Dance Matters Performing India on Local and Global Stages

This volume presents a multidisciplinary perspective on dance scholarship and practice as they have evolved in India and its diaspora, outlining how dance histories have been written and re-written, how aesthetic and pedagogical conventions have changed and are changing, and how politico-economic shifts have shaped Indian dance and its negotiation with modernity.. Written by eminent and emergent scholars and practitioners of Indian dance, the articles make dance a foundational socio-cultural and aesthetic phenomena that reflects and impacts upon various cultural intercourses -- from art and architecture to popular culture, and social justice issues. They also highlight the interplay of various frameworks: global, national, and local/indigenous for studying these diverse performance contexts, using dance as a critical lens to analyse current debates on nationalism, transnationalism, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial politics. At the performace level, some articles question the accepted divisions of Indian dance (‘classical’, ‘folk’, and ‘popular’) and critique the dominant values associated with classical dance forms. Finally, the book brings together both experiential and objective dimensions of bodily knowledge through dance.

Introduction byPallabi Chakravorty & Nilanjana Gupta PART ICan the Subaltern Dance 1. Dancing off-stage: Nationalism and its 'Minor Practices' in Tamil Nadu byKalpana Ram 2. Another Time, Another Space…Does the Dance Remain the Same? by Urmimala Sarkar-Munshi 3. Folk Culture in Front of Serious Challenge: A Case Study on the Tribes of North Bengal by Samar Biswas &Somnath Bhattacharjee 4. The Problematics of Tradition and Talent in Indian Classical Dance bySreeparna Ghosal 5. Dance for Recovery, Healing, and Rehabilitation: Kolkata Sanved Way bySohini Chakraborty PART II Globalization of Indian Dance 6. The Ownership of Indian Classical Dancing and Its Performance on the Global StagebyMandrakanta Bose 7. Negotiating Identity: Dance and Religion in British Hindu Communities byAnn David 8. Local/Global Histories of Bharatnatyamy by Payal Ahuja PART IIIAesthetics Embodied and Embedded 9. It Matters For Whom You Dance: Audience Participation in Rasa Theory byUttara Coorlawala 10. Manipuri Dance: A Lyrical Manifestation of Devotionby Sruti Bandhopadhyayay 11. Swayed by Love: Dance in the Vaishnava Temple Imagery of Bengal byPika Ghosh 12. Remixed Practice: Bollywood Dance and the Global Indian byPallabi Chakravorty PART IV The Gendered Dancing Body 13. The Daring Within: Speaking Gender through Navanritya byAishika Chakraborty 14. Re-Exporting 'Tradition': The Transcultural Practice of Kathak in Kolkata and the Creation of a New Female Body byMonica Dalidowicz 15. The Lords of Dance: Changing Fortunes byVikram Iyengar PART V Alternative Histories 16. The Politics of Memory: the Rise of the Anti-hero in Kathakaliby Mundoli Narayan 17. Guru Surendranath Jena: Subverting the Reconstituted Odissi Canon byAlessandra Lopez Royo 18. Courtesans and Choreographers: The (Re)Placement of Women in the History of Kathak Dance by Margaret Walker

Pallabi Chakravorty is Assistant Professor, and Acting Director of Dance Program, Swarthmore College, U.S.A. Nilanjana Gupta is Professor of English,and Director, School of Media Communication & Culture, Jadavpur University, Calcutta.