Descriptive Transcript: Homepage

Kaustavi Sarkar is posed in a brightly colored Odissi performance costume with arms raised over her head, balanced in a niche of the Rajarani Temple in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. She is surrounded by sculptural figures likewise posed as dancers; the same image is both the focal point of the homepage and (in enlarged form) its background. Over the figures surrounding her are layered four semi-transparent videos of dancing figures that play automatically when the page loads. Languorously raised arms, interlaced fingers clasping on each wrist, sharply deflected torso, and flexed ankles pointing below describe the sedentary sculptural posture created by the dancer as she places herself amongst the sculptural ruins of the temple. 

In the top left corner is a video of a humanoid figure performing an Odissi dance sequence in three-dimensional space. The figure is comprised of geometrical shapes in bright green and blue: lines to indicate torso, limbs, and appendages, small squares to indicate joints. There are no recognizable facial features. Yet, the curvilinear traces created by the gestures, torso, feet, and neck leave the indelible marks of the human flesh that we deliberately erase in its digital renditions. 

In the bottom right corner is a video of a humanoid figure performing an Odissi dance sequence in three-dimensional space. The figure appears to be a Southeast Asian male and is dressed in black, with bare hands and feet. The figure possesses human facial features
that do not change. Images providing interpretation of the dance's narrative, symbolic elements (such as spring flowers, a bull, a young woman, the deity Jagannath) appear intermittently in the background to the left and right of the dancing figure. The digitized model moves with the gestures and postures of Sarkar’s Odissi body yet adding a distinct style of its own; he seems to transition from one move to the other with a slightly different timing and intension as if adding a layer of his own on Sarkar’s movements as well as Sarkar’s animation experiments with her movement. 

In the bottom left corner is a video of a humanoid figure performing an Odissi dance sequence in three-dimensional space. The figure appears to be a nude female in monochromatic tan tones, with a stone-like texture. The figure possesses human facial features that do not change. The texture emulating the stone sculpture takes the viewer to the luscious temple-walls of Odisha inundated with languorous, erotic, and voluptuous sculptures of the Alasa-Kanyas.

In the top right corner is a video of a humanoid figure performing an Odissi dance sequence in three-dimensional space. The figure is clothed in material that approximates the shape and arrangement of an Odissi dance costume, though the material appears to be inflated white plastic and tan canvas rather than brightly colored silks. The body itself is absent; the clothing appears to be moving on its own. The clothing rests on the absent body as the folds of a Sari echoing, billowing, and landing with the moves generated by Sarkar’s Odissi curves.