PRITHA KUNDU

Pritha is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher who finds her voice at the intersection of movement and visual arts, creative coding, and scientific research.

She is the Co-founder/Co-director of Aramandi to Attitude (ATA), an interdisciplinary creative community where  individuals can find a safe collaborative space to take creative risks to explore, research, and innovate in artistic processes at the intersection of science, arts, and tech. The core of her work aims to contribute towards building an equitable and empathetic society, and research into making resources accessible/connecting communities across contexts is at the heart of it.

Pritha is the Associate Director of the WE-Program (www.we-program.com) which focuses on providing community-sourced low-cost education and accessible opportunities to movement artists to educate, engage, and encourage emerging artists. (www.we-program.com)

Pritha has been training in different movement art forms for the past 20 years and has had her independent movement and visual arts practice for the past 10 years. Her practice started with Bharatanatyam and Yoga. Pritha then went on to train in more contemporary forms starting with Uday Shankar Technique followed by her forays into practices of Kung-fu, Kalaripayattu, Kathak, Jazz, and Butoh. Some of her mentors and teachers include Tanusree Shankar, Florian Lochner, Alice Klock, Mathilde Gilhet, Andrea Miller, and Jacob Jonas. Pritha has received scholarships to train with contemporary dance companies like Jacob Jonas the Company, FLOCK, Gallim Dance Company, Sydney Dance Company, Beijing Dance Theatre and others.

Currently, she practices developing improvisational movement pieces that explore self-expression through dance that is not restricted to a particular style but constantly evolves and takes new creative forms. In remote collaboration with artists in her movement community, Pritha produces short films and visual arts work. Funded by the WE-Program and Goethe Institute, Pritha also engages in community-driven creative work aimed at facilitation of artists in marginalized communities across the world.

Along with her artistic pursuits, she holds degrees of Master of Science by research in experimental, theoretical, and computational ecology and evolutionary biology. 

She received scholarships to attend intensives with Jacob Jonas The Company, Flock, and Gallim, during which she ventured into dance filmmaking. Her movement research areas include improvisational movement arts, movement therapy and pedagogical practices.

As the Co-director of ATA, she has fostered non-traditional, remote collaborations with over 50 international multidisciplinary artists, developed her movement pedagogy that is taught across remote and in-person workshops and community classes. Pritha has also organized community-funded artist residencies to support emerging movement artists in India.

 She is also involved in a long-term community engagement project Delta Lives that aims to reimagine artistic, social, and climate justice in marginalized communities residing in ecologically-fragile, isolated places. At Delta Lives, Pritha co-leads a team of over 15 multidisciplinary artists and 30 local community members across diverse backgrounds like cultural researchers, web developers, designers, farmers, fishers, and artists to co-create this project.