Sarah Morelli

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Institutional Affiliation

University of Denver

Lamont School of Music

Education

• Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, Harvard University, 2007
• BA, Music and Russian, Dickinson College, 1995

Regional and Thematic Interests

South Asia
Literature and the Arts

Profile

Sarah Morelli is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2007). She currently serves as President of the Society for Asian Music, Book Reviews Co-editor for the journal Ethnomusicology, and as a member of the Editorial Board for South Asian Dance Intersections.

Active as a scholar and performer, Sarah’s work is grounded in extensive training with kathak dance master Pandit Chitresh Das and Hindustani music maestro Ali Akbar Khan (voice and sarod). She has also studied with noted disciples including Pandit Rajeev Taranath, George Ruckert, Gretchen Hayden, Steve Oda, and with retired baiji performing artist Madhuri Devi Singh.

Her monograph, A Guru’s Journey: Pandit Chitresh Das and Indian Classical Dance in Diaspora (University of Illinois Press, 2019), is an ethnographic account of Pandit Das’s dance company and school, his unique contributions to kathak, and processes of cultural transformation in artistic diasporas. This research has also led to publications in The Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States, Anthropological Notebooks, and College Music Symposium Forums.

Sarah is co-editor of Music and Dance as Everyday South Asia (Oxford University Press, 2024), a 30-chapter volume advocating for inclusive, comprehensive, and embodied approaches to the study of South Asian music and dance. She also authored the Instructor’s Manual for the college-level world music textbook Soundscapes (W.W. Norton, 3rd ed.) and is co-editing The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethnomusicology with Sarah Weiss and Rachel Ong Shu Ying.

As a kathak performer, Sarah has presented full solos and leading roles at venues ranging from the Royal Opera House in Mumbai and LA’s Ford Amphitheatre to Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry. She is a founding soloist with the Leela Dance Collective, which unites leading kathak artists across the U.S. to collaboratively advance a shared vision for kathak’s future. She is also a member of the Temporal Taal Collective, a cross-cultural ensemble that weaves together Indian classical music, jazz, and global traditions to create new, immersive performance experiences.

In Colorado, Sarah is the founder and director of Leela Denver, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to nurturing the next generation of kathak artists and aficionados. Through training, mentorship, and public performances, Leela Denver supports students at all levels while cultivating a deeper appreciation for South Asian music and dance within the broader community.

Selected Publications

Forthcoming. Tales of a Modern Guru: Pandit Chitresh Das and Indian Classical Dance in Diaspora. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Forthcoming. “‘A Superior Race of Strong Women': Negotiating Power, Race and Gender through North Indian Classical Dance in the San Francisco Bay Area.” In America’s Musical Diversity. ed. Kip Lornell and Anne Rasmussen. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Second edition (First ed. Musics of Multicultural America, Schirmer, 1997).

2010. “Intergenerational Adaptation in North Indian Kathak Dance.” Anthropological Notebooks. 16(3): 77-91.