Scholar
While
literature and teaching have both informed her life in large part, dance
is Ratna's first love
and Orissi dance has become her passion. Ratna applied for and, in 1985,
received a Fulbright Advanced Research Fellowship to delve into the hidden
nooks
and crannies of Orissi Dance.
Ratna Roy has received three Fulbrights,
the first for advanced research on Orissi Dance, and an American Institute
of Indian Studies Fellowship to study Jatras of Orissa. These grants culminated
in a book, Orissi Dance in the Context of Classical Dances of India.
Ratna presented a paper, Gender Constructs in Orissi Dance, and gave
a workshop at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in July 1999. Since
then she
has given several lecture-demonstrations on the unique style of Guru Pankaj
Charan Das, including one for Shraddhanjali
at Habitat Centre, New Delhi, December 2001 (made possible in part through
support from The Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions,
a public-private partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S.
Department of State, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and The
Rockefeller Foundation, administered by Arts International), and another
at the Barbara Stoler Miller Conference in Columbia University, New York,
February
2004.
Ratna's articles,
published
is several journals and an encyclopedia, have included
explorations
of Orissi and Chau of Orissa. Ratna has conducted workshops internationally
as well as provided many local lecture/demonstrations for the Washington
State Humanities Commission over the years.
Her latest research work is in dance for self-empowerment of
women and dance
therapy, or Orissi for Health. In January 2005 Ratna received a Fund for
Folk Culture Fellowship (underwritten by the Ford Foundation) to reconstruct
two
dances from the Mahari style of Orissi, based on her scholarly research
and David Capers' archival videos.
