Yamuna Sangarasivam

Yamuna Sangarasivam is a Sri Lankan-American dancer, academic and writer. She was well known for dancing with Michael Jackson during the shooting of the video song Black or White (1991). She works as a professor of Sociology & Anthropology at Nazareth University in New York. She also currently works as a director of the Women & Gender Studies Program at Nazareth College.

Biography

She was born and raised in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. Her father was of Singaporean-Ceylonese origin while her mother was from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She pursued an interest in dancing at the age of six. She initially learned the classical dance, Bharatanatyam. She also learned the classical dance, Odissi under the guidance of Gangadhar Pradhan, while she was staying in Odisha for her studies. She also studied western classical piano and Tamil carnatic voice. She emigrated with her family members and settled in the United States when she was only nine years old. Prior to moving to the US permanently, she lived in Sri Lanka and North Borneo for some time.

Career

Sangarasivam completed her Bachelor of Arts in Musicology and Piano in 1990 at the University of Minnesota. She pursued her master's degree in Anthropology and Ethnochoreology at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1992. She obtained her Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at the Syracuse University in 2000.

She rose to prominence and limelight following her duet dance performance with iconic dancer Michael Jackson, which featured in the 1991 song Black or White. The song was eventually premiered in over 27 countries, targeting a wider audience range of 500 million. She received the opportunity to dance alongside Michael Jackson after being selected as one of the dancers amongst 3,000 participants at an audition conducted by Jackson himself, calling for ethnic and modern dancers for his single Black or White. Yamuna's duet with Jackson was shot at a location that brought the Los Angeles expressway to a standstill temporarily, barring private vehicles from entering the expressway in order to pave the way to film both Jackson and Yamuna with stunt drivers. The shooting took place for nearly 14 hours.

She has engaged in teaching and research on various fields including nationalism, terrorism, social conflict, cultural anthropology, women and gender studies, intersectionalities of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She published a bibliography titled Nationalism, Terrorism, Patriotism: A Speculative Ethnography of War (2021) which was based on the tactics of suicide bombings deployed by the militants representing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during its fight against the Government of Sri Lanka during the 26-year old Sri Lankan Civil War.