Beginning with his seminal work in New York, Avant-Garde Composer, Multi- Instrumentalist and Music Theorist Manjunan Gnanaratnam has worked extensively as an inter-disclipinary artist within the context of modern, post modern, contemporary dance and performance art. He has composed for and collaborated with numerous choreographers and dance companies both here in the United States and abroad and with his extensive experience in Limon, Graham, Cunningham, Wigman, Hawkins, Holm, Horton, Post Modern forms, Improvisational methods, Release methods, Fusion methods and other technique forms/movement vocabularies, he has been a musician for master classes for numerous choreographers including among others, H.T Chen, Bill Evans, Bill T Jones, Liz Lerman, Susan Marshall, Clyde Morgan, David Parsons, Don Redlich, Robin Steim, Elizabeth Streb, Dan Wagoner. His current research and practice within the context of Music and Dance, include explorations in Physical Computing Methodologies, control of the physical world/choreography through MIDI, which he began in 1990 at the Computer Music Labs at the Department of Dance, State University of New York at Brockport while a faculty musician, and Choreoperiodocity and Optimum Creative Dialog principals in live performance between Dance and Music, begun at Barker Center for Dance, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 2004 while a Composer/Staff Musician there. Manju's current and future projects include "STEEL" an evening length performance art installation, based on his Optimum Creative Dialog principals between music and dance during performance, utilizing the Weisman Art Museum structure to explore structural fludity through sound and movement and the reconstruction of composer Karlheinz Stockhausen's work "Ceylon" to be set on choreography by the nATANDA Dance Theatre of Sri Lanka. Manju has served on numerous panels, with the most recent being "100 years of Sound and Choreography: The Evolution and Praxis of a Collaborative Art Form" for the SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Art; "Music and Dance" for the National Association of Schools of Dance [NASD]; Exploratory committee member, Target Studio for Creative Collaborations, Weisman Art Museum; Exploratory committee member, India Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and presented papers with the most recent, on his book research, "Contemporary Dance [Modern/Western Movement Vocabulary]: The catalyst for deviation and extension in Post Structural Sound, Choreoperiodocity, Optimum Creative Dialog and the Dunnist Period in Music" at the 20th anniversary conference of the International Guild of Musicians in Dance. He is the founder of Open Source Dance, a comprehensive methodology developed from his research which focuses on providing a multifaceted transitional environment for a dancer, from student to professional. Born and raised in Sri Lanka, he lives and explores in the United States.