Daniel Phoenix Singh is currently working as the Executive Director of Kalanidhi Dance in Maryland and also serves on the board of Arts Administrators of Color Network. He has worked in Queer Communities, South Asian Communities, Informational Technology, the field of dance, and in Arts practice, policy, and funding at local and national levels. His identities lie at the intersection of his socialist, queer, antiracist, South Asian, immigrant, artist, and advocate roles in the various communities he inhabits.
He acknowledges the complicity and internalization of castist, colonial, and racial oppressions in his life and works hard to approach issues from an anti-caste, anticolonial, and antiracist perspective. He has been influenced by the work of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Justin Laing, Toni Morrison, Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (aka Periyar), Arundhathi Roy, Vidhya Shankar, and Rabindranath Tagore, who work from multilayered frameworks.
In his dance practice, Daniel was mentored by Pamela Mathews as curiosity took him from computer science to a dance major in college. He is deeply grateful to Lorry May of the Sokolow Foundation, Harriet Moncure Williams, and Karen Bernstein for helping shape his choreographic voice. Madhavi Mudgal and Leela Samson in India have broadened his perspectives on the space Indian dance forms can occupy both within the body, in the pedagogy, and field of dance.
Daniel works in Bharata Natyam, Modern Dance, and a syncretic blend of the two. He is also a devoted social dancer with practice in Salsa, Merengue, and Argentine Tango. Daniel is a single parent of twin kindergartners who are is most profound teachers.
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