Ashish Mohan Khokar

🪔 About

Ashish Mohan Khokar, born on February 29, 1960, in Baroda, Gujarat, India, is a distinguished Indian dance historian, critic, author, archivist, and editor. He is the son of pioneering art scholar and collector Prof. Mohan Khokar and senior Bharatanatyam Guru M.K. Saroja. Khokar received training in various classical dance forms, including Kathak from Guru Kundanlal Gangani, Odissi from Guru Mayadhar Raut and Aloka Panikar, Western Ballet from Marianne Balchin, Bharatanatyam from Shanta Raghavan (a disciple of Swarna Saraswathy), and Kuchipudi from Guru Krishna Kumar. He holds a Masters in Indian History from Delhi University and is a PhD candidate at Mumbai University. Throughout his extensive career spanning over four decades, Khokar has made significant contributions to the documentation and promotion of Indian classical dance. He served as a dance critic for The Times of India for nearly a decade in New Delhi and for five years in Bangalore. Since 1998, he has been the editor and publisher of "attendance," India's sole yearbook dedicated to dance, which is now in its 25th anniversary year (2024) and hailed as a "bible of arts." He is the Curator-Director of The Mohan Khokar Dance Archives of India, continuing the legacy of his father's monumental collection, which has been donated to the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in Delhi, where he serves as Project Advisor-Curator since 2018. Khokar has authored over 51 books on Indian arts, culture, spirituality, and heritage, with exclusive publishing for dance books under Ekah Bios. He has also been a cultural columnist for publications like The Hindu, India Today group, First City magazine, and Spic Macay's The Eye. From 2008 to 2017, he was a Culture Mentor for the Alliance Francaise Dance DISCourse series, World Dance Day, and annual awards. He chairs the Dance History Society and has instituted the "attendance awards" to recognize young talents in dance. Additionally, he is a visiting professor at various universities, including Baroda, Bangalore, Mauritius, and Paris, and has developed 85 modules on Indian dance history for UGC's M.A. level course.