Theatre & Dance Cooperating Graduate Faculty
Professor | Hindi-Urdu
Bollywood Dance, Film and Music, Indian Theatre
saib@hawaii.edu
Dr. Sai Bhatawadekar is a Professor of Hindi-Urdu, a Cooperating Graduate Faculty with the UHM Department of Theatre & Dance, and is a former Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at University of Hawai’i. Her expertise include Bollywood dance, music, film analysis, film history, and film adaptations of literature. She also teaches and publishes in Indian (specifically Marathi) theatre, German-Indian theatre and film connections, Hindi-Urdu and German language pedagogy, East-West cross-cultural studies, and German philosophical interpretations of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. With skills in camera work and editing, she has started making short films since the pandemic.
She was the co-director, choreographer, lyricist, music supervisor/co-composer, singer, dramaturge, and language coach of A Midsummer Night’s Bollywood Dream – A Kennedy Mainstage production in 2019, for which she received the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Meritorious Achievement Award and the Hawaii State Theatre Council’s Po’okela Awards. For her creative pedagogy, she has also received the university-wide Board of Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Teaching and the “Master Teacher” title by the Center for Teaching Excellence. She has received the Department of Education’s grant through the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program ($122,624.00 for the years 2023-25) for her proposal to develop Digital Storytelling as a tool to innovate an interdisciplinary curriculum for Hindi and Urdu language learning and South Asian Studies.
Her original dance piece RRegh (from the 2021/22 Mainstage dance concert Sphere) was selected at the national level by the American College Dance Association (ACDA) and shown during its nationwide Virtual Gala Concert on May 1, 2022. Click here to read UH News Article.