Choreographer · Performer · Teacher
Roger Sinha
Choreographer
Why They Matter
Sinha's work remains vital to dancers and choreographers exploring intercultural practice and the integration of technology with embodied movement. By refusing the logic of fusion—where different traditions are blended into undifferentiation—and instead maintaining the specificity of Bharata…
Biography
Roger Sinha is a Canadian choreographer, dancer, teacher, and artistic director born in London on 30 August 1959 to an Indian father and Armenian mother. He moved to Canada at age eight and trained at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre before settling in Montréal, where he founded Sinha Danse in 1991. Over more than three decades, Sinha has created over twenty works that weave together contemporary dance, Bharata Natyam, martial arts, theatre, spoken word, and interactive technology into a coherent artistic language. Rather than treating these elements as decorative references, Sinha's choreography makes cultural encounter and technological mediation structural parts of the work itself. His pieces have been documented in Olympic and Expo contexts, and his work *Burning Skin* was adapted for CBC's *In Performance* in 1994, marking a significant milestone in his engagement with screen-based dance. Through Sinha Danse, he continues to develop an intercultural movement vocabulary that challenges the boundaries between dance forms and media.
Legacy & Impact
Sinha's work remains vital to dancers and choreographers exploring intercultural practice and the integration of technology with embodied movement. By refusing the logic of fusion—where different traditions are blended into undifferentiation—and instead maintaining the specificity of Bharata Natyam, martial arts, and contemporary dance within a single choreographic frame, Sinha demonstrated that cultural dialogue could be structural rather than decorative. His decades of practice at the intersection of dance, theatre, spoken word, and interactive media continue to model how artists can build careers that honour multiple lineages without resolving them into synthesis.
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