Performances

  • CELSODriven Arts Collective. San Francisco, 2021–2023. CLTC Cybersecurity Arts Contest winner.
  • Digital MilkDriven Arts Collective. San Francisco.
  • Zaga FilmDriven Arts Collective. San Francisco, 2020. Emergence Dance Festival, 2021.
  • Quarant Time FilmDriven Arts Collective. Emergence Dance Festival, 2020.
  • KhoraODC. San Francisco, 2019.
  • com//ense6th International Conference of Movement and Computing. Tempe, Arizona, 2019.
  • vo//cabRAW Residency, SAFEHouse Arts. San Francisco, 2019.
  • a/lign55Live Art Platform. Phoenix, Arizona, 2015 & Slingshot Festival. Athens, Georgia, 2015.
  • NritarutyaPart-time dancer. Bangalore, India, 2010–2014.

Research

Talks & Workshops

About

Varsha Iyengar is a creative technologist and movement practitioner based in San Francisco, USA and Bangalore, India. Her work largely involves integrating movement and technology to create multifaceted immersive performance environments.

With formal training in Bharathanatyam and Contemporary dance, Varsha has been a dancer for Nritarutya, an Indian Contemporary dance company in Bangalore, India. She is also a founding member of Driven Arts Collective, a California-based collective where she has developed works such as CELSO, Khora, and Digital Milk, which explores themes of digital futures co-authored by humans and AI-driven emerging technologies. These pieces have been presented at CounterPulse, SAFEhouse Arts, and ODC in San Francisco, supported by grants such as the CLTC.

Her academic work and research based on data capture and analysis of vernacular movement have been presented at multiple conferences including MOCO and CHI. She also sits on the Board of Directors at CCAM, an artist-run platform based in Chicago.

Varsha’s work is rooted in inquiry and multidisciplinary collaboration, inviting equitable and critical examinations of technology within an arts practice. Her current project, Decoding Digital Bodies, investigates how movement influences robotics research and development, with a particular focus on Boston Dynamics Spot robots. She is also directing and producing an international project based in India, Where Things Go, which is an exploration of the intricate and often unseen relationships we have with everyday objects and technological tools.

Write to varshaiyengar177@gmail.com

Performances

Present

2024–26 · 4 works
Solo · 2026

Digital Vocab 2.0

Context
Unrehearsed Artist Residency, Nava Dance Theatre
Cohort
2026, seven South Asian dance & movement artists
Shown
Virtual work-in-progress sharing, Sept 2026

A solo made across the Unrehearsed residency, a virtual program that funds South Asian movement artists across genres and geographies. [Add one line on what the solo asks.]

Video16:9
WIP sharing excerpt, 60–90 s loop
Photo3:4
Rehearsal still, full body
Photo4:3
Process: notebook, screen or setup
Collaboration · 2026

CodeMoves

Lead
The Movement Project · Lauren Bedal (technology lead)
Artists
Miryam Gabrielle, Elyse Morckel
Shown
Sandefur Theatre, Akron · Jun 6
Hangar Theatre, Detroit · Jun 11
Funder
Knight Foundation, Knight New Work

How can AI tools support choreographic practice for artists without technical backgrounds? The project ended in an evening of new works by Gabrielle and Morckel alongside a lecture demonstration on AI in choreography.

My partLed the unboxing sessions that put dancers and technologists on equal footing. Built prototypes used in the show. Led the theatre recce for projection and setup.
Black and white: three dancers on a studio floor smile at a laptop
Prototype interface: a quilt of coloured fabric patches with two numbered zones, beside controls for pose detection, projector and zone sounds
Video21:9
Prototype in use on stage
Photo3:4
Performance, Akron or Detroit (credit photographer)
Photo3:4
Lecture demo
Photo3:4
Team / rehearsal
Research · Film · Paper · 2024–26

Decoding Digital Bodies

Team
Jessica Rajko, Varsha Iyengar, Max Merlin, Ivy He, Elijah Lennington
Film
/slice — Kinetic Dance Film Festival, NYC, Jan 2026
Paper
“Choreographic and Improvisational Approaches to Interrogating Robotic Systems,” MOCO ’26, Montpellier
Talk
CRCI, Rhode Island, Jun 2025

Where does dance end up inside a robot? The Robots Edition studies Boston Dynamics’ Spot and its choreography tools to trace how gesture and dance shape, and haunt, robotics development. Whose embodied aesthetics become computable, and who gets credit?

01
02
03
04
05
06

↑ Six /slice stills as a sequence, like a contact sheet

A dancer bends low beside Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot in a lab, one hand resting on its arm
Five researchers seated on the floor around Spot, hands on the robot’s body and arm
Direction · In development · 2024–

Where Things Go

Began
Residency at Medai, Bangalore, Dec 2024
Form
Evening-length performance for three movers, live sound, sensors, projection

People and the things they own: a mother’s bracelet, a pair of jeans, a phone. The piece follows objects from purchase to disposal and asks what consumption and technological dependency are doing to us, in urban India especially. Built over two years by breaking the group’s personal stories down and rebuilding them until a narrative held.

Photo3:4
Object portrait
Photo1:1
Object portrait
Photo21:9
Live projection with objects

Past

Performance · 2010–2023

Research

Papers

Peer-reviewed · 2016–26

Talks & Screenings

About

fig. 2 — assemble a body

run your cursor (or finger) over the dots