From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Indian Classical Dancer
Navtej Singh Johar
(born 8 August 1959)
[1]
is an Indian
Sangeet Natak Akademi award
-winning
Bharatnatyam
exponent and
choreographer
. He is also an
LGBTQ
activist.
[2]
[3]
Life and career
[
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]
Johar is faculty at
Ashoka University
, Sonipat.
[4]
He is trained in
Bharatanatyam
at
Kalakshetra
, a dance school of
Rukmini Arundale
at
Chennai
, and with
Leela Samson
at the
Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra
in
New Delhi
. He also studied later at the Department of
Performance Studies
,
New York University
.
[5]
He has received numerous fellowships for his research such as Times of India Fellowship (1995), the Charles Wallace Fellowship (1999).
Johar has collaborated with composers Stephen Rush,
Shubha Mudgal
and installation artist
Sheba Chhachhi
among others. He has also acted in
Earth
by
Deepa Mehta
and
Khamosh Pani
by
Sabiha Sumar
.
[6]
He is among the few male dancers of classical form in India and first
Sikh
to have taken to the art form.
[7]
Activism
[
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]
In June 2016, Johar and five others, belonging to
sexual and gender minority
community, filed a writ petition in the
Supreme Court of India
challenging
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code
.
[8]
This resulted in the 2018 landmark judgment in
Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India
in which the Supreme Court unanimously declared the law unconstitutional "in so far as it criminalizes consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex".
[9]
References
[
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]