ResDance Series 10: Episode 3: You Can’t Balance AwayOppression: Dance, Power, Resistance with RoyonaMitra In this episode, Royona reflects on her relationship to dance, from her training in classicised and contemporary Indian dance in India to specialising in physical theatre in the UK. Drawing on her experiences as a teacher,researcher, and practitioner, she explores how movement practice has become a space to question and reflect on questions of power within dance. Royona discusses how moments of discomfort throughout her training and practice have shaped her intellectual inquiry, often becoming starting points for deeper questioning. She also reflects on how these experiences, alongside her academic writing, have helped unpack questions around caste politics, caste identity, and caste supremacy, and their intersections with gender, race and other socialpositions, including how practices such as contact improvisation shift when considered within the realities of caste and power. Themes of power, responsibility, and positionality emerge as she considers how dance and performance studies can both challenge and reproduce structuresof power. Looking ahead, Royona reflects on the need to move from reflection into action—galvanising practitioners to question and reshape the field. A thoughtful and thought-provoking conversation on dance, power, and resistance. Biography Royona Mitra is Professor of Dance andPerformance Cultures at Brunel University of London, UK. She is the author of Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch (2025, OUP) and Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (2015, Palgrave). Her first monograph was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno FirstBook Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA); her article "Unmaking Contact: Choreographic Touch at the Intersections of Race, Caste and Gender", was awarded DSA’s Gertrude Lippincott Award in 2022 for theBest English Language Journal Article; and her co-edited journal special issue titled "Outing Archives/Archives Outing" for Contemporary Theatre Review journal,alongside Profs Bryce Lease and Melissa Blanco Borelli, was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Edited Collection Prize in 2022. Herresearch examines systems of oppression in dance and performance cultures at the intersections of bodies, social power regimes, and choreography as powerand resistance. She contributes to the fields of diaspora and performance, South Asian dance and performance cultures, critical dance studies and performance studies. Royona was Co-Investigator on the AHRC funded #DanceResearchMatters “South Asian Dance Equity” project (2023-2025) alongside Drs Prarthana Purkayastha (PI, RHUL) and Anusha Kedhar (Co-I, UC Riverside). She was also Co-Investigator on the BritishAcademy Small Grant funded “Contemporary Dance and Whiteness” project (2019) alongside Drs Simon Ellis (Coventry) and Arabella Stanger (Sussex). She was co-Chair of TaPRA alongside Drs Broderick Chow (RCSSD) (2022-2025) and Rachel Hann (2022-2024). Contact details Website https://royonamitra.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royona-mitra-ab359333b/ Other related links Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch (2025) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/unmaking-contact-9780197627778?cc=gb&lang=en&# Please share this episode with students, educators, practitioners, performers, and interdisciplinary researchers curious to learn more about dance research in action.
