On March 28, 2026, I will be presenting work on hand gestures (hastas), hand evolution, and brain evolution. 
In addition to dance, movement, and science, there will be hands-on activities as well, such as making finger puppets and drawing hand gestures. The link to register for this event is here.  

On February 28th, I presented work at the intersection of dance and science to 20 teens and 12 volunteers as part of Mount Sinai's Art and Science Saturday. 
I led the group through warmups and a small movement pattern. We spent the rest of the time talking about hand gestures (hastas) and how they can be thought of as a kind of language. By using a question-based pedagogical framework, I was able to elicit questions that were interesting and relevant to the participants (image below of what participants had to say): 

Image credit: Alyssa Gale, MPH 

Image credit: Veronica Szarejko​ (Director, Art of the Brain) 

In February 2026, I am looking forward to sharing with professionals at Saint Luke Institute a talk entitled "“Movement, Culture, and Healthy Aging”.

Description of talk: Movement, particularly dance, has been shown to promote healthy aging. This workshop will share groundbreaking work bringing together neuroscience with a traditional Indian form of dance called Bharatanatyam for healthy aging. (If comfortable), Participants will also engage in movement and co-create narratives among the group.

Learning objectives:

1. Describe the benefits of movement in general, and Bharatanatyam in particular, from the perceptive of neuronal plasticity for healthy aging.
2. Describe Bharatanatyam, which is a 2,000-year-old form of traditional Indian dance with a vocabulary of hand gestures (known as “hastas”), melody (raga), rhythm (tala), and storytelling using these elements.
3. Demonstrate how various aspects of Bharatanatyam can be used for healthy and creative aging in a culturally sensitive manner. Participants will explore this experientially.​
   

Saint Luke Institute "brings the healing ministry of Christ to priests, deacons, consecrated religious, laity and more, through integrated psychological and spiritual treatment, consultation, and education."

Too often, aging is linked with negative stereotypes. In this virtual event for volunteers of The American Museum of Natural History, I will talk about plasticity, how it changes over time, and what we can do (including dance!) to sustain and maintain plasticity. 
Please contact me if you would like a link to register for the talk, which will be held online on Tuesday, March 10 at 2pm EST!  

I provided several hypotheses on how the practice of Bharatanatyam might promote plasticity and enable healthy aging. I discussed many aspects of the dance form, such as gestures, grounding, balance, as well as additional artistic modalities such as fabric, embroidery, language, sculptures, and iconography. There were close to 25 people in attendance. Below are some reflections and thoughts:

Loosely defined as the perception of the internal state of the body, interoception is gaining considerable attention from the scientific community [1]. This inner sense shapes our perception, actions, behavior, habits, and generally, the way we feel in our bodies [2]. By linking brain and body, interoception has also been suggested to be linked to motivation and response to stress [3]. Some of the features of interoception are paying attention to one's internal state, localizing its manifestation in the body, and monitoring it over time [4]. 

All dance has the capacity to shape our interoception by linking physical movements with internal states. Bharatanatyam is perhaps uniquely suited to inform interoception, and even study it scientifically. We use hand gestures or hastas to tell stories - do the placement of the hands, repetition of gestures, and the emotions that accompany the gestures change how we feel in our body over time? Do the nuanced movements of the gaze have the power to frame our internal state? 

​Overall, can regular practice of ​Bharatanatyam shape and regulate the interplay between mind, brain, and body? 

PC: Libby Lussenhop at Aaron Davis Hall (Sept 2025) 

Citations:

1. "Making sense of interoception" Spring 2024, Harvard Medicine, The Magazine of Harvard Medical School. Link here. 
2. "Mapping the Sense of What’s Going On Inside" November 2025, The New York Times. Link here. 
3. Chen WG, Schloesser D, Arensdorf AM, Simmons JM, Cui C, Valentino R, Gnadt JW, Nielsen L, Hillaire-Clarke CS, Spruance V, Horowitz TS, Vallejo YF, Langevin HM. The Emerging Science of Interoception: Sensing, Integrating, Interpreting, and Regulating Signals within the Self. Trends Neurosci. 2021 Jan;44(1):3-16. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2020.10.007. PMID: 33378655; PMCID: PMC7780231. Link here. 
4. Khalsa, S. S., Adolphs, R., Cameron, O. G., Critchley, H. D., Davenport, P. W., Feinstein, J. S., Feusner, J. D., Garfinkel, S. N., Lane, R. D., Mehling, W. E., Meuret, A. E., Nemeroff, C. B., Oppenheimer, S., Petzschner, F. H., Pollatos, O., Rhudy, J. L., Schramm, L. P., Simmons, W. K., Stein, M. B., Stephan, K. E., … Interoception Summit 2016 participants (2018). Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap. Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 3(6), 501–513. Link here.