divine and healing bodies in the rituals and performances of Keralam
  Performance Research 2023 DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2023.2222355
  +Save
• Politics and Poetics of Syncretism: Case Studies of the Bonbibi Cult, the Mappila Teyyam Performances, and Three Poems of the Bhakti Tradition from the Indian Subcontinent
  Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 2021 DOI: 10.1353/dtc.2021.0036
  +Save
• Continued Traditions & Histories of Performing Arts
  Serendipity Art Festival and HarperDesign by HarperCollins Publishers India 2019
  +Save
• Performing disability: representation and power in ‘Classical’ Indian dance
  The Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture, and Media 2018
  +Save
• Performing Disfiguration: Staging of relationalities in Pottan Teyyam
  Performance Research 2018 DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2018.1573102
  +Save
• Performing Disfiguration: Construction of ‘Primitive’ and the Ambiguities of Representing Pain in Kathakaḽi
  Journal of Emerging Dance Scholarship 2017
  +Save
• Prosthetic rasa: dance on wheels and challenged kinesthetics
  Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 2017
  +Save
• 1,000+ STAGE PERFORMANCES An Interview With 100-Year-Old Chemancheri Kunjiraman Nair
  Focal Press- Routledge 2017
  +Save