Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India (Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia, 2) 9819973589, 9789819973583

Table of contents :
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
1 Introduction: All That is Dance
1.1 Searching for ‘All that is Dance’ in India
1.2 Critical Dance Studies: The Need and the References
1.3 Ground Zero
1.4 The Past in the Present: ‘MARG’—a Magazine of Architecture and Art and the First Dance Seminar by Sangeet Natak Akademi
1.5 Museumization and the Discourse
1.6 Thoughts on Teaching Critical Dance Studies for Master’s Degree Students in India: About Continuity and Change
1.7 ‘Indian’ Dance: Looking at Dance History Anthropologically
1.8 Dance as Human Communication/Connection and a Register of Changing Human Conditions
1.9 Resisting Neocolonization: Dancing—Writing—Agency
1.10 Reviewing the Field in the Pandemic Times
1.11  Positioning the Chapters
1.12 Chapterization—Meanderings and Criticality
References
2 Bodies that Dance: Critical Frames of Reference
2.1 My Body-Story: The Past in the Present Practice, Aesthetics, and Control
2.2 Bodies That Move/are Moved
2.3 Understanding the Body Discourse in the Context of Dance in India
2.4 From Prehistory Till Date
2.5 The Archival Body: The Body of the [Dancing] Girl of Mohenjodaro
2.6 Bhimbetka Rock Art—Ensemble Performative Actions Documented in History
2.7 Sculptures, Paintings, Natyasastra and the Documented Bodily Presences: References to Antiquity
2.8 Docility Through Knowledge: Bodies in Training
2.9 Everyday Bodies: Labour and Socialization in the Practices of Everyday
2.10 Ableism, Age, and Differently Abled Bodies in Dance
2.11 Resistive Bodies: “Critical Moves. Steps We Must Take”
2.12 The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Flashmob
References
3 Understanding Categorization—The ‘Tribal,’ the ‘Folk’, and the ‘Classical’ Dance Forms
3.1 Setting the Context
3.2 Case Study 1—Hornbill Festival
3.3 Case Study 2: Kalbeliya—Past to Present
3.4 Case Study 3: On Invention and Commitment to Classical Dances—Authoring and Authenticating the Portrayal of National Culture
3.5 Making Sense of Standard Categorization: Folk, Tribal, and Classical Dances as [De]contextualized Terms
3.6 Colonial Worlding and Perpetuated Exclusions
3.7 Presence and Representation
3.8 Building the Presence
3.9 Representation
3.10 Anthropological Implications of the Word ‘Authentic’: Dance as Community Knowledge
3.11 Allotment of Spaces for Folk and Classical Dances
3.12 The ‘Bedrocks’ and the Rocky Terrains of Continuity
3.13 Participation Versus Presentation
3.14 ‘Training and Preservation’ Versus Increasing Aesthetic Values
3.15 Knowledge, Agency, and Accumulation by Dispossession
3.16 Dance’s Ongoing Problem: Patriarchy-Driven Bias Against Seeing It as ‘Work’
3.17 Yet Another Look at the World of Classical Dances
3.18 Summing Up: Thinking of Calendars
References
4 Patriarchy and the [In]visible Line of Control: Power Structures and Space Making
4.1 Women Dancers in a Patriarchal Dance Ecology
4.2 A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India
4.3 Performance and the Public: Pushing the Reading of Intersectionality
4.4 Two Cases from the Other End of the Social Spectrum: Nachni and Lavani
4.5 Making a Living Through Performance: Validating the Precarious Existence Within Family
4.6 Living through/for Performance and Becoming Absent/Dying as Soon as the Performance Finishes
4.7 Presence, Aliveness, and the Issues of ‘Pleasure’ Countering ‘Precarity’
4.8 Registering the ‘Cultural Struggle’ of the Lavani Performers: Holding Space in Discourse
4.9 The ‘Ideal’ Space for the Woman Dancer: Classical Dance as a Culturally Secure Space
4.10 The Nation Performed
4.11 The Timeless Image of the Woman in Dance
4.12 Queering the Space Beyond Binary
4.13 Performances as ‘Doing’: A Clear and Present Statement of ‘Being’
4.14 Roots of Discontent Amidst Assertion of Aesthetics
4.15 Analysing the Roots of Discontent
4.16 The Contentious Issue of Labour, Privilege, and Dispossession
4.17 Patriarchy and Perpetuated Humiliation
4.18 Attempts at Taming, Tameness, Control, and Resistance to Modes of Disciplining
4.19 Summing up: The Everyday Life of a Dancer 1887
References
5 The Modern and the Contemporary in the Context of Dance in India
5.1 Offering an Auto-ethnography as an Introduction: Shaping of My Contemporary
5.2 Negotiating Roles: Performing Rama or Being Rama?
5.3 The Warning Bells of Change
5.4 Remembering, Re-analysing, Regretting
5.5 Looking for the Modern and Contemporary in Dance
5.6 Rabindranath Tagore and His Contribution to ‘Modern’ Dance in India
5.7 Uday Shankar’s Explorations with the ‘Modern’ Vocabulary of Indian Dance
5.8 The Problem of Nomenclature and Changing Ecology in Dance
5.9 The Term ‘Contemporary’ and Its Problems
5.10 Our Multiple Contemporaries
5.11 Mode of Generating Sustainability
5.12 ‘Assertion of the Present Against an Arbitrarily Imposed Definition’ (Johar, 2021)
5.13 A Space in Transition
5.14 Individual Experience and the Corporeal Schema
5.15 Vikram Iyengar, a Kolkata-Based Dancer/Choreographer/Scholar Provides the Questions that Frame This Section
5.16 Aastha Gandhi’s Response, Delhi, 2020
5.17 An Ensemble Process of Creative Exploration and Performance—“Detritus: We Are What We Throw Away”. (Concept and Curation: Paramita Saha)
5.18 Masoom Parmar on Dancing in the Current Times
5.19 Meghna Bhardwaj (Delhi) on Her Multi-media Work “Yarning”
5.20 Patronage, Decolonization/Neocolonization, and the Contemporary Dancing Body in India
5.21 The Crisis, Decolonization, and the Clear and Present Danger of Neocolonization
References
6 To Be Continued: Thoughts on Dance as Response, Responsibility, and Resistance
6.1 Dance and the Social
6.2 Dancing Compliance
6.3 Interrogating the Scope of Looking for Agency and Politics in Choreography
6.4 Responding as the Political and Responsibilities as the Existential
6.5 Chandralekha: The Radical Feminist Choreographer and the Choreography of “Open Body and Open Mind”
6.6 Choreographing the Open Body of Padmini Chettur in Sloka
6.7 Raga: Reading of Alternative Sexuality?
6.8 Sharira (The Body): The Universe Made Out of the Male and the Female Principles
6.9 Viewing Chandralekha’s Major Choreographic Works
6.10 Maya Krishna Rao—Reacting to Here and Now/Developing Meaningful Content
6.11 Maya Krishna Rao’s ‘Walk’: In Response to the Delhi Gang Rape and Murder
6.12 Event 2: Walking as a Bodily Strategy: The ‘Walk’ as a Vocabulary
6.13 Art as Support/Response
6.14 Alokananda Roy: “It Was not just Dance….”
6.15 Choreographing Mediations Around an Alternative Concept of “Work:” Reimagining the Bodies of Survivors of Trafficking
6.16 The Issue of Embodiment and Empowerment
6.17 Redefining “Work” Through Dance and Movement
6.18 Survival
6.19 Reworking Life
6.20 Towards a Pedagogic Analysis of Dance Movement Therapy
6.21 Somatics and the Image of Self
6.22 Kinesics and the Survivor
6.23 Proxemics and Gaze Behaviour
6.24 Haptic Communication
6.25 Proposing a Structure of Progression in DMT
6.26 Summing Up: The Possibility of ‘Committed’ Art
6.27 Post-script: Thoughts on Purpose and Criticality
References
Index

Citation preview

Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India

Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia Volume 2

Series Editor Manujendra Kundu, Kolkata, India Editorial Board Aishika Chakraborty, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India Alberto Guevara, York University, Toronto, Canada Ameet Parameswaran, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Ananda Lal, Jadavpur University (retd.), Kolkata, India Anasuya Subasinghe, University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka Anuradha Kapur, National School of Drama, (retd.), New Delhi, India Bishnupriya Dutt, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Claire Pamment, William & Mary, Williamsburg, USA David V. Mason, Ecumenica Journal, USA Dhrupadi Chattopadhyay, Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University, Mumbai, India Indika Ferdinando, University of the Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka Lata Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Mallarika Sinha Roy, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Partho Datta, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Rajdeep Konar, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Jodhpur, India Rimli Bhattacharya, University of Delhi (retd.), New Delhi, India Sumangala Damodaran, Institute for Human Development, New Delhi, India Syed Jamil Ahmed, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Vasudha Dalmia, University of California, Berkeley, USA

This interdisciplinary series explores cultural formation and evolution by understanding matrices of performance discourse and religious, gender, racial, political and economic complexities. It welcomes proposals on drama, theatre, dance, music, theory and praxis related to Performance Studies from the South Asian region and beyond. It discusses the performance history, diverse practices, customs, and principles prevalent in urban and hinterland spaces. The primary aim of this series is to incorporate not just individual urban voices but to examine the marginalized vocabularies and understand their agency and “affect”-edness. It deals with aesthetic practices or practices that have a stated artistic goal and performances that may be non-artistic in their objectives. The series invites original monographs, edited books, and handbooks.

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India

ISSN 2731-5088 ISSN 2731-5096 (electronic) Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia ISBN 978-981-99-7358-3 ISBN 978-981-99-7359-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Paper in this product is recyclable.

To Manasi, Namrata, and Aditya

Preface

In a curated event, as part of a five-year long project called “Provincializing Dance Studies” (2020–2024) of the Dance Studies Association, Professor Susan Leigh Foster invited me to have an online conversation with senior dancer/scholar Rosalie Jones. That timely conversation made me think about Dipesh Chakraborty’s idea of “Provincializing Europe” and therefore about reimagining and asserting the need to understand the problems with the structure of dance studies that was initially identified as a multi-disciplinary field in the Euro-American University spaces. The subject had entered academic spaces of research much earlier than in India as a formal specialized research focus, without much space for the voices and bodies carrying references of the variety of dance and the dynamic historical/contemporary experiences of political modernity in South Asia. While the Western discourse diversified in a steady manner, the instinctive conservation and conservatism in dance in India kept resisting any new discourse. And here we are, still in a ghettoized space, fighting hard against the problems imposed from within and from outside, where scholarship on dance from India has to be published through foreign publishers and preferably by academics employed in Euro-American spaces to get noticed or read. Thus, this window, created by Prof. Susan Foster for this conversation with dancer/ scholar Rosalie Jones, was a wonderful opportunity to learn about each other and share concerns regarding the state of dance studies in the academic spaces in our respective spaces and also about marginalizations of very different kinds. I also hope this is a step towards an ideal world where I can hope that there will be no centre or margin, no core or periphery for dance studies. With an increasing number of students going away from India to work on dance-related research topics in foreign universities, there is a hope that they shall create multiple strands of knowledge together because we live, do, love, think, write, and film dance in different ways under different circumstances. To begin with, I hope with these interventions, Dance Studies Association’s events shall travel more often to geographies at a distance from the Americas. I dream that more conferences shall be organized in different ‘ground zeroes’, so that those who need to be seen and heard can hope to directly reach such forums, instead of speaking through the voice and films and research of others. I am here to share my personal observations and understandings, which vii

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are of course coloured by the advantages of holding a steady university job in one of India’s premier institutions. I also very tentatively hope to be able to bring the echoes of some of the voices I hear to strengthen my idea of important directions and misgivings. And at this point, I thank Rosalie Jones once again, with whom I have been lucky to share some time exchanging ideas. Thank you so much for your perspectives. Provincializing Dance Studies links to Dipesh Chakraborty’s writing on Europe and that provokes interesting thoughts. Chakraborty’s project was not about rejecting European thought as a whole, but was rather an effort to review the European idea about the superiority of their knowledge, and to let there be a beginning of separate discourses for the margins and by the margins. Though I must confess, I am uncomfortable in even acknowledging that there is a margin and a centre in dance studies. Even if there is some thought about some countries leading the way, as a post-colonial scholar, I think that to begin with we must reject such ideas as a whole. However, I also know that even if I refuse to acknowledge problems, there are several problems, and the principal one is with Euro-American dance studies that imagines itself as something like Chakraborty’s Europe—as the mature holder of knowledge. In comparison there is the tradition-obsessed dance studies from India that only allows scholarship in and around dance history. Even now we spend time managing microhistories, while all new discourses become the realms of the EuroAmerican academic spaces and research. In India, academic scholarship in dance has strengthened the urgency to create an alternative and inclusive way to include embodied practices embedded within the everyday lives of different communities from different parts of the country. It was led by the realization that a strong sense of hierarchization has been created within the dance discourse in India. Superior positions were designated for classical dances that were fashioned and curatorially created from community practices of specific geographies within India. Most everyday activities that included embodied expressions were being excluded as non-specialized mundane participatory activities that did not match the expertise and high-level skills involved in ‘higher’ form of dances. Eventually, the methodology for research in critical dance studies also could not remain bound within the sphere of classical dances. This broadening of the field for an India-specific/centred discourse within dance studies still has a long way to go in order to be at par with the developments in its global counterparts, and dance studies on and in India still remain a space in transition. Deeply indebted to the colonizers for beginning conversations about dance, we also lead our students to readings by Euro-American academia and have only ourselves to blame for falling prey to these systems of control, both in India from internal cultural policing and outside India from an increasingly confused but well-meaning academic community. I sense a certain ghettoization in the discourse, and I may be completely wrong, but I still want to ask a question that is important to me. I see that many scholars from Europe and America still do a lot of research on the ex-colonies. How many dance scholars from ex-colonies choose or are given a choice to focus on some research that is not from their own geographies or the same ecology? It is not a pleasant thought but ghettoization is natural and normal in dance studies. We do it through hierarchization

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of race, marginalization of geographies, religious majoritarianism, class and caste privileges, economic dispossessions, and so many other things. Currently, English is the language of control in academic spaces. A handful of university presses and highly corporatized publishers of books and journals are significant and recognized modes of control too. How many books published in India get to be read and referred in Euro-American spaces? Who reads them? What is this, if not control? My investigation started at the time I was making a transition from being an anthropologist in and from India, to a person who wanted to bring the practicetheory interface into the MA course on Arts and Aesthetics (SAA, JNU) that was making space for dance studies within a multi-disciplinary rubric. I needed to teach this course and had to create two basic modules: (1) dance history specific to India and (2) an introduction to dance theory and aesthetics. Foucault’s account of how power and knowledge are central to the process by which human beings are ‘made subjects’ was the way I was reading our cultural policies. Twenty years have passed since, and I feel dance scholarship from and about India has acquired a significant presence. I also hope that this book will be a useful addition to the excellent range of published material on dance from India. As for the future of critical dance studies in and from India, I can see that the future generation of scholars shall contest the ghettoization that still continues from within and outside India, in the name of showcasing India as a cultural heavyweight in South Asia, and in the years ahead ‘all that is dance’ shall be danced, debated, researched, and written about. New Delhi, India

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

Acknowledgements

The idea of this book was grown over the last twenty years, around and over all the dance that happened in form of doing, watching, discussing, writing, and researching. It is finally becoming a reality, as a part of the Springer book series “Performance Studies and Cultural Discourse in South Asia”, as a result of an intense engagement and persuasion from the series editor Dr. Manujendra Kundu. While the book brings updated versions of selected sections of pre-published research into the current text, it is not a simple collation of my earlier thoughts. I am grateful for the permission to use sections from these essays that were previously published: (1) “Boundaries and Beyond: Problems of Nomenclature in Indian Dance History”, in U. Sarkar Munsi edited Dance: Transcending Borders (1st edition, pp. 78–98). Delhi: Tulika Books © 2008; (2) “A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India”, in S. Bagchi edited Beyond the Private World: Indian Women in the Public Sphere (1st edition, pp. 295–314). Delhi: Primus Books © 2014; (3) “Response and Responsibility: Creative Interventions and the Dancer as a Social Being” in R. Chaturvedi and T. Gupta edited Contemporary Indian Theatre: Theatricality and Artistic Crossovers (1st edition, pp. 87–102). Kolkata: Rawat Publications © 2017; (4) “Towards a Pedagogic Analysis of Dance and Movement Therapy” in T. Prentki and A. Breed edited The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance: Volume Two—Brazil, West Africa, South and South East Asia, United Kingdom, and the Arab World (1st edition, pp. 198–208). London: Routledge © 2020; and (5) “Mediations around an Alternative Concept of “Work:” Re-imagining the Bodies of Survivors of Trafficking,” in “Leveraging Justice” https://csalateral. org/archive/issue/5-2/, eds. Janelle Reinelt and Maria Estrada Fuentes. https://creati vecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. The dancers and/or scholars of all genders, ages, and regions, who have contributed by being patient, tolerant, generous, sharing their dance, knowledge, and insights, make me feel that this discipline is worth teaching and writing about. I want to thank Maya Krishna Rao, Navtej Singh Johar, Sharon Lowen, Bimbabati Devi, Mandeep Raikhy, Surjit Nongmeikapam, Meghna Bhardwaj, Anubhuti Sharma, Amritha Shruthi, Yashoda Thakore, Ananya Chatterjea, Pratibha Jena, Aastha Gandhi, Srabasti Ghosh, Sumedha Bhattacharyya, Paramita Saha, Bipasha Gupta xi

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Roy, Piali Ray Mahashay, Sumedha Bhattacharyya, Mridupankhi Rajkumari, Yaoreipam M. K., Deepshikha Ghosh, Gourab Ghosh, Masoom Parmar, Usham Rojio, and Sangliana Hmate, for helping me sort the cobwebs in my brain that comes with the ‘protected ignorance’1 acquired through distilled and privileged socialization. I have to thank the constant flow of students/scholars engaging in dance studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, for never letting me take this exciting discipline for granted. I especially want to express my gratitude to Parvathy Rajendran from Centre for English Studies, JNU, for helping me with the edits. I want to acknowledge all the scholars who have worked officially and unofficially with me during their research under M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees. The list of names after twenty long years is long, but they have continued to keep me thinking about dancers and their relationships with their bodies and their praxis. These emerging scholars/academics have brought new energies to my research as they learned their way around the discourse in the university. Over and above, I want to acknowledge the master’s degree students who have credited my courses every year since 2004—I learned a lot from all of you. I remain grateful to my institution Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, its founder late Director and my teacher Amala Shankar, and all my friends from there for making the dance ecology we all grew up in so safe, enjoyable, reflexive, intelligent, and vibrant. I thank my colleagues in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies—H. S. Shivaprakash, Rustom Bharucha, Bishnupriya Dutt, Partho Datta, Saumyabrata Chowdhury, and students-turned-colleagues, Ameet Parameswaran and Brahma Prakash—at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, for letting me experiment with teaching tools from praxis and theory, while pushing for criticality in teaching/writing dance. I also wish to record my appreciation for Kavita Singh, who made the dream of practice-theory interface in everyday classes come true by helping to create a dance studio in the School, and to Y. S. Alone for helping with the non-hegemonic readings of dance histories through sculptures and anti-caste discourses. I cannot thank Prof. Lokendra Arambham enough for his help in my efforts to understand dance in the state of Manipur over last 14 years. Over and above all, I thank Samik Bandyopadhyay for continuing to be a mentor and the most willing sounding board, with his critical input. I acknowledge gratefully the role that World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific has played in shaping me as a dancer/scholar with a desire to remain connected to dance studies in India, since 1997, and thank Profs. Mohd. Anis Md. Nor, Yunyu Wang, Lubna Marium, and the late Adrienne Kaeppler, who I miss constantly, for their generous mentoring and support. I also want to thank my colleagues in the fragile ecosystem of dance studies in India—Aishika Chakraborty and Anita Cherian—for being cowriters and partners in projects that have helped me finalize the structures for this book. It is essential to mention two important scholars/friends from across the world, Pallabi Chakraborty and Priya Srinivasan, without whose encouragement

1

“Protected ignorance” is a term used by Y. S. Alone in his essay “Caste Life Narratives, Visual Representation, and Protected Ignorance” (2017).

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and critical inputs, I may not have been able to sustain my interest in continuing this project. Finally, Anomita Sen, A. P. Rajaram, Debanjali Biswas, Akhila Vimal, and Blue Tokai Coffee—Vasant Vihar—this book comes together because of you.

Contents

1 Introduction: All That is Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Searching for ‘All that is Dance’ in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Critical Dance Studies: The Need and the References . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Ground Zero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 The Past in the Present: ‘MARG’—a Magazine of Architecture and Art and the First Dance Seminar by Sangeet Natak Akademi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Museumization and the Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Thoughts on Teaching Critical Dance Studies for Master’s Degree Students in India: About Continuity and Change . . . . . . . . 1.7 ‘Indian’ Dance: Looking at Dance History Anthropologically . . . . 1.8 Dance as Human Communication/Connection and a Register of Changing Human Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.9 Resisting Neocolonization: Dancing—Writing—Agency . . . . . . . . 1.10 Reviewing the Field in the Pandemic Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.11 Positioning the Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.12 Chapterization—Meanderings and Criticality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Bodies that Dance: Critical Frames of Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 My Body-Story: The Past in the Present Practice, Aesthetics, and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Bodies That Move/are Moved . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Understanding the Body Discourse in the Context of Dance in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 From Prehistory Till Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 The Archival Body: The Body of the [Dancing] Girl of Mohenjodaro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Bhimbetka Rock Art—Ensemble Performative Actions Documented in History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2.7

Sculptures, Paintings, Natyasastra and the Documented Bodily Presences: References to Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 Docility Through Knowledge: Bodies in Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 Everyday Bodies: Labour and Socialization in the Practices of Everyday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.10 Ableism, Age, and Differently Abled Bodies in Dance . . . . . . . . . . 2.11 Resistive Bodies: “Critical Moves. Steps We Must Take” . . . . . . . . 2.12 The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Flashmob . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Understanding Categorization—The ‘Tribal,’ the ‘Folk’, and the ‘Classical’ Dance Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Setting the Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Case Study 1—Hornbill Festival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Case Study 2: Kalbeliya—Past to Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Case Study 3: On Invention and Commitment to Classical Dances—Authoring and Authenticating the Portrayal of National Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Making Sense of Standard Categorization: Folk, Tribal, and Classical Dances as [De]contextualized Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Colonial Worlding and Perpetuated Exclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Presence and Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Building the Presence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.9 Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.10 Anthropological Implications of the Word ‘Authentic’: Dance as Community Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.11 Allotment of Spaces for Folk and Classical Dances . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.12 The ‘Bedrocks’ and the Rocky Terrains of Continuity . . . . . . . . . . . 3.13 Participation Versus Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.14 ‘Training and Preservation’ Versus Increasing Aesthetic Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.15 Knowledge, Agency, and Accumulation by Dispossession . . . . . . . 3.16 Dance’s Ongoing Problem: Patriarchy-Driven Bias Against Seeing It as ‘Work’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.17 Yet Another Look at the World of Classical Dances . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.18 Summing Up: Thinking of Calendars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Patriarchy and the [In]visible Line of Control: Power Structures and Space Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Women Dancers in a Patriarchal Dance Ecology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Performance and the Public: Pushing the Reading of Intersectionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

45 51 53 69 71 72 81 85 86 88 91

95 100 103 106 107 110 112 117 121 122 123 126 128 130 131 132 137 138 140 144

Contents

Two Cases from the Other End of the Social Spectrum: Nachni and Lavani . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Making a Living Through Performance: Validating the Precarious Existence Within Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.6 Living through/for Performance and Becoming Absent/ Dying as Soon as the Performance Finishes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.7 Presence, Aliveness, and the Issues of ‘Pleasure’ Countering ‘Precarity’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Registering the ‘Cultural Struggle’ of the Lavani Performers: Holding Space in Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.9 The ‘Ideal’ Space for the Woman Dancer: Classical Dance as a Culturally Secure Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.10 The Nation Performed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.11 The Timeless Image of the Woman in Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.12 Queering the Space Beyond Binary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.13 Performances as ‘Doing’: A Clear and Present Statement of ‘Being’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.14 Roots of Discontent Amidst Assertion of Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.15 Analysing the Roots of Discontent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.16 The Contentious Issue of Labour, Privilege, and Dispossession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.17 Patriarchy and Perpetuated Humiliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.18 Attempts at Taming, Tameness, Control, and Resistance to Modes of Disciplining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.19 Summing up: The Everyday Life of a Dancer 1887 . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xvii

4.4

5 The Modern and the Contemporary in the Context of Dance in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Offering an Auto-ethnography as an Introduction: Shaping of My Contemporary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Negotiating Roles: Performing Rama or Being Rama? . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 The Warning Bells of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Remembering, Re-analysing, Regretting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5 Looking for the Modern and Contemporary in Dance . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Rabindranath Tagore and His Contribution to ‘Modern’ Dance in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Uday Shankar’s Explorations with the ‘Modern’ Vocabulary of Indian Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 The Problem of Nomenclature and Changing Ecology in Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 The Term ‘Contemporary’ and Its Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.10 Our Multiple Contemporaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.11 Mode of Generating Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

150 153 157 160 163 166 168 170 174 175 177 178 179 182 185 187 189 193 193 195 196 197 199 202 205 209 210 213 214

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Contents

5.12 ‘Assertion of the Present Against an Arbitrarily Imposed Definition’ (Johar, 2021) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.13 A Space in Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.14 Individual Experience and the Corporeal Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.15 Vikram Iyengar, a Kolkata-Based Dancer/Choreographer/ Scholar Provides the Questions that Frame This Section . . . . . . . . . 5.16 Aastha Gandhi’s Response, Delhi, 2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.17 An Ensemble Process of Creative Exploration and Performance—“Detritus: We Are What We Throw Away”. (Concept and Curation: Paramita Saha) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.18 Masoom Parmar on Dancing in the Current Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.19 Meghna Bhardwaj (Delhi) on Her Multi-media Work “Yarning” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.20 Patronage, Decolonization/Neocolonization, and the Contemporary Dancing Body in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.21 The Crisis, Decolonization, and the Clear and Present Danger of Neocolonization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 To Be Continued: Thoughts on Dance as Response, Responsibility, and Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Dance and the Social . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Dancing Compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Interrogating the Scope of Looking for Agency and Politics in Choreography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Responding as the Political and Responsibilities as the Existential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Chandralekha: The Radical Feminist Choreographer and the Choreography of “Open Body and Open Mind” . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Choreographing the Open Body of Padmini Chettur in Sloka . . . . 6.7 Raga: Reading of Alternative Sexuality? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8 Sharira (The Body): The Universe Made Out of the Male and the Female Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.9 Viewing Chandralekha’s Major Choreographic Works . . . . . . . . . . 6.10 Maya Krishna Rao—Reacting to Here and Now/Developing Meaningful Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.11 Maya Krishna Rao’s ‘Walk’: In Response to the Delhi Gang Rape and Murder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.12 Event 2: Walking as a Bodily Strategy: The ‘Walk’ as a Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.13 Art as Support/Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.14 Alokananda Roy: “It Was not just Dance….” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

215 217 217 218 219

222 224 225

226 228 231 233 233 236 237 238 241 243 244 245 246 247 248 252 252 255

Contents

6.15 Choreographing Mediations Around an Alternative Concept of “Work:” Reimagining the Bodies of Survivors of Trafficking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.16 The Issue of Embodiment and Empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.17 Redefining “Work” Through Dance and Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.18 Survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.19 Reworking Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.20 Towards a Pedagogic Analysis of Dance Movement Therapy . . . . 6.21 Somatics and the Image of Self . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.22 Kinesics and the Survivor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.23 Proxemics and Gaze Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.24 Haptic Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.25 Proposing a Structure of Progression in DMT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.26 Summing Up: The Possibility of ‘Committed’ Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.27 Post-script: Thoughts on Purpose and Criticality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

xix

257 260 262 263 266 267 270 272 273 274 276 276 277 279

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

About the Author

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi is a social anthropologist specialized in dance studies and a dancer/choreographer. She is a professor and the current dean, teaching critical dance studies and research methodology in performance studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. She is the president of World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific. Her latest books are Uday Shankar and His Transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Modernity, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2022, and Alice Boner Across Arts and Geographies: Shaping the Dance Art of Uday Shankar, published by the Alice Boner Institute, Varanasi in 2021. She has coedited the MARG 75th year Readings on Dance in 2022. Her ongoing research on survival strategies for women survivors of sexual violence has yielded many writings, among which the recent most is “Towards a Pedagogic Analysis of Dance and Movement Therapy” in The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, 2021. Her essay “Being Rama: Playing a God in the Changing Times” (published in Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha edited Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments, 2021) came out of her involvement in the Global Humanities Institute and Melon Foundation funded project “Crisis of Democracy” in 2018–2019.

xxi

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6

Fig. 2.7 Fig. 2.8 Fig. 2.9

Fig. 2.10 Fig. 2.11

Fig. 2.12

A creative dance class being filmed at Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, Kolkata with Uday, Amala and Ravi Shankar present at the site, 1967. The author is the central figure in the front line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The bronze figurine of the dancing girl—front view, from National Museum, Delhi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back view of the dancing girl figurine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Figures at Bhimbhetka rockshelters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sculpture in Ajanta Cave 20, marking a specific and deliberate presence, different from everyday activities . . . . . One of many sculpted figures at the Ajanta caves that projects a female body with exaggerated and stylized angularities, consciously created with a reference to the body’s negotiated relationship with the centre of gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thabal Chongba at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2023 . . . . . Nati dance in 2012, as a part of the International Dance Festival during Dussehra in Kullu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nati, a community dance from Kullu is now in Guinness Book of World Records since 2016, for record participation of women in traditional costumes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A tableau during the republic day Parade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A poster of the Khajuraho Dance Festival 2018 (Collected from Twitter on 15–04-2023, juxtaposing immovable antiquity and live dancing bodies. https://twitter.com/MP_ MyGov/status/964341119524974592) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JNU Flashmob protest at the main gate of the University, 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35 41 41 44 49

50 56 61

62 63

64 73

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xxiv

Fig. 2.13

Fig. 2.14

Fig. 2.15

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6

Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

List of Figures

Screen-grabs of from the video available on YouTube for the animated performance “The Warli Revolt” Accessed on 15 April, 2023. https://www.animationxpr ess.com/latest-news/nature-conservation-looking-beyondvirtual-life-ekabhuya-animation-raises-strong-voice/ . . . . . . . . . . “The Secular Project” by Mandeep Raikhy at the JNU Teacher’s Association event Mosaic in front of its Convention Centre in February, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In an improvised response to the site in “The Secular Project”, the performance space soon shifts to the base of the recently erected flag post at the same venue . . . . . . . . . . . . Santhal dancers near Bolpur, West Bengal, during Basanta Utsab, 2022 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kalbeliya dance is popular and sought after in tourist destinations in Rajasthan. This photograph is of an evening programme where a single woman performer and five male accompanists were performing for visitors and guests at the Neemrana Fort Hotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Madhavi Mudgal at Konark Temple, Odisha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Folk dance festival at the Talkatora Stadium, 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . Daytime rehearsal for Chhau in the village Pitidiri in Purulia 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jyotsna Debi during her Nachni Performance in Purulia, 2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Srabasti Ghosh during a presentation of her own Choreography in Delhi, 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Meghna Bhardwaj in a contemporary dance Presentation in Delhi, 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amritha Sruthi during her presentation in classical style of Bharatanatyam, Delhi, 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kristina Dolinina during a Kathak dance presentation in Delhi, 2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gauri Jadhav, Shakuntalabai Nagarkar and Pushpa Satarkar at Khuli Khidki (Delhi) in 2023, during their Lavani lecture-performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A site-specific dance theatre Ek Sadharan Ladki, based on Tagore’s painting ‘Six seated women’ work, space and music co-created and co-curated by Diya, Ruchika, Amita, Satabisha, Meghna and Urmimala . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Uday Shankar’s choreography ‘Labour and Machinery’ was a part of his feature film ‘Kalpana’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Surjit Nongmeikapam from Manipur makes challenging departures and returns between dance, theatre, everyday movement and skill. ‘Meepao’ is his recent work . . . . . . . . . . . . . Navtej Johar’s choreography Fana’s Ranjha Revisited, 2023 . . . .

75

77

80 86

92 108 109 116 145 146 146 147 148

148

206 207

212 216

List of Figures

xxv

Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6

223

Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4

‘Detritus’ in JNU, Delhi, 2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Yarning’: a multi-sensory, interart project by Meghna Bhardwaj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chandralekha with dancers—Namaskar 1986 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maya Krishna Rao performing during JNU protest . . . . . . . . . . . Alokananda Roy during her project at the Presidency Jail or the Correctional Home in Alipore, Kolkata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kolkata Sanved Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) senior team of practitioners/trainers during a workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . .

226 242 248 256 263

Chapter 1

Introduction: All That is Dance

1.1 Searching for ‘All that is Dance’ in India My project of writing a monograph on critical dance studies in and from India started with the idea of questioning the umbrella term ‘Indian dance’—used to designate all types of dance from and in India—through a geopolitical understanding of this almost bounded and hence identifiable collection of dances. Such an umbrella term erases the unique identities of dance and embodied practices from particular communities, for whom such specific communicative practices work as markers of identity, tools for generating solidarity, and a shared sense of belonging. It also challenges the idea of microspecialities of local and embodied knowledge systems as rhizomic structures within and across regions in the country. ‘Indian dance,’ as an inclusive term, also makes it possible for the state to assert its power to dictate the terms and conditions of belonging to the communities of practitioners, generating a possibility of exclusion if the state-indicated terms are not followed. Such terms are also surveillance mechanisms in themselves, making it possible for the agents of the state to act as the controller of destiny for dance practices and their survival, beyond the niche environment of the community it belongs to.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_1

1

2

1 Introduction: All That is Dance

1.2 Critical Dance Studies: The Need and the References For me, acknowledging the complexity and possibility of using the title Critical Dance Studies1 is to acknowledge the scholars who thought of the realms of dance studies as a critical discourse. It is also to hint at the opening up of a critical discourse on dance as the consolidation of a prolonged wishful thinking about the future path for undergraduate, post-graduate and research programmes on dance (broadly inclusive of history/ historiography, ethnography, philosophy, and analysis.2 That name is now being used globally by major institutions, departments, artists, and dancers. Faced with the urgent task of restructuring the Master’s degree course curriculum for dance studies in the year 2004, I had to decide how I wanted to unpack the term ‘Indian dance,’ before I could even change the course made by the previous faculty at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I started with a few questions to myself: . Which of the practices of the performing arts are eligible to be identified as dance? And why? . Which of the embodied practices are ‘dance’ enough? . What are the standards by which any dance, in or from this geography, could be considered ‘Indian’ enough? . What are the possible disciplinary lenses through which this course needs to enable people to critically engage with dance in and around the Indian context—without becoming too ambitious, or too banal and descriptive like a survey. . How does Critical Dance Studies, for and from India, consciously make space for the multiple voices from Ground Zero, and keep the engagement valid and responsive to the ever-changing scenario of practices/discourses? The above questions are basically about understanding what kind of physical activities could be identified as dance, and why. These questions became the base for developing an understanding of how dance studies in and from India could make its own space within the existing mytho-histories, and colourful and descriptive but deeply hierarchical dance stories that ruled the dance ecology in India till the early 2000s, often in the name of history of dance in India. The methodology of 1

The process of adding the word ‘critical’ to change the name of Dance Studies to ‘Critical Dance Studies’ is energized by the change that the University of California Riverside Dance Department faculty voted for in 2011, to change the name of a course from the previous PhD program in Dance History and Theory (est. in 1993) to the one that emphasizes on criticality as a basic premise. The new focus centred on dancing bodies as integral to various historical, social, cultural, rhetorical, and political connections and processes. Students were given a range of graduate and undergraduate courses that reflected this ethos of dance and dancing bodies as integral to the politico-historical spaces they were a part of. The name change was proposed by two scholars/faculty of the department Marta Savigliano and Priya Srinivasan. The name change was voted in unanimously by all the faculty at the time to reflect on the complex, interdisciplinary processes at the heart of Dance Studies offering a critique of the field, even as it was to offer itself as critical and self-reflexive in its making and unmaking. 2 See Janet O’Shea (2010).

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using archival material, ethnography, and oral history had to be privileged as an alternative practice for introducing discursive rigour. Even though the push for greater academic accountability has still not reached the methodological criticality expected of humanities and social sciences, the academic engagement has gained currency with an increase in the number of scholars engaging with Indian dance in the twenty-first century. Foster’s words ‘Dance studies has long recognized as a central and critical problematic the techniques of research and representation necessary to write about dancing’ (Foster, 1996: xiii). She helps clarify what critical dance studies needed to become in the Indian context. She writes, Dance must consider its constructions, its changes through time, its presents…… [D]ancing, as a cultural practice that cultivates disciplined and creative bodies, as a representational practice that explores rigourously strategies for developing bodily signification, as a cultural endeavour through which cultural change is both registered and accomplished, provides a rich resource for any study of embodiment. (Ibid, 1996: xii)

At the time when the desire to write on all that is dance was taking shape in my mind, the existing material on dance in India (a space with a specific history that needed its own discourses on dance) were uncritical publications on different styles of classical dance, a few written documentations of a few lesser-known ‘folk’ forms, and a series of publications on nationalistic dance history in Magazines such as Marg, (published since 1946) and Sangeet Natak—the quarterly Journal of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, published since 1965. Also note-worthy was the (auto)biographical material about dancers of repute. In my opinion, there was a gap in the way such studies defined what dance is, beyond the proscenium imagination it had already acquired, which left out the other functional qualities that dance fulfilled for everyday human existence in India. Hence the ground for critical dance studies was already prepared by the absences and marginalizations, rather than what was presented, preserved, and promoted as ‘Indian’ dance.

1.3 Ground Zero In the last thirty-five years or more, dance studies have begun to force its way into the Indian academic arena, even though its progress has been without much support from the university system. It has been too slow and unsure of its utility and focus areas. Since it’s very first appearance, it has been appropriated within Western dance research on world cultures and dance, and also within anthropological and ethnochoreological discourses. Western scholars found the dances/dancers in India to be a diverse area to explore, away from their already crowded field. The first generation of the now well-known Indian dance scholars also began their journeys to different universities in the US and UK in the eighties. Much of the intellectually stimulating philosophical discourse on body as the political/cultural/resistive tool and philosophical research remained largely controlled by the Western scholars—not only for South

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Asia, but also for other parts of the world—who were always accessing different “ground zeros” only through specific fieldworks. The post-colonial shifts continued to facilitate knowledge flow from ex-colonies, such as India, to the West, willingly accepting to continue the hierarchy of knowledge. The ground zero continued to be the ‘ethnographic informant’ for practices and living traditions deeply entrenched in the life and time within this geopolitical space. The ground zero did not only make itself available, it gained as well, through the research and publications of the Western as well as migrant South Asian academics, for whom the claims regarding their past roots, as their own cultural and embodied knowledge bank, was important for their post-colonial subjectivity. While at risk of getting disconnected from the everyday realities of dance in and from India, and its economic, social, cultural, educational, political, gender, and patronage-related implications, such diasporic scholarships and their largely marginal spaces within dance studies continued to hold the fort with great deal of academic rigour, zeal, and passion. They were maintained through the links established by Euro-American university requirements, as well as the available discursive tools developed in the West. Two other categories of scholarship emerged as important ways of strengthening the Western discourse on dance in India. The first one that needs to be acknowledged is the important space of South Asian Studies. Given some space within the subjects of history and literature, scholars made important contributions by studying colonization, social reforms and dance in parts of India. These were largely historical/ cultural studies and made an extremely important contribution to the knowledge on dance, but they also strengthened some already visible mainstream histories through their research. The focus was specifically on colonial and post-colonial dance history in and from India, and most of the critical discourse was focused on dance reforms and classical dances from southern Hindu traditions of India. One such important focus was, and continues to be, on the history of Bharatanatyam and its classicization process.

1.4 The Past in the Present: ‘MARG’—a Magazine of Architecture and Art and the First Dance Seminar by Sangeet Natak Akademi One must note that dance was considered important enough to write about and document—within the national framework of culture, and in the history of the arts and knowledge. The first publication of the MARG magazine, Volume 1, No. 1 in October 1946,3 and the organization of the First Dance Seminar organized by Sangeet Natak Akademi in Delhi, in 1958, saw the beginning of engaging with

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Marg continues its journey through a long 77 years, having prioritized dance as one of its principle focuses. It has published several special volumes on dance, and innumerable articles on regional dance genres, as well as classical dances.

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writing dance in organized forums. While MARG steadily published essays, photoessays, reviews, and interviews of dance, dancers and dance films over the years, it also continuously created a remarkable archive for future scholars conducting research on the history of dance over the last seventy-seven years. MARG’s active role in documenting the reforms and classicization process of dance in a newly independent India needs to be acknowledged, even if it may have played a critical role in the hierarchization of dance and dancing communities, as per the mandates of the cultural policies regarding the recognition and legitimization of individuals, communities, pedagogies, and assimilations over the years that followed. Dance history—seen from a position of class/caste privilege is given a preference in such writings—sees representations of a certain Brahminic aesthetic, hyper-gendering through excesses in terms of emphasis on dresses/ornamentations/postures, and a clear preference for certain forms of bodily and movement representations over creating a visibility and presence for the range of dance and dancing bodies in India. In other words, a certain selection process operated in such representations, which were deeply influenced by the logic of Brahminic aestheticization, and was never questioned. Instead, that choice was legitimized by rendering all other categories of dance and movement-based practices as substandard, non-specialized, ritualistic, or ethnic. The proceedings of the first Dance Seminar (edited by the well-known dance critic Sunil Kothari) was published in four volumes.4 Seminar papers presented by different master-teachers, policymakers, critics, historians, and dancers may be broadly classified into four categories: (1) Understandings of culture and tradition; (2) Sanskrit textual references and explanations regarding dance, dance pedagogies and accompaniments; (3) Classical dances/and their histories and mytho-histories; (4) Specific folk cultural practices. Over the years, academic scholarship in dance has strengthened the urgency to create an alternative and inclusive space for embodied practices that are embedded within everyday lives of different communities from different parts of India. It was led by the realization that a strong sense of hierarchization had been created within the dance discourse in India. Superior positions were designated for classical dances that were fashioned and curatorially created from community practices of specific geographies within India. Most everyday activities that included ritual and social performances, embodied expressions of thoughts, devotions, emotions, knowledge, and movement-based physical communications about the self, community, gender, festivals seasons, resistance, and life in general, were excluded as non-specialized, mundane, participatory activities that did not match the expertise and skill involved in ‘higher’ form of dances. Eventually, the methodology for research in critical dance studies could not remain bound within the sphere of classical dances. This broadening of the field, for an India-specific/centred discourse, within dance studies in India still has a long way to go, in order to be at par with the developments in its global counterparts. 4

The compilation of papers came out under the name Papers From the First Dance Seminar. They were edited and collated by Sunil Kothari for Sangeet Natak Akademi.

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Developing dance studies as a critical multi-disciplinary area has been more difficult than theatre or music studies. Regional dances tend to be written using sociocultural and historical methodologies, steering clear of movement analysis, because of the ephemeral and indescribable qualities of the kinaesthetic elements while classical dances with regulated and well-defined movement grammars as well as a basic movement system, tend to link their diverse histories to the universal dance pedagogy generated by Natyashastra, highlighting a pan-Indian mytho-historical knowledge system discussed later in detail. There are many books on dance in India, but academic writing on dance is a more recent development. Most earlier texts are coffee-table publications, replete with glossy pictures. They contain articles that are either about the institutional histories of specific classical dances, or specific dancers. Dance writing has stayed descriptive, celebratory and non-critical. Whatever the social/cultural stigma attached to dance and its practitioners, and however debilitating the immense regulatory measures that were imposed to exercise restrictions through socialization, marginalization and psycho-social control, the writings (usually by upper-class/caste elite writers) never reflected much of that side of the ecology. Dance and dancers almost never escaped the existing and evolving power hierarchies, exploitations based on class, caste, gender, religion, as well as ethnicity-based complexities that restricted intersectional dialogues and patronage possibilities. These beautifully illustrated books on dance never ventured into such troubled waters. Rather than writing the stories of such exploitations, my obsession about creating an awareness about the need and the pedagogical possibility of studying such absences grew. I must have talked about my passion for writing a book on “all that is dance in India” to many over the years. Many of my academic friends must have started to understand just when they needed to run away from my passionate but repeated musings on the subject. That passion walked a parallel path to the monumental growth of the discourse around classical dance histories—especially focussing on Bharatanatyam, creating micromarginalizations for lesser-known regional and non-mainstream professional dancers, who were now pushed even further into a corner by established, governmentpatronized and well-funded forms. The performers of these forms have neither known nor been included in any larger national discourses beyond their smaller, side-lined or vernacular embodied practices. This book needs to create those spaces within the realms of critical dance studies, through intersectional, historical, and anthropological methodologies.

1.5 Museumization and the Discourse Until the 1990s, the category of classical dances in India remained almost exclusively bound by aspirations of the perpetuation of links with antiquity. Projections and presentations were curated through a desire to museumize and claim the historical, as well as the contemporary times, by locking them up in a sense of perpetuity and throwing away the key. Scholarship, as is discussed in other chapters in this

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book, was largely descriptive and historical, often moving into what may be called mytho-histories. These discourses were born out of post-independence cultural policies,5 and strengthened by the large number of Indian dancers teaching, performing, and perpetuating myths and histories around popular genres of classical dances from India, such as Bharatanatyam and Kathak till the 1970s, with the late entry of Odissi by the end of 1970s. Festivals were created by the Government of India, to energize and popularize the forms, within and outside India, because the practitioners also wanted to ensure that they continued their journey from being a student to becoming a performer, and eventually have a career as a teacher. In order to create a vibrant dance community that would be trained through standardized and controlled pedagogical modes, the government and government-recognized private academies have carried on their work of consolidating such pedagogies over the years since independence. Some of the important institutions that took the lead are Sangeet Natak Akademi (1953),6 Kalakshetra Foundation (1936, Chennai),7 Kerala Kalamandalam (1930,8 Kerala), Kathak Kendra, Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru Akademi of Manipuri Dance, Manipur. The last two were established as national institutions by The National School of Drama in 1959. Two additional institutions that Sangeet Natak Akademi set up in recent times are the Sattriya Kendra in Assam (2008)9 and the Chhau Kendra in Jharkhand (2018).10 This list is longer for the different private dance academies established by recognized dancers all over the country.11 Many of them receive grants from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, under the Scheme of Financial Assistance for Promotion of Guru-Shishya Parampara (Repertory Grant). This is available to “professional organisations of dramatic groups, theatre groups, music ensembles, children’s theatre and all genres of performing arts activities”.12 Practitioners need to apply by clearly stating their dance style and training, and provide appropriate authentication and yearly reports and audited accounts to avail of this grant. This has grown into a regular practice, much like a renewal of licence, to ‘authenticate’ the 5

See Anita Cherian’s “Redefining the Public: Naturalizing the Private: Rewiring of Cultural Policy”, 2017. 6 See details of the umbrella organisation for music, dance, and theatre, under the Ministry of Culture https://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/about-us. Accessed 03-02-2023. 7 See https://www.kalakshetra.in/ for details and structures of Kalakshetra Foundation, which was declared as an institution of national importance in 1993. Accessed on 03-02-2023. 8 Kerala Kalamandalam remains the premier academy for Kathakali dance. See https://www.kal amandalam.ac.in. Accessed on 03-02-2023. 9 The Sattriya Academy was established in Guwahati, as a part of Sangeet Natak Akademi’s project supporting Sattriya Dance, Music and Ankiya Bhaona (theatre). See https://www.sangeetnatak.gov. in/centres-of-the-akademi/sattriya-kendra. Accessed on 03-02-2023. 10 The Sangeet Natak Akademi mentions that “in order to fulfill its commitment towards the promotion, propagation and preservation of the performing arts of India, established its ‘Chhau Kendra’ at Chandankiyari, Dist. Bokaro, Jharkhand in 2018”. See https://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/centresof-the-akademi/chhau-kendra. Accessed on 03-02-2023. 11 See https://narthaki.com/ (accessed on 03-02-2023) for details of academies and dancers. 12 See www.indiaculture.nic.in/financial-assistance-promotion-guru-shishya-parampara-repertorygrant. Accessed on 03–02-2023.

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right to teach their specialized form and practice/perform the same. This practice has almost nothing to do with dance studies. It has a life and world of its own and operates on its own terms, within a regulated space of institutional constructs—perpetuating much of the frames established by post-independence cultural policies. The visibility and access of the upper-class/caste urban dance community continues to dictate and control the aesthetics as well as social experiences, and also to create/perpetuate access for the next generation of its members. It produces a willing, unwilling, or reluctant submission to the structures of control within the dance community, including the diasporic dancers who would like to be a part of the ‘Indian’ dance map. This, in turn, leads to a comfortable process that helps dance institutions and dancers to hold a legitimized space within a cultural bubble of an imagined and ideal past and its manifestations. The museumization of certain dance forms from India manifests in many ways in the diaspora. Besides satisfying Indian diaspora parents that they are injecting a curated culture capsule into their second or third generation ‘Indian’ offspring, through a miniscule module of time-warp that allows an exposure to the culture of the roots, such trainings enable the offspring to create a presentable identity within their educational institutions and community functions. There is little idea, almost no interest, and in many cases no awareness regarding the existence of ‘other’ dances from India, or what a subject like the critical regarding dance studies might mean in the context of an embodied practice. While tracing the history of dance studies in and outside India is beyond the scope of this particular book, works of scholars such as Kapila Vatsyayan, Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Avanti Meduri, Ananya Chatterjea, Pallabi Chakravorty, Priya Srinivasan, Davesh Soneji, Hari Krishnan, Aishika Chakraborty, Anurima Banerji, and Anagha Tambe, need to be acknowledged for their contributions towards my understanding of dance studies specific to India. They, along with many others, whose names will be mentioned in the chapters, must be acknowledged for creating a space for critical dance studies away from the space of Euro-American dance studies. Their representation and scholarship on dance in India were what became the beginning of marking the presences of brown bodies from India in dance, even though the emphasis was restricted to a large extent within dance history and anthropology. Their participation enabled a discourse that needs to be labelled as extremely important, and began some dialogues on Indian dance, by dancers and scholars from India, who had more than just an exotic interest in finding new dances to study from a once-colonized cultural reservoir. To imagine this particular critical frame for dance studies became important and inevitable over the past years, as dance became a tool for propaganda for majoritarian politics; but my proposal and draft got two distinct reactions. Many scholars across geographies and age, and younger practitioners were excited. Others thought this ‘political’ view is not necessarily the only criticality that dance in and from India needs to have. Hence, I begin the next section by situating this criticality in a particular context of the university space.

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1.6 Thoughts on Teaching Critical Dance Studies for Master’s Degree Students in India: About Continuity and Change13 Janet o’Shea, in her introduction to the Routledge Reader of Dance Studies had suggested ‘four strands of intellectual activity’ that divided academic research and writings within dance studies: [A]nthropology, folklore and ethnography; the writings of expert viewers and dance analysis; philosophy, especially aesthetics and phenomenology; historical studies including biography and dance reconstruction. These categories are not exhaustive or watertight; there is some overlap between them. All of these approaches transformed over time to address issues of identity and their articulation in dance, a shift from an authoritative position to a multiplicity of voices, and changing relationships between performance, choreography and writing. (O’Shea, 2010: 2)

O’Shea’s writing was, of course, based on the available scholarship in dance studies for both the East and the West in the Euro-American world. Since then, a large body of research has been published in and on Indian dance, and a sizeable number of those are from Indian publishers. Though still not configuring in the Euro-American University space as citable research, these writings have changed the way dance studies is taught in India. Still unaware of many Indian publications and authors (writing in English), and also excellent vernacular publications, there continues to be a dark spot in the availability of meaningful contributions from the non-Western world in anything but dance history. Thus, Western academia still seems to continue to hold the rights to speak for themselves and the rest of the world, and the recognition for critical dance writing goes largely to South Asian authors employed in Western University spaces and publishing through corporate publishing giants. Such neocolonizing trends need to be taken up as an urgent focus, if we need to attend sincerely to the trendy calls of decolonization within the subject. The alarm bells need to be rung loud in the academia—especially in the spaces of higher studies. This is proven by the fact that, though a large number of Indian students travel to the Euro-American Universities today for their doctoral research, there seems to be an unwritten rule for them being restricted to South Asian topics. Over the years, we, the once-colonized, have remained ghettoized in our research topics while the neocolonization of knowledge seems to have managed to facilitate freedom to research the ‘avant garde’, the ’global’ and the ’contemporary’ for the largely white Euro-American academia. Over and above these disturbing truths, it is also a reality that Indian dance research, instead of continuing in a path of growth, has continued to be a divisive space. Severe in-fighting around dance histories, provoked by scholarship from the Euro-American academic spaces, have continued to force dance studies in and on India to focus only on dance history, while the ‘new’ and ‘exciting’ scholarship in ‘critical dance studies’ is left as a more advanced terrain of scholarship to be encouraged by Western academic institutions. It may be worth thinking why there 13

Vatsyayan, 1972

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are no global scholarships or stepping out of the ghettoized space for young Indian scholars aspiring to study in dance studies departments in the West. It may also be pertinent to ask why Indian dance scholarship is uncomfortable moving beyond dance history. It is also necessary to understand the several neocolonial ways of asserting control over knowledge whereby visibility, international readership, and acknowledgment of scholarship remains under the control of the West through the use of English language, ‘international’ journals and their power of validating scholarship, ‘international’ publishing conglomerates and their competitive visibility, and the acquiring of local niche archives by Euro-American Universities through the research of ‘international’ students. Critical studies on dance, according to me, requires engagement and a deep experiencing of dance ecology using updated and respectful understanding, and not just a collection of data from the communities of dancers or dance spaces through spurts of engagement, with a view to use the data for embarking on newer writing projects or for career enhancement. Hence, there was a hope, and an intense hope, that the course structures at the School of Arts and Aesthetics would continue to provide the new generation of scholars the freedom to choose their engagement with the vastly varied landscape of dance, and traverse it with dignity, happiness, and an awareness of differences in expressive embodied activities in dance, which are inevitable due to a range of differences in identities, beliefs, practices and hierarchies. It seemed important to acknowledge the ‘dancing’ field, the training, and the history, while stressing on the possibilities of dancing and thinking dance through different critical lenses. Simultaneously, it was essential to encourage dancers who have taken contemporary dance as their specialization—where they might want to create their own philosophy and vocabulary of dancing. The pedagogic challenge was of a binary between students who were already trained dancers and usually came from urban centres, and those who came from rural and small-town localities from all over India. While most students with dance training came from small or large urban centres of India, and with knowledge and skill of one of the classical dances—Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Manipuri, Kathak, some of them also had some awareness about the other four less popular classical dances. Most of them had no idea about the history of the dances they had learnt. Other students came from subjects ranging from engineering, sciences, even medicine, but mostly from Social Sciences, History, English, and other disciplines. Many came with some training and practice in theatre; others had absolutely no idea what dance studies was about to offer. A large number of the students were from the remotest of corners, bringing their diverse class, caste, religious, and gender identities to one of the best university spaces in India. This course on dance in India mattered. It had to contribute to the understanding of the idea of performativity, the structures of knowledge and its transmissions, and most importantly the powers and privileges that it could unleash as a historically enabled tool of social, political, and cultural communication. After the introductory class, where I tried my best to create a picture of ‘ALL THAT IS DANCE,’ most students cheered up and sat at the edges of their seats. They

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talked endlessly about the occasions they have witnessed dance in their communities, where they had grown up seeing people dance, or dancing themselves. I soon realized that they could teach me a thing or two (or more) about the community history and knowledge they carried in their memory—both in social as well as embodied forms. Therefore, I learned fervently—beyond the available Western scholarship, and very often falling back on the inadequate documentation preserved at the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA) and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) library or archive, or even coffee-table books mostly written by dance critics. I taught at the School of Arts and Aesthetics for the first year, trying not to be troubled by these preexisting structures of the formally approved course syllabus, and its dependence on Natyashastra for providing the non-critical and mytho-historical template of thinking about dance in India. All I could do was to consciously bifurcate this history into an anthropologically reconstructed one, that is, I based my lectures on the survey of dance in India on what I came to refer as ‘the remnants’ within art history, historical evidence, ethnographical records and living traditions on one hand. On the other hand, I put emphasis on a brief overview of Natyashastra and its instructions for theatre, dance, and music as a conglomerate. Skill versus community emersion had to be separated, as both these practices required different forms of intellectual, embodied, and memorial labour. To become a specialized skill, dance is required to become a learned/practiced form, that necessarily does not have any resemblance to the ensemble presences, collaborative movings, or embodied community memory. The sphere of understanding the dance practices of India acquired more layers of complexities with every passing batch, as we all learned from a melting pot of discourses, memories, lived experiences, and ideas around what the students continued to identify as dance. These understandings came from their own spheres of existing knowledge, in the knowledge transmission system. Hence, the need for a book of this kind stems from teaching courses around the formulation and critical discourses on the history, theory, and practice in ‘Indian’ dance, and also the triadic relationship between dance, body, and society. Attempting to position the existing, deeply problematic discourse within a regional, ethnic, caste, and gender discourse, rounding the functions that dance performs as a tool of communication and identity marker, as a mode of ritual practice, a popular entertainment or a form of high art—my wish is to create a monograph that situates dance in the everyday lives of different communities in India. This situating occurs in the context of different intersectional realities, of geographical territories, caste/class/gender led expressions/religious normativity and linguistic identities, and within rural and urban spaces. I cannot overemphasize the importance that I place on acknowledging dance’s relationship with important occupation and survival-related words such as work, labour, market, career, and identity and dispossessions. I have taught Critical Dance Studies for the MA and MPHIL/PHD programmes since 2004 and 2007 respectively, at the School of Arts and Aesthetics in Jawaharlal Nehru University. I have written, coauthored, edited, and coedited books and journals on critical dance studies, and tried to respond to these important debates in my published essays within the Indian perspectives, while developing, reviewing, encouraging research on dance. In spite of many revisions, this book still wants to

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begin with the idea of “All that is Dance,” to bring together emerging and critical issues in critical dance studies in the Indian context. It aims to address the lacuna in the scholarship that comes from scholars teaching Indian Dance (and some historical/critical concerns) to undergraduate and graduate students in Western universities within departments of South Asian Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, and Dance. While there are many recent books that are excellent in research and criticality, none of them address the pluralistic idea of dance within the Indian context. Their outlook is largely historical and focuses on the way dance research has been led to take shape in post-colonial India. Several times the recent researches recalibrate a universal idea of dance as a culmination of aesthetic expressions and skills, using Natyashastra to give it the position of a formalized, grammatically complex specialized art form. Within critical dance studies, whenever there is a mention of the term Indian dance as a category, the counterargument has to foreground the need to think of ‘all that is dance.’ It is vitally important that this idea of exclusivity of dance as higher art and a specialized high caste practice of privilege is dismantled, while placing dance within the geopolitical space of India in current times. It must remain a thread of arguments that defiantly tries to address the marginalization of certain dance practices, choosing to locate the politics of these forms and choices within the framework of the nation-building exercise, as something that set the course for the future of ‘Indian’ dance as a Sanskritized, generalized and homogenized fragile art practice. The practice is vulnerable in its acceptance, and consistently struggling under the regulatory surveillance system, by being placed under the label of ‘culture.’ This book aims to address the problems of hierarchization within the dance forms of India. Dance, whether it is known as such or not, is an artistic/expressive activity among all communities residing in India—from its most remote corners to the largest and most chaotic cities of global proportions. Its functions vary from religious and ritualistic ones to those of pure entertainment, and from being embodied expressions that are community-bound to those which involve specific skills, learning and presentational motivations for a structured aesthetic outcome. Dance spaces vary vastly too. Within India, dance finds place in community gatherings, rites of passage, specifically designated spaces for ritual practices, local/national/global festivals, informal/ temporary and formal/permanent proscenium structures built specifically for presentations of artistic expressions, film screens, and digital/multimedia spaces. For such a range to exist, adjust, and flourish within the same temporality is difficult, if not impossible, especially when the rather arbitrary governmental cultural policies of post-independence India have created hierarchies within the existing genres—as Classical (high art), Folk (art practices by smaller communities), Tribal (Cultural Practices), Modern (innovative/often fusion based dance that broke out of the practices of antiquity, and Contemporary (the emerging dance practices that continue to look beyond traditional grammars and trainings) dances. In this hierarchization, with all arguments and writing starting from or centring around classical forms such as Bharatanatyam, all other embodied activities are relegated to either the category of ‘folk’ or ‘tribal’ dances, which are immediately hierarchized as lower in their skill, presentation, and aesthetic capability than the classical dances. Knowingly or unknowingly, cultural policies have supported and encouraged these categorizations

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and hierarchizations, perpetuation of class, caste, linguistic, and ethnic hierarchies between a privileged few and the underrepresented minorities. Theoretically oriented university systems shy away from the challenges involved in assessing praxis or marking dancing bodies. While theoretical courses on dance include history, anthropology, philosophy, and notations, they shy away from engaging with active dancing bodies. Over the twenty years of working as a faculty in a university that could never make up its mind about whether dancing bodies and dance could be accommodated in the assessment system, it has become clear that moving bodies, with their various ways of creative uncertainties and possibilities, are on one hand immensely disciplined and on the other hand full of ephemeral and challenging shifts, either temporary or permanent. Most universities in India prefer to have a Dance Practice department, where practitioners teach dance techniques, with the examination system being shaped around the teaching of particular styles - usually Classical dances. The courses come with a short introduction into the form’s history, but largely concentrate on creating a dance academy model inside the university space. This is a space kept at a distance from the ‘purely academic’ departments. Many practitioners who have already been learning from childhood with different Gurus or master-teachers seek admission in practice-based Masters courses, as the degree is a valuable achievement for seeking employments and projects. Many other changes in the dance ecology of India have kept the criticality everchanging in the discourse in India. Many conversations in international forums still work by the colonial ethnographic logic, and it has been the dominant trend in dance studies as well. The much-needed conversation on post-colonial studies had led the way to laying the ground for decolonization – a trendy word, robbed of much of its essential politics in current times. The formal reappearance of the term ‘decolonization’ in recent times marked the intellectual ecology of the world, putting together issues of Black Lives Matter with oppressions of upper castes in India, in the fight for justice. Many writings about social oppressions within dance in India exists since early 2000s, but thinking of all oppressions through decolonization intensified in the arena of dance studies during a turbulent time in America, during the year 2020. These trends are visible in the Dance Studies Association special issue of 2020, Conversations across the Field of Dance Studies: Decolonizing Dance Discourse, edited by A. Banerji and R. Mitra, which includes many scholars from different university spaces in Europe and the Americas. Banerji and Mitra dedicated the Preface to the special issue on Conversations (DSA, 2020) to the theme of “Decolonizing Dance Discourses,” which was pertinently led “by critiques of anti-Black racism and caste injustice in our discipline”.14 They wrote, When we accepted the invitation to co-edit this special issue, we set out with the intent to present the proceedings of two Gatherings on decoloniality that we organized for the 2019 Dance Studies Association (DSA) conference “Dancing in Common” at Northwestern

14

See “Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies: Decolonizing Dance Discourses”, 2020.

14

1 Introduction: All That is Dance University… We saw this colloquium as a necessary move towards decolonizing the foundational terms in our field--part of an ongoing endeavour, allied with the work done by a whole lineage of intellectual predecessors.15

The discourse of marginalization and its effective realities were limited in their representation, and in fact made many of us feel the need for the urgent creation of a more inclusive discourse involving critical dance studies and allied multi-disciplinary research that can contextualize for the new generation of dance scholars all that is dance from India.

1.7 ‘Indian’ Dance: Looking at Dance History Anthropologically The dance discourse did not turn critical only from 2020. It was being written about before without drawing attention of the world because of its publication was largely from Indian publishing houses, mostly lost in transmission. I have taught such writings, as they were often the only ones that addressed the critical issues in the world of dance in India while the world of ‘Indian’ dance is constructed on histories closely linked with mythical references and is deployed in myth-making in return. Having hardly any academic publication to strengthen my teaching of dance history that would address it through critical lenses of social agencies and identities in the beginning years, I held on to what historian Partha Chatterjee wrote regarding how the nationalist emancipation is necessarily a story of betrayal. [I]t could confer freedom only by imposing a whole set of new controls, it could define a cultural identity for a nation only by excluding many from its fold; and it could grant the dignity of citizenship only because the others needed to be represented and could not be allowed to speak for themselves. (Chatterjee, 1997: 154)

The next effort was for me to ground my knowledge of the local/national/global/ glocal formulations within dance. This was energized by Bharucha, who writes that in the more institutionalized sectors of cultural practice as well, there was. a vacuous retrieval of the past through an ‘invention of tradition’, whereby a ‘back to the roots’ anti-modern/anti-realist/anti-western policy was crudely, yet tenaciously propagated by the state and its accomplices. These proponents of an authentic ‘Indianness’ were, for the most part, neither native visionaries nor ideologues, but cultural bureaucrats who exemplified the ‘intellectual laziness’ that marks the defunct state of the national bourgeoisie.... (Bharucha, 1993:33)

Thus, we find that any dance, in order for it to be accepted and included in historical documentation as ‘Indian’, had to have an added characterization such as being ‘pure’ and/or ‘traditional’, while being identified as classical, intangible heritage, tribal, or 15

The Preface of the article mentions “The Gathering on August 9, 2019, featured presentations by Jasmine Johnson, Prarthana Purkayastha, and Maria Firmino-Castillo on “dance,” with Cynthia Ling Lee, Anusha Kedhar, and Arabella Stanger discussing “choreography.“ On August 10, 2019, Munjulika Tarah, Anthea Kraut, and Clare Croft addressed “technique,” while Imani Kai Johnson, Shanti Pillai, and Janet O’Shea spoke on “training.“(Banerji & Mitra, 2020).

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folk, in terms of the category it belonged to. The patronage required a certain format of belonging, and this led to mild to severe dispossessions, i.e., losing the right to perform, losing occupation as a dancer, losing the right to call oneself an artiste, to mention a few. ‘Accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2004) is thus one of the threads that is followed throughout this book, while I bring in critical readings of dispossessions within gender, ethnic, caste, and class groups, through state and nonstate patronage apparatuses. The effects of such marginalization and dispossession will be discussed in parallel, with efforts of survival and new (even if small) emerging spaces of knowledge and agency production in the dances of India. Moving individually, as well as in a group, refers to a certain socially instigated/ encouraged/ shaped activity. If one were to peel away the layers of socialized modes of control over the body and its moving instincts, one would begin with tools that produce identities—gender, caste, class, religion, ethnicity, structures of norms and values, and aesthetic principles, and expectations. It is not surprising that the earliest published records of dance in India are written and documented within anthropological monographs and ethnological volumes on the Adivasis and geographical regions, and the communities therein. Most monographs had detailed descriptions of important seasonal rituals and festivals, and marriage and other rites of passage16 ceremonies, accompanied by a description of the dance and music. The musical instruments were described in some of these documents, while their photos were often included, along with the dresses, headgears, and ornaments in many of these books. Some of the dances were described along with lines/circles and other choreographic arrangements. These were adding to the knowledge bank that was being created by untrained observers, but therefore also remained rather sketchy. Fortunately, the embodied archive of the communities is part of the informal knowledge system that allows multiple ways of transmission. From elders within the family, to peer group gatherings, and politically conscious efforts to maintain and perform community identity—dance knowledge flows from one body to another. Thus, a fairly good record of our dance traditions is found within these embodied practices, and their transmission processes in the everyday spaces within specific practices of the Adivasi communities and other regional community performances. The dance pedagogies that were consolidated as specialized artistic skills, formalized over the years since independence and taught by the specialist teachers are also responsible for the knowledge transmission within regional dance forms. These include forms such as Chhau17 , Yakshagana18 , and the formalized repertoires of classical dances taught by state-owned academies and institutions. This helps in taking the pedagogy beyond the region into the national and international. 16

Rites of passage in anthropological terms are the principle rites of signification around the achieving or changing social status, such as puberty, marriage, birth, death in the life of a human being. 17 Chhau is a dance form from the eastern part of India, recognised in 2010 as a Representative of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. See https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/chhaudance-00337. Accessed on 03-02-2023. 18 Yakshagana is a popular performance tradition from coastal Karnataka that combines dancesong-music-drama-dialogues by dancers/actors using elaborate costumes.

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The dance discourse in India is overburdened by history. The historical records and accounts make it clear that there was tremendous stigma around this form of expressive art as India transitioned from a colonized country to an independent nation. It was burdened by the urban/rural, savarna/non-savarna divides, and got more complicated by the disparities created by formal/non-formal knowledge systems that the population was divided into. The class divides were consolidated and strengthened by all these other hierarchies. Dance was hierarchized as well. The way the elite looked at community dance practices or the Adivasi and other non-elite dancing bodies was influenced by a racialization that was affirmed by their foreign education and caste-class based presuppositions. The idea of everyday was different, lived realities were experienced differently, the concept of work (manual labour versus elite choice of professions) was different, and deeply hierarchizing and marginalizing in nature. It was as if dance could not be defined in the same manner for these very different communities. The ritual practices involving music, singing and structured bodily movements were alien to most upper-caste/class citizens of India. This act of active dissociation with the cultural practices of a large number of fellow citizens is troubling. Over all this was the problematic association of dance with the dancing bodies, and specifically those of the female dancers. The patriarchal social structure, that subjugated women as citizen subjects, and designated all women dancers as dangerous polluting entities in a doubly marginalizing process, was relentless in establishing an ongoing war against women dancers who were seen as entertainers, and automatically a sexually dangerous entity. On the one hand the elite in India did not acknowledge dance as a part of their life and culture, choosing to stop their offspring from having any connection with it. On the other hand, during the formation of independent India, dance became an easily exhibited audio-visual emblem of India’s glorious past, and a living proof its rich cultural traditions—an image that has stayed till today. By the same scheme of things, folk and tribal dances were an integral part of the culture of the masses. These were good for showcasing the variety and ‘ethnic-ness’ of the Indian people. They were therefore required to be put under a special category, where they were clearly part of the non-elite masses and suitable for exhibition-like circumstances such as the Republic Day parade or Indian festivals held abroad, but never deemed fit to be representative of an Indian ‘high’ culture. On the other hand, the ‘pure’ form of dance had come into existence virtually through an elaborate process of cultural engineering, wherein the grammar was systematically structured, the link with the Natyashastra was deliberately sought and established, and, in most cases, even the name of the form was newly invented. The overemphasis and responsibility bestowed on dancers to become custodians of ‘purity’ and ‘traditional national identity’ has been discussed in my previous writings (Sarkar Munsi 2008, 2011, 2017, 2021). Rustom Bharucha (1995), Anita Cherian (2009), and Uma Chakravarti (2017), among others, help us to understand the process by which the cultural policies of independent India has placed dance at the foreground of image-building modules. Thus, their critical literature would form a necessary ground to rest my discussion on the attempts to recontextualize dance in India. In my writing, I aim to foreground the shift in the agencies of the

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dancers as the patronage shifted towards presentational forms of dance. As Indian urban spaces were developed to follow international models of modern inhabitations, they became occupied by specialized artistic activities that required an invested audience—students and patrons from middle- and upper-class families, and from higher-caste backgrounds, who had time and resources for art practices. As dance inadvertently distanced itself from everyday activities, or rather, as it was consciously given the position of being ‘high art,’ specialized forms (named as classical dances) with references to higher ways of life took centre-stage in India’s references to dance, and in its historical context. Always uneasy with female sensuality, sexuality, and pleasure, the higher caste explanations of the dance mytho-history were composed of references to Sanskrit texts. They replaced ideas of pleasure, enjoyment, fun, and playfulness with those of devotion, dedication, sacrifice, and remorse. Kapila Vatsyayan, arguably the most visible, earliest and also the most prolific academic writer on Indian dance, in her book Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts (1977) wrote extensively about creating a connection between art practices that were already linked to textual and literary references through written history. One such example of generalized historical connections she makes is between ‘Indian’ dance, poetry, music, and sculpture (Vatsyayan 1977: 17). In her writing quoted below, one finds the grand narrative about the ‘most concrete manifestation of the inner state and vision’ within Indian dance, which was responsible for the elitist takeover of dance history in India. Indian dance, like Indian poetry, music and sculpture, seeks to communicate universal, impersonal emotion, and, through the very medium of the human form, it transcends the physical plane; in its technique it employs the technique of all the Indian arts and it is impossible to comprehend the architectonic structure of this form without being aware of the complex techniques of the other arts which it constantly and faithfully employs and synthesizes. (Vatsyayan, 1977: 17)

Vatsyayan saw it as the responsibility of the dancer to deal with the texts and meanings of the thematic content, as well as the aesthetic core of Indian classical literature. In her opinion, [T]he music which seems to accompany the dance is actually the life-breath of its structure and, indeed, dance interprets in movement what music interprets in sound; The postures and the stances it attains are the poses which the Indian sculptor models; all these the dancer imbues with a living spirit of movement in a composition of form which is both sensuous and spiritual. (Vatsyayan 1977: 17)

This text by Vatsyayan requires a thorough analysis to strengthen the introductory argument of this book. If this unified, universal, and generalized idea of Indian dance is to be tested by looking at how it lends itself to the very different ways, reasons and aesthetics that people dance, the first contestation comes from the fact that, many communities that dance in India are exclusively dependent on oral and embodied transmission of knowledge. The second argument against such universalization is that even if some of the dance practices are the ‘raw material of literature’, many community dances cannot be taken as interpretative of this mainstream literary history and ‘the finished product of literary creation’. Vatsyayan refers to the role of

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the historic idea of ‘the dancer’ as someone who embodies and enlivens the ‘spirit of the movement.’ ‘The movement’ is rather problematically traced back to a form of cyclical and continuous communication between the music, the dancer and the sculptor, whereby the final creation of the ‘sensual and spiritual’ outcome is experienced in the dancer’s expressive presentation. The reference to the guiding principles for origins of movements, as well as aesthetic outcome as being spiritual alongside sensual, is of course once again a point that is repeatedly noted in the published material on dance history. The sensual had to be qualified by being spiritual, to be an acceptable communicative platform. As dance started being projected as the cultural face of a newly independent nation, some Indian dances became categorized as ‘classical’ dances, while the others were marginalized and seen as localized forms of ‘entertainment’ or as parts of community ritual process. While looking at sources that form the base of the scholarship and presentation/documentation of dance in India, one is struck by the numbers of books and articles written on the so-called classical dances. Beyond a cursory mention of India’s rich history of dance, by placing a picture of the Mohenjo-Daro figurine of the ‘Dancing Girl’, or of Nataraja as the ‘Lord of Dance,’ and decorative sculptures to prove that point, hardly any exploration has been done on the evidence and remnants of dancing, such as the Bhimbhetka cave paintings, until very recently. One also starts to wonder what exactly qualifies as a remnant of the past in the case of dance in India. So, while sculptures of static moments in dance, created under the patronage of certain rulers to ensure their own immortality, and paintings of dancers to glorify patrons and their presence in history are taken as time-defying proof, the living traditions of lesser beings such as small local communities of Adivasis and other ethnic groups have not seen the same historical glorification. Hence, the temples and caves where the murals and sculptures exist are heritage sites; paintings, scripts, and other movable artistic creations are protected in museums; while embodied practices need to find their own resources and actually have to fight or lobby for survival. Keeping up with survival related vulnerabilities in contemporary India, dance, along with all other expressive practices, has undergone a lot of change. Some forms have become extinct, others have been revived, and still more have changed, in order to keep up with a changing audience. A notable section of studies on dance in India are the results of efforts to know and understand “other cultures” by many Western ethnographers and anthropologists. As a continuation from colonial times, such endeavours are usually enabled by the privilege of looking from the vantage of Western academia. Regardless of the intention of sincere representation, some of these scholarships fed off the majoritarian narratives of the post-independence Brahminic rhetoric that engulfed the domain of dance history within India. These researches time and again reinforced an artificial hierarchy within the dance ecology in India—pushing down non-formal living traditions in comparison to the classical dances that have been established as high artistic canons. Classical dances and the practitioners of those forms have anyway had greater visibility within and outside India—in praxis, in being written about, in being patronized more than other performing arts, and in research.

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Apart from the numerous community practices that complicated the category of dance within documents related to Indian cultural policy, the other, less talked about category until very recently was the ever-evolving cinematic dance of Bombay cinema/Bollywood. Even if completely uneasy with the blatantly defiant stance of the film industry in its use of bodies (of male, female, and other genders) for commercial/popular entertainment, the cultural elite in India could actually never make up their mind or opinion regarding these dances, and the eroticized displays that often did not need the high skills and trainings that the classical dance pedagogy had made mandatory. These commercial considerations created and upheld the structures of presentations, and the film industry has continued to refuse to be restrained or restricted by the same set of strictures imposed on classical dancing bodies. As Bollywood films have become more available and popular across the world, governmental agencies have accepted and in fact included Bollywood music and dance in their international exchange programmes. Film scholars seem to be more accepting of the ever-changing constructs of Bollywood dances (seen in the number of papers on film dance within film studies scholarship) than dance scholars, whose principal interest continues to be dance history through the colonial times, and the pre- and post-independence social reforms. Pushing further, the commercial use of dance as a skill for earning a living needs a critical lens to understand the concept of art as/for work. It is in this context that the movements may need separate categorization as erotic,19 given that this category of movements are created by keeping a certain form of work and outcome in focus, ranging from enticing entertainment to sex work. Prakash sees such movements forcefully claiming and owning the “visceral presence of a dancer who foregrounds the labour of the erotic and the bodies of sensory in a live performance” (2022).

1.8 Dance as Human Communication/Connection and a Register of Changing Human Conditions For me, the most intriguing fact about dance in India is its varied functions. While some could be the form in which a community said its prayers, others were seasonal and related to the economic calendar. Without claiming any glorified role within the educational systems, some of these songs and dances helped oral and audio-visual transmissions within non-formal aesthetic systems of knowledge transfer in some communities. Some other functions are totally removed from these aesthetically acceptable realms, in which comodifying and catering to the desires of self and others becomes the context to read such moving principles, there by rendering their functions as ‘unacceptable’.

19

See Brahma Prakash’s essay “The erotic power of the dancer: labour of the erotic and the bodies of the sensory in the Arkestra of North India” (2022), and Aishika Chakraborty’s essay “Calcutta cabaret: dance of pleasure or perversion? (2023)

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There can always be more said about the fascinating examples of embodied communication that human societies have used dance for, within and outside India. There is a comforting and common pattern that may be read into the human wish to communicate with and about the moveable and immovable elements of the environment. Human desire to mark special occasions and major changes such as marriage, child birth, puberty, death of a near and dear ones manifest in creating an identifiable event as a landmark moment of transition. They want to register the change for themselves, and also share and announce it in different manners. In this context, it is also important to accommodate the overarching wish to mark these occasions, within this communicative process, through a process of seeking some kind of permission from the forces that are considered to be ever-present but unseen—such as the elders or ancestors, and also supernatural presences. Bowing to potent yet invisible forces is still considered to be an important part of proscenium performances in contemporary times. Dancing is a form of communication, fitness, enjoyment, leisure, gendered behaviour, identity or resistance. While dance can be considered a specialized activity that requires skill in some communities, it is also an extension of natural movement capacity into a beyond-regular as well as extra-locomotor activity, whereby the structure of everyday locomotion, communicative gestures, and expressive abilities are pushed beyond the regular and common movement systems. People notice such moments as something extra and beyond the ordinary, something that needs some extra effort/intentionality, often linked to music, songs, and/or rhythmic accompaniment. On the other hand, dance is also a specialized activity, standing apart, or becoming identifiable by the dancer as well as the ones who experience the embodiment by viewing it. It needs controlled movements, and yet it sets the body free. It demands arresting and releasing energies, has a tremendous capacity for becoming what one wants it to be—at any time. Thus, it adjusts to age, capacity, and energy level, but still remains dance to the person who is holding it in his/her body. With changing times, classical dances have been systematically made more visible in post-independence India. Dancers, with their highly aestheticized and carefully assimilated appearance as well as extraordinary skills, were easily transportable packages, who could then be accompanied by musicians and singers, to locations near and far, and present a neat abstraction of a glimpse of Indian (read Hindu) culture. This was the neatest and most inclusive package of all artistic presentations. There has been a gradual shift in the locations of the activities of dancers over the years as well. Delhi has become the place where all the wheeling and dealing occurs, regarding patronage and funding all over India. The Ministry of Culture has remained the control room that gives, controls, or takes away the visibility of young and old artistes, and well as Gurus. Fervent activities and lobbying20 take place for securing these ‘government’ awards and grants. Obviously, in such a world of power games, with possibilities of becoming invisible and thus unimportant, a relatively 20

Lobbying is very specific term implying asking for special favours such as government recognition, awards from the Sangeet Natak Akademi, or the Padma awards that are given annually.

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short career in performance can only be prolonged for a few people who are either genuinely recognized for their talent and skill, or known through such awards, grants and visibility, mostly granted by the government. There is a tremendous overload of trained and wonderfully skilled newcomers, but there is never enough space at the top, with established dancers occupying the top positions in terms of popularity, much beyond the retirement age for ballet dancers in the West. Obviously, there is resentment, uncertainty, frustration, and helplessness in the community. The profession does not or cannot accommodate anybody very easily. As a result, young dancers leave and scatter into oblivion in large numbers. As I have previously asserted in many of my own writings over the last two decades, a matter of deep concern is that there are many people who like, or practice, different forms of dance as members of a community or as trained practitioners, and are not a part of the deliberate and conscious process of shaping the history and geography of dance, through a folk versus classical binary. But there seems to be no room for people who do not want to be placed in either of the two categories mentioned above, namely classical and folk dance, and instead have strived to experiment with dance and movements—trying to contextualize their dance in their everyday existence. In this context I would also like to approach the much-debated terms ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’ in the specific context of Indian dance. ‘Modern’, ‘contemporary’, ‘intercultural’, ‘fusion’, ‘creative’—all these are terms that have been applied to dance virtually at random, and without much specificity in relation to the particular styles of different practitioners of dance in India. For a long time, Indian philosophers and thinkers, who were predominantly from the Brahmanical elite classes had serious problems in acknowledging the creative processes at play in dance processes that could contribute to the cultural enrichment of the country, and yet coexist with tradition. While the very use of the English language, the format of Western (British) education and certain Victorian notions of sanitization were normally welcomed by the elite, these same people had great difficulty in accepting what they called the ‘aping of the West in dance’. Over the years I have written a lot on what will now be refered to in the chapters in the book. I see this introduction as a significant entry point for this book, and the academic contribution it hopes to make to the discourse publications on Critical Dance Studies in and from India. Any twenty-first century book on dance in India, in my opinion, needs to start with the fact that ‘folk’ and ‘tribal’ dances were, and still are, an integral part of the showcased “Indian culture” of the less represented minorities. These dances—often referred to as ‘simple’, ‘unspecialized’, ‘ritual’—were good for drawing attention to the variety and ‘ethnic-ness’ of the Indian people, and have been categorized in a manner that strengthened India’s image as a nation united in its diversity. This was always a way of keeping these varied forms of dances distinctly differentiated from the ‘pure’ and ‘specialized’ forms of classical dances. The eight classical dance forms—Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Manipuri, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Mohiniattam, and Sattriya—are exhibited as examples of the rich Indian tradition. They have come into existence in the post-independence years through a virtually elaborate process of cultural reconstruction, wherein their grammars were systematically

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structured, the link with the Natyashastra in each case was deliberately sought and established, and, in most cases, even the name of the form was newly invented. The other emphasis was to enhance each of the classical forms’ links to ancient historical sources, in order to establish their pure and sacred origins to re-establish links with the great traditions of the past. Though consistently referred to as ‘pure’ and/or ‘traditional’, many of these newly reconstructed classical dances actually draw from their regional roots, and carefully curate their current presentations, to showcase their contemporary repertoire as a form that is inclusive and consciously acknowledging it’s past as well as present environs. One way to think of dance as a corporeal experience is by involving the soma—the kinetic logic of embodiment, the choreographic instincts that create connections with time, space, and other humans. But its political and social potentials and availability for ensemble actions of human mobilization and resistance necessitate a reading of dance as a mode of socio-political actions, where the dramaturgy is always a reflection of a larger and deeply psycho-social sphere of cultural actions. I shall also locate its connection to human ‘possibilities,’ such as the expanding world of communication and media-related expansions/shrinking of space, and write on how these re-define their practice. Throughout this book, the thread that would connect the topics is the relation of dance to the much-debated terms ’traditional’, ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary,’ in the specific context of India.

1.9 Resisting Neocolonization: Dancing—Writing—Agency I must confess that I began dancing before I started writing—and when I say that I mean actually writing anything beyond alphabets and simplest of 3 letter words. I joined a local dance school at the age of five, and then transferred to Uday Shankar India Culture Centre—run by Amala and Uday Shankar (but principally administered by Amala Shankar herself, who was also our teacher of Creative Dance). I grew up thinking of dance as my automatic tool for all expressions, and yet not being forced to compete with others to be the best dancer in class was perhaps the reason I have had a relaxed relationship with this art practice/physical activity. Even though it needed both physical and psychological disciplining to pursue dance, it always was a world away from the other more structured and complicated learning processes in formal education and sports—both of which were simultaneously going on in my life. From a student to becoming a performing member of the dance troupe and travelling all over the world, and then taking additional responsibility as a faculty and also an administrator under Mrs. Shankar helped me understand the dance, pedagogy, aspirations and limitations of the dance ecology in India, and also in the context of the world. Meanwhile, I completed my B.Sc and M.Sc degrees in Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology of Calcutta University and decided to specialize in Social Anthropology. My interest in performance studies made me seek the multidisciplinary Research Training Programme offered by the Centre for Studies in Social

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Sciences, Kolkata, in the late 1980s. Since then I have been motivated to consistently think of dance as an expressive and communicative art as well as an occupation. A feter my Ph.D., as an academic based within India, and without much support from any solid peer group that was similarly invested in serious academic research within this same cultural/social/artistic milieu, I was simultaneously limited by and free to choose my own path. Dance was a complex entity to me. I acknowledged the passion in me for dance as a praxis to begin with. But as I became part of a troupe that travelled all over the world for contract-based performances for different patrons, it also became a commitment that, along with generating a small part of my income, exposed the complex webs of insecurities in its practitioners. The relationship of control that patronage had, across rural and urban, higher and lower castes, in elite and marginal classes, and in male, female and other genders, made it necessary to complicate the ways of seeing dance in the geopolitical terrains of India, as something far more complex than ‘Indian’ dance. I could no longer see dance as a pure hobby. It also became essential to acknowledge the ecology within which this passion/occupation was nestled. Soon, I was conscious of the fact that dance, or various ways of perceiving it as a systematic bodily engagement, was part of everyday life for different communities in different ways. As a tool for socialization of the body within a particular social milieu, a skill, a hobby or an occupation there could be no one universal way to understand it’s functions. In other words, without consciously creating spaces for microengagement in the discourse, dance in India would always be partially or incompletely represented, and its presence as well as history would continue to be misrepresented as we have seen happen over the last 100 years. Therefore, I see this book as a small effort to address the complications that have arisen out of an overemphasis on presenting dance in a wrapper of historical grandeur, skill, and aestheticization. A systematic erasure of the identity and the unidentified and unnamed representation of the dancing body—simply used for the reference, form, or representation of an aesthetic posture or a festival—almost always highlighted the position of the patron. I identify the complications as the following: First, It consistently left the dancer unidentifiable in sculptures and paintings before photography was introduced as a recording medium. Even after that, the patron continued to have the choice of naming the dancer(s) in most cases — from sculptures and paintings of antiquity, to government records, and festivals of the contemporary times. Second, there has been also severe lack of acknowledgement regarding the different levels of psycho-physical labour and the deep socio-political roots that dance holds and portrays in a society that is deeply segregated through gender, caste, ethnicity, and class-based identities. In other words, there was an almost total absence of any dialogue beyond dance-nation-antiquity. Third, during my years as a scholar at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, and teaching at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the readings historians, anthropologists, sociologists, feminist scholars, philosophers were what gave me directions beyond the restrictive presence of mytho-histories and coffee-table publications. Kapila Vatsyayan’s scholarship, though largely representative of the traditional scholarship as I have already stated in many of my writings (2008, 2009, 2020), sustained my research, teaching and writing at a time when there was almost no

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scholarly work on dance. Fourth, the strange Covid-induced times spent alone in the year 2020, and its continuation in various forms of restrictive mobility, finally gave me the opportunity to collate several strands of my existing research on dance and hierarchies— for pushing the paradigms of Dance Studies beyond the Brahminic/ urban discourse that forced the knowledge of dance in and from this country to remain a prisoner of “culture” and “classical dance” contexts21 , most often configured and guided by Sanskrit texts such as Natyashastra. And finally, I acknowledge my frustration over the marginalization of dance as an academic subject of study. The subject had only a few takers when I started linking Dance Studies to Anthropology. At a time when Indian dance was studied only by academics from the West (as they assumed an automatically acquired right as former colonizers), there were very few scholars writing about dance in India. Most of the writings in India were by people who were critics or specialists in other subjects such as Sanskrit, Aesthetics, etc. While the field of Dance Studies remains deeply segregated by race, with Western scholars holding on to the areas of theorization and contemporary dance, non-Western scholars, even from within the Western academic spaces, continued to deal with the baggage of history and post-colonial debris. In that ecology, creating a space for a multi-disciplinary scholarship in and around dance has indeed been a pleasure, and I thank Biswanath Bannerjee, Surajit Chandra Sinha, Partho Chatterjee, Roma Chatterji, Pashupati Mahato, H.S. Shivaprakash, Rustom Bharucha and a range of international scholars such as Adrienne Kaeppler, Mohd Anis Md. Nor, and Andre Nahachewsky for encouraging this process through their research, or their numerous interactions, or both. I have struggled hard in the past to push my research methodology beyond ethnography. In an article published long back, named ‘Another Time, Another Space: Does Dance Remain the Same’ (2010), I had written: ….. in all performing art traditions, especially in dance, we see a dual process at play—a natural, inevitable, change from within, brought about by the experiences of the community in the changing world, and a more powerful change from without, forced on them by outsiders searching for a larger variety of dances to perform/market. (Sarkar Munsi, 2009: 27)

What became important through my research are works that did not remain bound by one discipline. Writings by Kapila Vatsyayan (aesthetics), Sunil Kothari (dance criticism), Lata Singh (women’s studies and history), M.S. Pandyan (social sciences), Sundar Sarukai (philosophy), Gopal Guru (political science), Sharmila Rege (social sciences and gender studies), Y.S. Alone (visual art), Roma Chatterji (sociology), Kalpana Ram (anthropology), Rustom Bharucha (performance/cultural Studies), and Surajit Chandra Sinha (anthropology), and Partho Chatterjee (history and anthropology) have been important for providing me the grounds on which I have tried to build a curriculum for my courses on Dance Studies from scratch. After many years of teaching, it feels like the base of Dance Studies in and for India is a little clearer to me. Dancing is embodying, expressing, owning, changing and resisting ideas, thoughts, and assertions—be it celebratory and joyous or resistive and dissenting. 21

See https://knowindia.gov.in/culture-and-heritage/performing-arts.php#:~:text=Dance,have% 20rigid%20rules%20of%20presentation, Accessed on 22/02/2021.

1.10 Reviewing the Field in the Pandemic Times

25

Bodies in dance engender, labour, question, assert, confirm, concede, or break rules simultaneously; they cannot help it. It is an inevitable process because the bodies exist in split times, through and with memories of past experiences that constantly get enmeshed in the present state of their beings. Some of these coexisting strands are identifiable, while many others are not. It is essential to acknowledge the processes of remembering, conforming, and changing existing structures of movement regimes. Trained dancing bodies are often docile. It becomes easy for dancers, therefore, to fall into a routine. But one cannot ignore the fact that, like many other artistic genres, dancing expertise or skill is the stepping stone to new experiments as well. In contemporary times, the dancing body is trained individually in most times. While the training is an isolating process creating competitiveness and a feeling of anxiety for many dancers trained in presentations of classical dances, this embodied form of activity has the capacity to produce a deep satisfaction and love, in being able to align with others to move in syncretic togetherness. Thus dance, like music and songs, becomes the voice or expression of a group/community and is often seen as a tool to create a multi-body presence. The idea for this book is based on thinking through intersectional identities, reorientation of the folk/classical narrative based on the identification of multiple processes of dispossession, and linking all of these to the historical structure of power and patriarchy. Based on my continued research on the artificially introduced hierarchies within the dance genres in India, this book is dependent and feeding on the stratification and categorization of dance forms into categories such as the folk and classical. It bases its structures on my previous publications in journals and books over the last two decades, a few of which are referred in the text here. Taking reception and patronage as the life-blood or oxygen for any category to exist in the current times, this book searches for ways to escape the hegemonic presences of certain dance forms such as Bharatanatyam, that dominates the dance discourse while simultaneously imposing a silencing mechanism on all other discourses of other genres. In bringing together the focus on dance as a source of power, knowledge production, economic and socio-political support as well as dispossession, I am energized by these recent lines in Susan Leigh Foster’s book Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion (2019): An oddly simple yet seldom remarked upon aspect of dancing is that it brings people’s bodies—people as embodied, people as bodily presences—into proximity. They physically commingle; they collaborate, dominate, or acquiesce, or even pretend to get involved; but they connect through and in the action of dancing. (Foster, 2019: 25)

1.10 Reviewing the Field in the Pandemic Times The idea and the proposal for this book started before the pandemic. Naturally in the post-pandemic times much of the original ideas has had to be reformulated. What seemed like a manuscript already prepared for publication has had to be edited and changed, as social media and the absent dancing bodies created, choreographed, and

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curated a different public sphere. These thoughts that have come together in this text, in these strange times of the pandemic, stem from a few examples chosen from experiencing, teaching, viewing, theorizing and most importantly, dancing in India and beyond. One remembers Antonio Gramsci’s words ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,’ that he wrote in his Prison Notebooks22 . Covid—19 held us literally as prisoners of our concerns for others and ourselves in our ‘safe’ spaces. This pandemic had restricted and realigned our thoughts, movements, and communicative processes in more ways than one. Dance suffered, and so did dancers. The lack of freedom to gather as a community to move/dance together, use dance studios, a severe lack of patronage in these troubled times, and a complete restriction on any possibilities of performing for a live audience seemed like a death knell for dance and dancers for a while. But the relentless ‘optimism of the will’ has prevented us from becoming discouraged, and most dancers are trying different ways and means to dance, to conquer these challenges and to make a living. The internet has become a saviour for many in these times. It opened small and limited, but powerfully enabling windows of communication for all, and dancers have managed to change their modes, mediums and methods of moving, teaching, choreographing and being visible. The ‘pessimism of the intellect’ maybe debilitating at times, but it has not been able to kill the ‘optimism of will’. But this experience of being ‘locked down,’ and thus also being ‘locked out’ of dance spaces (which for some automatically mean a partial or complete occupational lockdown) has energized my thoughts, that begins by registering a deep anxiety about the fact that this sense of disquiet and utter hopelessness about the future of dance (now a popular lament in the past two years designated as ‘Covid-19 times’ or the lockdown, depending on where we were geographically located) has been heard for many years now, and is a commonly heard lament within the lesser-known/less popular/community dance forms. This fear and lament have increased over the years, with the decrease in the patronage for community practices. The lack of occupational possibilities has squeezed the life out of many traditional art forms, not surprisingly, as people have moved away from their niche community environments, either physically (to other geographies) or because of the fast-changing experiential/occupational environment. At this juncture, it is important to re-locate and re-energize discourses on ‘inevitabilities’ such as largescale urbanization, post-independence cultural policies in India, changing definitions of the viability and market evaluation of the arts in general and dance in particular, and dance’s ‘value’ and ‘resource-fullness’ as a tool for embodied and creative education.

22

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci writes about ‘Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will’ in the early part of 1930s, to assert the importance of creating and holding on one’s ideological commitments to social equality and transformation against the growing authoritarian atmosphere of the first half of the 1930s projects the binary of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ in a factual manner.

1.12 Chapterization—Meanderings and Criticality

1.11

27

Positioning the Chapters

As discussed earlier, the scholarship on Indian dance has continued to grow tentatively yet parallel to practice. It has a comfortable ongoing relationship with history and aesthetics - with scholars still debating colonialism, cultural nationalism, and microhistories after 75 years of India’s independence. In the last ten years with increased political propaganda using dominant. Hindu narratives and restrictive and controlling patronage of governmental agencies, the space of intellectual academic engagement has been changing fast along with practice within the dance ecology. Dance ethnography remains a domain largely within the social sciences. More and more number of students leave India for studying at foreign universities, while Indian scholarship on dance remains bound by territorial ghetoization. Even diaspora scholars, who are researchers or are employed in Euro-American university departments, except very few exceptions such as Ananya Chatterjea (2003, 2020), have not ventured into the territories marked as Euro-American’ dance’. In contrast, those from the West have found it completely logical to stray into trans-regional or even completely south Asian/Indian dance history and dance practice/cultures. It is an uncomfortable truth that this crowded space of dance history/practice, must be shared between the scholars from and on India, as well as those scholars from Indian diaspora with research positions and tenures in Western academic universities, simply because they can only re-search their own dance ecology. One hardly finds such restrictions on the white scholars from the West who have long-since been venturing into once-colonial or racially marked spaces, inherited as a legacy of the colonial control over knowledge, which is now facilitated by the post-colonial and often neocolonial negotiations. It is in this contested and complicated space that the critical writings have emerged in the following chapters.

1.12 Chapterization—Meanderings and Criticality Within India, the dominant discourse on dance history has always been from and on South India—making it the ghettoized quarters within which dance and dance studies had already been finding its international validation. It is a space that is derived from the deeply exploitative histories of women dancers and powerful patrons, and a lot of violent silencing. The pains and sufferings of the exploited and marginalized dancers remain largely unaddressed, while the dance is appropriated by new learners from privileged/urban/literate backgrounds. This story of appropriation and ruthless enculturation has been written about many times in the context of dance in India and has now become a popular historical milestone told and retold by scholars of history, dance, and South Asia. But this story needs a wider coverage, and also urgently needs to take into consideration the marginalization that such dominant stories of and from one region forces

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on other regions of different histories, such as the Adivasi population. Their marginalization is of a different scale, and with much more restrictions in its circulation, among the relatively more known and already-internationalized discourses. It needs to be placed in a critical framework, instead of privileging one history over all others. Critical dance studies need to provide a way to direct attention while creating academic discourse for scholars, to be able to focus on different dispossessions across regions, without perpetuating hierarchization between histories of marginalization. Thus, the stories of all who danced in historical times in different spaces, and with different aesthetics and functional understandings, within the same geopolitical entity named India need to be understood through archival records as well as ethnographic tools. The different bodies, with their different ways of moving, and differing capacities (skills, ritual, and community-based socializations etc.), rights, marginalities, and hegemonies can be identified in their uniformity as well as diversity. In order to do that, the growing band of multi-disciplinary scholars in and on critical dance studies in India would ideally have to find a way to establish a multi-pronged relationship with contemporary dance ecology, through the directions provided by the academic disciplines of women’s studies, dance studies, and performance studies with economic and political anthropology, to analyse and resist the idea of making the dancer or the dance absent, at least in the critical discourses created by us. Diversifying our small yet invested space of critical dance studies may be the best path for creating an inclusive and contemporary space inhabited by dancers/scholars from multiple histories and differences, i.e., principally enabling dance and scholarship to lead healthy and parallel/intersectional lives. In doing that, criticality and not identifying each other as less or more deserving or marginalized is of crucial importance. In recent times, new scholarship refuses to be ghettoized and relegated to antiquity and history. As of now, in the critical juncture that scholarship in dance studies seems to find itself, it seems extremely important to advocate new scholarship on dance that creates dialogues between and within bodies, through principles of somatic consciousness, kinaesthetic impulses and creativity, building proxemic and psycho-social connections within and across communities. As a preface to the five chapters that come after this introduction, it is important to assert that the idea of critical dance studies works on the desire of a near utopic theory–practice interface, where practitioners are not pushed into being merely ethnographic ‘informants’ or cultural show-pieces, and the poor cousins of scholarship, required only to be put forth as proof of the academic worth of scholars. This book aspires to foreground (already existing) ways of locating and acknowledging all that is dance in and from India. In this book I frame the Chap. 1 as its Introduction. Directly getting into the principal idea of “All that is Dance” this chapter lays down the ground and introduces the urgency that many of us have felt for addressing the confusions regarding methodologies, techniques, discourses and legitimacies of marking a specialized space for dance studies specific to the context of India. In marking this as a specific area of study, I have made a specific choice based on the post-independence developments and socio-political currencies that sets dance in and from India as different from all its neighbouring countries. Through the next five chapters, this book threads together a few of the principle concerns (out of many) that continue to shape our choices and our vulnerabilities as dancers and dance scholars in and from India.

1.12 Chapterization—Meanderings and Criticality

29

The Chapter 2, “Bodies that dance: Critical frames of reference” begins with the common prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic references and remnants of dancing bodies, that dancers and students of history, art, and literature read about, but are never really acquainted with, as bodies that matter. In contextualizing the dancing bodies in regions, and socio-cultural contexts I have tried to connect the past to the present—as a methodology of connecting the dancing bodies of the past to what, how and why we are the bodies that we have, and what we choose or are made to dance now. Through a selective mapping of examples I hope to excite readers to keep dance and the dancing bodies as the knowledge in the centre of their larger critical research. In creating this chapter, I have generated my thoughts from a constant connection of writing to the range of time- and space-specific examples of dance in and from India, from pre-colonial times to the present. This chapter uses specific examples first to bring the past in connection to the present, by looking at spaces and bodies that continue with traditional practices in contemporary India in different settings. These examples help me to emphasize that dancing bodies and not the learned, most often monetized skill acquisition keeps dance flowing through time. The chapter ends with a word that is generally kept out of official discourses in India—‘resistance’ in the context of dance. Here, the emphasis is again consciously laid on searching and finding the dance as the tool for communication/connection and assertion of rights and duties, linking the dancing bodies meaningfully to the everyday realities of India, way beyond being a tool for aesthetic and elitist assertions of antiquity. The Chapter 3 is named “Understanding categorization—the ‘tribal’, ‘folk’, and the ‘classical’ dance forms”. Going by the categorization of dances in the Sangeet Natak Akademi, this chapter critically examines the above terms through different examples. The principal critical explorations of this chapter are concerned with the artistic engagement, aesthetics, and livelihood possibilities for the dancers who are identified by these terms. The methodology for understanding the different categories has been based on the understanding of dance as a tool used for socialization and also a mirror reflecting and recording these traditions and transitions. This chapter also looks at dance as a reflection of local cultural ecology and the changes that matter. Moving beyond the examples of this chapter, which try to create and experience the categories of folk, tribal, and the classical dances, it brings forth conceptual understandings that in my opinion need to be the preparational grounds for working on any of the above categories or even dance history. Words such as decontextualization, presence, representation, participatory and presentational principals therefore become the ideas on the basis of which the chapter creates a connection with the previous chapter on dancing bodies. I believe that it is my responsibility as a dancer/anthropologist, and a scholar who meanders through multi-disciplinary tools of writing and understanding dance, to transfer the doubts, guilt and confusions that I have regarding the paths we have chosen to remain protected in our ignorance23 and arrogance regarding the Indian dance ecology.

23

The recent resurgence of debates in the world of dance regarding the transgression of cultural, aesthetic and economic ownership of dance knowledge and the continued disregard of this continuing violence over the long post-independence years may be read through. Alone (2017) writings amongst those from within the world of dance practice and scholarship.

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Chapter 4 brings the attention to one of the most important tools of control in dance ecology—patriarchy. The chapter is named “Patriarchy and the [in]visible line of control: Power structures and space making”. It focuses on the systems of control over the dancers’ labour, that are imposed and achieved through simultaneous and multi-pronged assertions of power. As many of the dancers who take up dancing as a hobby or work are women, special emphasis is laid on the woman dancer’s existence, practice and labour within the controlling and often exploitative patriarchal structures and their hierarchizing principles. Of key importance are the ideas of dispossessions, labour and privileges within the regulatory categories of caste, class, and gender, while specifically analysing patriarchal family regulations and an overall masculine understanding/assertion of nationhood and rights. Finally, it looks at the economic control over saleable aesthetics and popular entrepreneurism around dance and dancers, placed in differently identifiable locations of power/social categorization/faith, and most importantly, labour. The chapter registers the space for dance in and from India as an ongoing conversation between different identities, i.e., genders, sexualities, caste, class and faith with power and patriarchy. This remains a broad spectrum, furthering my assertion of what critical dance studies ought to empower the future scholarship with. Chapter 5 is titled “The modern and the contemporary in the context of dance in India”. This chapter begins by a methodology that I forced myself to use, i.e., that of beginning by facing my own stake and position regarding the way my ‘contemporary’ negotiations with the dance world which makes me a problematic and vulnerable subject as an author. It also acknowledges that there are many contemporaries giving rise to a range of connections with the corporeal schema and praxis thereafter, that reflect not only skills but individual experiences, politics, and commitments, and therefore generate different languages and communications both for the dance community and the audience. Another extremely important focus in this chapter is on the two related and deeply interconnected terms: decolonization and neocolonization. Framing the references on ongoing debates worldwide and within India, the chapter wishes to create a space for long and critical debates that, for me, becomes a mirror for looking at our engagements with the subject, the subjectivities and their reflections on the ongoing, drastic and often-destabilizing violence being created within the ecology of dance. In the hope that we remain committed and academically inclined towards registering and appreciating, and also analytically and critically researching the works of different stakeholders within the dance ecology, Chap. 6 is framed as “To be continued: Thoughts on dance as response, responsibility and resistance”. It is a long chapter, building on examples once again like most other chapters. The examples are unequal in volume and details, but they are deliberately kept that way. My intention has been to anthropologically analyse specific examples of commitments to dance, beyond its overbearing presence as a tool for entertainment or aesthetic assertions. These examples come across as framed beyond the regulatory principals discussed in the previous chapters. I have engaged with examples of using dance as a tool for interartistic and multi-disciplinary communication—of identities, politics, sexualities, alternate sources of power, resistance. They are artistically and functionally

References

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different—as they emphasis directly or indirectly their commitment to social change. And yet, they can be seen as very much the same in their effort to use dance as a tool for communicating with the audience and the larger community. Chapter six also becomes then the place where I reluctantly draw a finishing line, hoping that the research so far iterated will join the discursive lines that an everyday belonging to the dance ecology generates in many of us.

References Alone, Y.S. (2017). “Caste Life Narratives, Visual Representation, and Protected Ignorance”. Biography: Journal of University of Hawaii, Vol. 40, No. 1, Winter. 140–169. Banerji, A. & R. Mitra. (2020). Conversations across the field of dance studies: Decolonizing dance discourses (Special Issue). Dance Studies Association, XL. https://journals.publishing.umich. edu/conversations/issue/72/info/ Bharucha, R. (1993). Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture. Routledge. Butler, J. (2009) “Performativity, precarity and sexual politics”. Antropólogos Iberoamericanos en Red, 4(3). Sept–Dec. i–xiii. Madrid. Chakraborty, A. (2022). “Dancing the night away: Erotic Outlaws of the Democracy, Economic and Political Weekly, 57(22), 45–52. Chatterjea, A. (2009) “Red- stained Feet: Probing the ground on which women dance in contemporary Bengal”. Susan Foster (ed.) Worlding Dance. USA: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119–143. Chatterjea, A. (2020). Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-south Choreographies. Palgrave Macmillan. Chatterjee, P. (1997). The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories, reprinted in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus. Oxford University Press. Chatterji, R. (2009). Writing Identities: Folklore and Performative Arts of Purulia, Bengal. Indira Gandhi National Centre of the Arts. New Delhi: Aryan Books International. Chatterji, R. (2016). Scripting the Folk: History, Folklore, and the imagination of place in Bengal. Annual Review of Anthropology., 45, 377–394. Cherian, A. (2017). Redefining the public: Naturalizing the private: rewiring of cultural policy. In A. Cherian (Ed.), Tilt, Pause, Shift: Dance Ecologies in India (pp. 31–42). Tulika Books. Foster, S. L. (1996). Introduction. In S. L. Foster (Ed.), Corporealities: Dancing Knowledge Culture and Power (pp. x–xvi). Routledge. Foster, S.L. (2011). Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. USA & Canada: Routledge. Foster, S. L. (2019). Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion. Oxford University Press. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio. Q. Hoare & G.N. Smith (eds.) New York: International Publishers. Guru, G., & Sarukai, S. (2017). The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory. Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (2004). The ‘new’ imperialism: Accumulation by dispossession. Socialist Register. (oxford University Press), 40, 63–87. Kothari, S. (2013). Papers From the First Dance Seminar. 1958. Delhi: Sangeet Natak XLVII (1 -4). MacKendrick, K. (2004). Embodying transgression. In A. Lepecki (Ed.), Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on Dance and Performance Theory (pp. 140–156). Wesleyan University Press. MARG magazine, 1(1) in October 1946. O’Shea, J. (2010). Roots/routes of dance studies. In J. O’Shea & A. Carter (Eds.), The Routledge Dance Studies Reader (2nd ed., pp. 1–16). Routledge.

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Pandian, M.S.S. (2006). Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present. Delhi: Permanent Black. Prakash, B. (2023). “The erotic power of the dancer: labour of the erotic and the bodies of the sensory in the Arkestra of North India”. South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 186–201. https://doi. org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2097424. Quentin H. & Smith, G.N. (edited and translated). (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Rainer, Y. (1999) A Woman Who….: Essays, Interviews, Scripts. USA: JHU Press. Ram, K. (2000). Listening to the call of dance: Re-thinking authenticity and essentialism. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11(2), 358–364. Rege, S. (2013). Writing caste/writing gender: Narrating dalit women’s Testimonios. Seagull Books. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2009). Another time, another space: Does the dance remain the same. In P. Chakravorty & N. Gupta (Eds.), Dance Matters (pp. 26–39). Routledge. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2022). Uday Shankar and his transcultural experimentations: Dancing modernity. Palgrave Macmillan. Singh, L. (2017). Raising the Curtain: Recasting the women performers in India. The Orient Blackswan. Sinha, S. (1982). Tribes and Indian civilization. Indian Anthropological Society. Tambe, A. (2009, 24 April). “Reading devadasi practice through popular marathi literature” In: The Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 44, no. 17, pp. 85–92. (Updated on 2 June 2021) Tambe, A. (2022). “Folk dance/vulgar dance: erotic lavani and the hereditary performance labour”, South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 153–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2022.214 2899. Tambe, A. (2022, 28 May). “Women-only! Reframing of Erotic Lavani”, Contemporary Maharashtra, 57(22), 37–44. Vatsyayan, K. (1972). Aspects of Cultural Policies in India, UNESCO PARIS. United Nations. Vatsyayan, K. (1974). Indian Classical Dance. Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Vatsyayan, K. (2007, 3rd ed). Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts. Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi.

Online Sources: https://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/about-us. Accessed 03-02-2023. https://www.kalakshetra.in/. Accessed on 03–02–2023. https://www.kalamandalam.ac.in. Accessed on 03-02-2023. https://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/centres-of-the-akademi/sattriya-kendra. Accessed on 03-022023. https://www.sangeetnatak.gov.in/centres-of-the-akademi/chhau-kendra. Accessed on 03–02–2023. https://narthaki.com/. (accessed on 03-02-2023) www.indiaculture.nic.in/financial-assistance-promotion-guru-shishya-parampara-repertory-grant. Accessed on 03-02-2023. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/chhau-dance-00337. Accessed on 03-02-2023. https://knowindia.gov.in/culture-and-heritage/performing-arts.php#:~:text=Dance,have%20r igid%20rules%20of%20presentation. Accessed on 22/02/2021.

Chapter 2

Bodies that Dance: Critical Frames of Reference

2.1 My Body-Story: The Past in the Present Practice, Aesthetics, and Control Bodies are repositories—whether we like it or not. I, for one, exist in a body that hardly remembers a time when it did not carry any signature dance training. I am told I expressed the desire to enter a dance school when I was three years old. A year later I was taken to a dance school, where I was greeted by the sounds of ghungroo (the ankle bells). I remember shivering in anticipation of being able to move with those bells jingling around my ankles, and also imagining dressing up in colourful dresses and ornaments. Before learning to dance, I was imagining the appearance (and the body) I shall soon be able to acquire through dance. In reality, it was a class full of many bodies, all obedient and waiting to be guided to move together. The warning was sharp and clear, it still rings in my ears. “You will not talk. You are here to dance and that is what I shall teach you to do, and if you are dedicated, you shall succeed in learning fast. Once you are doing your tatkaar (rhythmic footwork) well, we shall order ghungroo for you,” said the teacher. I tried my best, not because I was loving what was being asked of my body and mind, but because I was obsessed with the idea of wearing the ghungroo while dancing to its sound. Looking back, I do not remember any pleasure in those days of being initiated into the dance learning process. The class had a sense of grave seriousness, focused on achieving a goal. It seemed as if a moment taken to enjoy it would make me seem less dedicated than others. But I remember my body of that time, through the aches and pains, the touch of the breeze on the sweaty body, and the amazement of pushing it to add extra vocabulary, such as the spins of Kathak, or the isolation and moving of the base muscles of the neck. I remember adding extra responsibilities for my feet; in fact, I remember the sensation of the stamping that I did to try to follow the basic tatkaar on the first day.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_2

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We were learning rhythms(tala), by clapping and reciting them loudly. We were learning steps by repeating each basic step in three speeds. We were also doing another class where we were being taught a dance by imitating the movements of the teacher. The steps were already set to a song by Rabindranath Tagore. The seniors mechanically led us, while the teacher sat and supervised. By the end of the first month, I was desperate to run away. The atmosphere seemed stiflingly restrictive, and the commands my body was receiving can only be interpreted as confusing and oppressive in hindsight. The body was to respond to rhythm; but in reality, the rhythm was a tool of control. We were given homework to practice dancing to the song of Tagore, but my mother was scolded for not making me practice hard enough. My heart was not in the training my body was receiving. I was ready to run away, and I started pestering my mother about finding another school. I still loved the idea of dance, but hated the dance that I was being made to imitate. I joined Uday Shankar India Culture Centre (USICC), Kolkata in 1966. The Centre had reopened in Kolkata in 1965. (Fig. 2.1) The original institution was established in Almora in 1939. It had shut down in 1944 due to difficulties in procuring funding and infrastructural support due to the Second World War, but had already set a high standard as a residential institution teaching Kathakali, Bharatanatyam and Manipuri dances, and had also established a pedagogy for a creative style of dance.1 Uday Shankar and his wife Amala Nandi (Shankar) had chosen Kolkata as their city of residence, and Amala Shankar became the Director in Charge for USICC, while Uday Shankar was its Founder Director. Unlike its predecessor in Almora,2 this school was not a residential one. This Centre had a mandate of teaching three forms of classical dance (Manipuri, Kathakali and Bharatanatyam) along with a course on Creative Dance. The preparation of the body was through these classical vocabularies. The students of the Junior Section had to complete a minimum three years of a diploma course and at least twelve years old to be promoted to the Senior Section. So, for any child who joined very early, the Preparatory and Junior Sections would be his or her space till s/he was ready to move into the Senior Section. We had classes two days a week. The learning consisted of hard and often repetitive work and perseverance involving the body and the mind. The techniques and the basic grammatical structure of the classical dances needed intense observation, assimilation, expansion, and (re)organisation of the body’s movement capacity. Most movement and coordination principles were new vocabulary for the body, and it was hard work and often extremely tiring. The teachers of Kathakali, Bharatanatyam and Manipuri were rigid yet loveable—uncompromisingly pushing boundaries, as well as creating them through their monitoring of the dance vocabulary as well as the aesthetic expectations they were sharing and teaching. The work was extremely repetitive at times and needed to be practiced at home every day. We loved the contrast of laughter, joy and freedom that the creative dance class offered. 1

See Sarkar Munsi’s Uday Shankar and his Transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Modernity, Sarkar Munsi, 2022a, b. 2 See Sonal Khullar’s essay “Almora Dreams: Art and Dreams at Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, 1939–1944”. 2018.

2.1 My Body-Story: The Past in the Present Practice, Aesthetics, and Control

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Fig. 2.1 A creative dance class being filmed at Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, Kolkata with Uday, Amala and Ravi Shankar present at the site, 1967. The author is the central figure in the front line. © Author

The class on creative dance always had an element of surprise. We never knew what the day’s task would be, and neither was the music ever the same. Four musicians, with tabla, drum, Sarod, flute, and cymbals sat in a row facing us, as we assembled for the class. Amala Shankar was at the helm, and she was a spectacular teacher. The training was rigorous but different. In the creative dance classes, we were learning to think and move in coordination and in conversation within our own mind and bodyscapes, as well as in a proxemic relationship with other minds and bodies in the class. All the while the classical classes put in different signals into the systems of moving, learning, and remembering. The body was getting very different directions and was responding to those with mindful alertness, and a keen ability to observe that was honed in the creative dance classroom. While we learnt to identify and portray fixed vocabularies in the classical dance classes, the creative style forced us to think through our everyday experiences. The creative style was not completely free style, it had codes of concentration, observation, improvisation, and imitation as four important criteria of pedagogic transfer and assessment. But the important difference that the creative style brought into the body was the sense of freedom in experimenting with new pedagogical impulses, and constantly updating the body’s repertoire in response to the training it was receiving. The process of creativity encouraged thinking through the acquired knowledge to create movements beyond imitation, by using everyday imageries through one’s own initiatives. Much

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later I realised that not all dancers actually develop the skill of understanding their own body and the movement ranges it acquires through the training. Embodying a set of grammars of moving does not necessarily provide the incentive to create new movements, especially in case of the rigidly transmitted pedagogies of classical dances. Creativity is a sort of mobilisation that requires a constant provocation for activating conscious engagement between the mind and the body. The expectation and motivation are differently constructed for the process of engaging imagination, concentration, observation and memories, in case of creating a movement that comes from the body but does not belong to any already existing pedagogy. For learners in junior classes in USICC the impulses were introduced by the teacher, and the mobilisation of images, thoughts and experiences were mentored by gentle and constructive suggestions, that taught the learners to invest in micro-possibilities, separating and attending to constructing the architectural structure of any impulse that would then remain as the root of a slowly evolving detailed movement sequence. Thus, for me and many others in USICC, the learning process actually set in motion two very different artistic processes and embodiments. The first of the skills was the ability to learn, remember and reproduce folk and classical dance pedagogies taught in class. The second skill prepared the bodies to become more and more capable of thinking, reacting, and experimenting on the feet. The split in concentration—where the young students were expected to react and respond to new instructions while simultaneously remembering the earlier mobilisational inputs by the teacher and existing embodied knowledge—was a challenge and a developmental push. It created a receptive body that was pushed to think, imagine, and assimilate while moving and creating its own movement structures. In many of the classes we had guests, some of whom I now remember as dignitaries as well as dancers/choreographers from different countries. Workshops with famous dancers from different modern dance institutions were a common occurrence. Amala Shankar was clear about her goal as far as her students were concerned. She repeatedly told us, our parents, and everyone around: “I never wanted to create great dancers in isolation, I wanted to create great human beings, who see and feel dance in everything around them”. I spent 1966–2006 as an active member of the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre—as a student, as a troupe member, as a teacher and as an administrator, in different permutations and combinations. My body–stories, memories, performative experiences, and nostalgia were constructed at, with and from this institution that formally closed down in 2015, fifty years after its birth. In the time spent at the institution, the dance vocabulary of my body expanded with performative as well as social experiences, challenges and practice. The capacity of the body to remember, assimilate, and process never fails to surprise me at the post-sixty stage.

2.2 Bodies That Move/are Moved

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2.2 Bodies That Move/are Moved The previous section works as a reminder for me to further explore3 the ways in which it is vitally important to set the stage for critical dance studies to locate itself in the bodies that consciously or unconsciously begin to move purposefully, using rhythm, skill, narratives, abstractions, and passion for communication. The following words by Dreyfus (quoted by Purser, 2017: 4) set the stage for the bodies I plan to bring into the discussion on the dancing body, within the critical dance studies discourse. … [A]t first we must slowly, awkwardly, and consciously follow the rules. But there comes a time when we finally can perform automatically. At this point we do not seem to be simply dropping these same rigid rules into unconsciousness; rather we seem to have picked up the muscular gestalt, which gives our behaviour a flexibility and smoothness. (Dreyfus, 1992, pp. 248, 249)

These words clearly establish the routes for a body to travel, in order to become capable of dancing. It also is an extraordinarily simple way of talking about the process of gaining control of movement skills through practice. The third achievement of these two simple sentences is that they actually make us think of links between practice and embodiment, as one gets habituated in moving his/her body according to a certain range of patterns. Merleau-Ponty’s words take this argument further: “My body is not for me an object in-itself; I cannot jump outside it in order to see it occupy successive positions in objective space.”4 In dance, this means a denial of the Cartesian duality of the mind and body, which Merleau-Ponty argued against. It links the idea of acquiring and letting the new dance skill inhabit the body, and remembering the experience through a process of memorizing. It gives us a further understanding of the ways in which one can understand and acquire skill, and then practice them through a repeated revisiting of the experience, giving the body time to adjust to the patterns of added vocabulary, now accessible through kinesthesia.5 Discussing Merleau-Ponty’s conceptualization of the body, Purser explains: Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy emphasises the importance of a tacit or pre-reflective sense of self which precedes or underlies the reflective thought involved in the Cartesian cogito. Understanding our subjectivity and what it is to be human, thus requires attending to our pre-reflective sense of ourselves as embodied beings in the world. Direct experiences of dance are particularly helpful for this because as an embodied practice and an expressive art, engaging in dance focuses us on our bodily presence in the world and on the here-and-now rather than encouraging detached reflection. (Purser, 2019: 253–263)

According to Purser, a dancer is forced to think through and in movement while dancing. The training makes it possible to think about movement while in the process of dancing. The body becomes the site as well as the tool, and the intention and 3

See “Becoming the Body” (Sarkar Munsi, 2022a, b), Introduction: The Dancing Body (December 2022) to read some of the earlier writings that bring in different perspectives. 4 See Langer (1989: 102). 5 Kinaesthesia is the awareness of body parts and their movements and links to each other. It is mediated by sensory receptors present in different body parts such as the tendons, joints, muscles, that move together or in coordination.

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the embodiment become one (Ibid). It may also be said that dancing means inhabiting and using the body at the same time. According to Purser, the immediate tacit sense of embodied self, which dancers often describe with the terms ‘being-in-yourbody’ and ‘being-in-the-moment’ is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the corporeal schema (Ibid). The corporeal schema becomes one of the most important threads in the following chapters, through the critical readings of different categories of skill, participatory process, and solo/ensemble practices. Purser further analyses MerleauPonty’s theorization of “the embodied beings making sense of the world they inhabit”, claiming that “in locating subjectivity in the lived body, Merleau-Ponty locates our capacities for thinking and feeling in a sensual and sensuous body which is embedded in and oriented towards the world around us and the others in our environment” (Ibid). This discussion leads us to create a binary of bodies through the understanding of the corporeal schema as the space where dance begins, before the acquisition of any skills. The skill and training are additions that complicate the corporeal schema by adding layers of embodied knowledge.

2.3 Understanding the Body Discourse in the Context of Dance in India Dance training starts with the training of the body and the mind. All dancing bodies are created and/or crafted; they are bodies that speak; and bodies that prepare to occupy public realms. These bodies are prepared and trained, either intentionally or unintentionally. There could be a differentiation of dancers on the basis of whether (s)he is a dancer by choice, by necessity or by imposition. (Sarkar Munsi, 2022a, b). In my essay “Becoming the body” (2022a, b),6 I asked “What is this uneasiness in giving the dancing bodies differential agencies, about interpreting the past or to earn a living—about representing different stakeholders through history—about choosing the way they want to be seen, perceived and remembered?”. I have tried answering this question by looking at different empirical examples of preparing dancing bodies as formally skilled or prepared through socialization, “through a range of different relations with the concepts of labour, effort, deviance, dedication, precarity, and resistance”. I have asked some further questions while writing this chapter about the dancing body in India: What are the embodied references to dancing bodies in India? When does a body appear to be dancing? What does a body have to do to be recognized as a dancing body in the Indian dance ecology? How is the dancing body to be read as tool as well as the space for ongoing social/ cultural/political/and economic negotiations? To begin with an academic contemplation, one must understand that even in contemporary times many bodies in dance are largely shaped and controlled by social norms. Each dancing body registers two kinds of training. The first is through the socialization processes, that start at birth and consolidate the frames of reference 6

See “Becoming the Body” (Sarkar Munsi, 2022a, b) for further details.

2.4 From Prehistory Till Date

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for the embodied expressions, thoughts, and relationship that develops between individuals and their bodies. This process is both individual and community-specific, and is structured through common experiences as well as individual/family manifestations. The second training is that which is very often a choice, and the knowledge involved is specialized and specific, attached to the form and not to a particular way of living. It’s end-use could be a livelihood option or an art practice that the dancer is able to pursue as a hobby. The training is registered as a means to an end, usually specified as a goal to reach a particular level of expertise, and could be formal or informal depending on what the body is being prepared for. Dancing bodies therefore may either possess special skills, or be untrained, but will be carrying community knowledge specific to the socio-cultural background they come from. They are gendered, socialized, caste/class/creed-controlled bodies— from different geographical locations of India, that are very dissimilar in their cultural/embodied practices. Keeping in mind the vast range of dancing bodies, I attempt to answer the above questions using references to dance, and the dancing bodies that are publicly established within the common narratives of Indian culture and society.

2.4 From Prehistory Till Date On the one hand, we have grown up hearing the story of “The Dancer in Repose” from Mohenjodaro, and on the other hand, we have seen endless community dances— both within the identifiably segregated community spaces of the Adivasis and also in the celebrated showcases of different regional dances at the various occasions of national celebrations. There is, however, a tangible sense of stigmatization that is simultaneously attached to the dancing body as well as the dancer. If dance is so commonly accepted as a bodily act to be exhibited as well as encouraged—then why is there so much uneasiness regarding the dancing body, especially in the upper-caste/ upper-class/urban population? What is difference in the implications that a sporting/ athletic body communicates, to make it relatively separable and safe from such social stigmas? Why is the dancing body infinitely implicated in religious, historical, cultural, social, political, and occupational dynamics, that effects the dance and the dancer, even in the current times? The dancing body is the focus of a rapidly growing discourse in Indian scholarship, taking in situ experiences of embodiment into the specialized realms of multiple disciplines such as history, philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, and cultural studies. The complexities are exciting, as dancing bodies in their individual and ensemble forms continue to demand attention, and there is a rising consciousness about creating an evolving methodology which is multidisciplinary well as intersectional. Writing yet again about the dancing body in this chapter pushes me to start by referring to some of my earlier essays that specifically dealt with the bodies in dance (2010, 2011, 2017, 2020, 2022). In this chapter, I take a different approach, whereby I try to put together different references to the dancing body that occupy space within

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dance discourse in the current times. While I might not be able to include all dancing bodies and their representations, this chapter remains dedicated to all the bodies that help us imagine dance as an embodied act in today’s India.

2.5 The Archival Body: The Body of the [Dancing] Girl of Mohenjodaro The bronze sculpture of the Dancing Girl from Mohenjodaro is possibly a reference to the earliest dancing body in India. Without any concrete reference, this body of a woman stands with the weight clearly on her right leg and the right hip jutting out in an angle from the rest of the body. The other leg is bent at the knee. The right arm adorned with four bangles, bent at the elbow and rests on the hip—seemingly creating stability or possibly in an arrested posture in dance. The left arm is heavily bejewelled in bangles, and is straight at the elbow. It reaches the middle of the left thigh, and seems to be resting lightly on it. Nobody knows what this body was created to portray, but its identity has been declared as that of a dancing girl. Both the arms are longer than the normal length of human arms. The body is unclothed. There is a necklace around the neck and some unidentifiable object in her left hand. There is actually no way to really know whether or not this figurine is that of a dancing girl (Figs. 2.2 and 2.3). However, there are a few things that may be understood about what is interpreted as dance, and why.7 The National Museum in Delhi begins its description with: Dancing Girl 5721/195 C. 2500 B.C.E Mohenjodaro Bronze 10.5 x 5 x 2.5 cm. One of the rarest artifacts in the world, the statue of a young lady now unanimously called ’Indus dancing girl’, represents a stylistically poised female figure performing a dance. The forward thrust of the left leg and backwards tilted right, the gesture of the hands, demeanor of the face and uplifted head, all speak of absorption in dance, perhaps one of those early styles that combined drama with dance, and dialogue with body-gestures. (http://nationalmuseumi ndia.gov.in/en/collections/index/6)

The figure was described as that of “a young girl, her hand on her hip in a halfimpudent posture, and legs slightly forward as she beats time to the music with her legs and feet.” Archaeologist, Gregory Possehl, expressed his intrigue while describing The Dancing Girl as “the most captivating piece of art from an Indus site”. He was uncertain about the figurine representing a dancer, but went on to write “we may not be certain that she was a dancer, but she was good at what she did and she knew it” (Possehl, 2002: 113—114). It is to be noted that there have been doubts 7

The National Museum website mentions the Indus Dancing Girl in their Pre-historic Archaeology Collection saying: “The statue, recovered in excavation from ‘HR area’ of Mohenjo-Daro. The adornment of her left arm is widely different from the right. The left is covered in entirety with heavy ringed bangles. Besides, the figure has been cast as wearing on her breasts a necklace with four ‘phalis’ like shaped pendants. Though a small work of art, it is impressive and surpasses in plasticity and sensuousness the heavily ornate terracotta figurines.” http://nationalmuseumindia. gov.in/en/collections/index/6.

2.5 The Archival Body: The Body of the [Dancing] Girl of Mohenjodaro

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Fig. 2.2 The bronze figurine of the dancing girl—front view, from National Museum, Delhi. © Creative commons attribution-share alike 3.0 unported license8

Fig. 2.3 Back view of the dancing girl figurine © Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license9

expressed regarding the figurine being that of a dancer, and one popular opinion argues that the identification was made by British experts, who carried a particular idea about the oriental bodies of female dancers.

8 9

See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dancing_girl.jpg. Accessed on 10-02-2023. See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bronze_dancing_girl. Accessed on 10-02-2023.

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2.6 Bhimbetka Rock Art—Ensemble Performative Actions Documented in History In many public forums, a question is often asked regarding the use of dance studies. It is asserted that dance needs to be danced, not written about. While dance is a principally corporeal act, it is ephemeral as the movements generated by the act of dancing disappear as soon as they are over, and the body passes into the next stage of moving. Nobody can go back in time to dance the same dance again in the same historical time. Hence all dances are always a new rendition, danced with new energies, new states of emotions and new negotiations with time and space. Unless documented, therefore, dance tends to disappear without trace. As it has become very clear from past historical occurrences of war, violent or non-violent changes in patronage, and also aesthetic revolutions and reinterpretations in history, bodies that dance have disappeared and repeatedly been marginalized or demobilized. Their history then only remains in documented pieces of evidence and is open to continuous interpretations. We must therefore pay special attention to remnants of the past in our pre and protohistoric sites, as well as the later structures of dancing bodies that tell us about the presences and representations of dance, as depicted by the remains of dance through the bodies that have been documented in historical sites. Bhimbetka is a “primary site”.10 UNESCO website puts on record: The site complex is a magnificent repository of rock paintings within natural rock shelters with archaeological evidences of habitation and lithic industry, from the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods through the Chalcolithic to the Mediaeval period. Some of the world’s oldest floors and walls have been found here. All of these have remained, providing an undisturbed continuous sequence of history of stone age cultures to the historical period. A consistent use of these shelters over this long span of time, apart from habitational deposits, is also indicated by paintings which have been superimposed on earlier existing ones, by inscriptions between the second century BC and seventh century AD, and more recently, by paintings of the Mediaeval period. (Archaeological Survey of India, 2003: 14)

There is some confusion regarding the dating of the superimposed layers of rock carvings and paintings found in this area, situated in the state of Madhya Pradesh.11 The area is about 40 kms away from the alluvial river basin of the Narmada, where a lot of human tools made in the Lower Palaeolithic period have been found. A hominid cranium has also been found in the same area. As all these tools were discovered in alluvial gravels, it has been assumed that most of them have been made or used elsewhere, and therefore the river basin is considered to be a secondary site.12 In 10

See UNESCO document by Archaeological Survey of India, “Rock Shelters of Bhimbhetka” , 2003. See https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/925.pdf for details. (Accessed on 20-052022). 11 Exact location of these rock shelters is stated to be N22 55 40.0 E77 35 00.0 on the southern edge of the Central Indian plateau, according to the UNESCO website. 12 In archaeological terms, secondary sites of discovery of human remains are those where the tools are not primarily made, or initially used.

2.6 Bhimbetka Rock Art—Ensemble Performative Actions Documented …

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contrast, Bhimbhetka is taken as a primary site. Because of both direct and indirect evidence of worksites, it is believed that this region has preserved the earliest remains of the ancestors of humans from the Pleistocene Age. The UNESCO report further elaborates that “the discovery of Bhimbetka, therefore, is not only of vital significance for the prehistorian, but in many ways provides evidences which are unique in the entire world.” The report elaborates that the rock shelters, preserved through time from the Pleistocene period by its naturally protected geographical situation, has managed to protect and carefully exhibit an evolving history of human existence through the preserved evidences in the material and artistic remains. According to the Archaeological Survey of India, the findings at the rock shelters show evidences of “continuing traditional expressions in the lifestyles of the surrounding [A]divasi settlements of the Gonds, Pradhans and the Korkus…… Bhimbetka is exceptional in the fact that in at least one of the excavated shelters (III F-23), continued occupation is demonstrable from 100,000 BP (Late Acheulian) to 1000 AD”. (Archaeological Survey of India, 2003: 15). There has been a lot of research on Bhimbhetka (Fig. 2.4) since it became popular as a prehistoric site. The dancing figures have often drawn attention. Some of the dancing figures are from older layers of findings, whereas others are from more recent times. According to Dubey-Pathak “Dance and music are represented in cultural scenes” (Dubey-Pathak, 2014: 7). There are a total of 161 dancing figures according to her. They belong to different times as per their datings. Generally, men and women are shown dancing together. The assertion of social bonding is made clear in the etchings. In one of the shelters, the human figures are in a line, holding hands across other bodies on both sides. This particular dance clearly signifies a shared corporeal event in a community—where the presence of the musicians as a part of the group maybe the documentation of a shared space between the dancers and the musicians. It is also possible to understand the interdependence between the dancers and the drummer/musician (14 in total in Bhimbhetka). The dancers are face to face with the musician in one of the clearer and more direct depictions of the dancing bodies in space—with a clear holding of hands between the codancers, creating an unbroken interlaced chain by extending the hand across the immediate neighbour’s body, to hold hand with the alternate dancer on both sides. The movement and the bodies in motion can be seen as being generated and passed through by the bodies in deep proxemic13 /haptic14 connection with each other. Kapila Vatsyayan writes in detail about the rock art in the central Indian caves in book Dance in Indian Paintings (1982). She says that though the dates are not certain regarding the etchings and paintings found in Bhimbhetka and other sites, the dancing figures are clearly associated with life-events of the people. They are also prehistoric and protohistoric links that point towards commonalities between embodied practices through time and space. About the specific etchings of human 13

Proxemic understanding is the sense of distance or closeness that people like to have while existing and sharing space with others. Often, reactions to closeness or distance between bodies may be results of the past experiences or socialization processes. 14 Haptic connections and reactions thereof are on one hand responses and reactions based on touch.

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Fig. 2.4 Figures at Bhimbhetka rockshelters © Author

figures, she writes, “the interlocking of the hands is an important aspect of many collective dances of India and other countries. In India, it is known to some tribal and rural communities, and not to others” (Vatsyayan 1982: 9). Some other etchings and drawings from Bhimbhetka are also identified by experts as dancing figures, and their presence is noted in different layers of archaeological findings. The oldest paintings from the late Paleolithic age show hunting and dancing as possibly related activities of a ritual associated with hunting. In the Mesolithic phase, depiction of war and community dances have been identified by Vatsyayan and others. Explaining the depictions of movements related to everyday use of weapons, the practice of faith through ritual performances, and also daily lives, Vatsyayan writes that many movements are constructed around warriors’ proficiency in holding and manipulating weapons, both for survival as well as self-preservation. Such movements are common among many regional cultures (Vatsyayan 1982: 7). The dating efforts in the Bhimbhetka rock shelters show that in the Chalcolithic period, other layers have been added to the older ones. The continuity and similarity of these dancing figures from the past to the living traditions and embodied practices of the local inhabitants are striking. Even when compared with current embodied practices, many of the group dancing modes and musical instruments remain similar to these past practices. These remain undocumented as well. Existing as daily practice rather than specialized dance, such acts of dancing reaffirm the psycho-social solidarities beyond simple bodily proximity. Such inherited patterns of dancing among smaller communities of Adivasis, that bind human bodies together within somatically connected kinetic spheres, are not considered worthy of documentation beyond anthropological films.

2.7 Sculptures, Paintings, Natyasastra and the Documented Bodily …

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2.7 Sculptures, Paintings, Natyasastra and the Documented Bodily Presences: References to Antiquity The Indian dancer comprehends movement almost on the same basis as the Indian sculptor (Vatsyayan, 2013: 109).

Material and literary remnants have been sources of mytho-historical imaginations of the dancing body in past writings on dance. They have also provided documentary and archival evidence of aesthetic and embodied configurations of the body in dance, in the specific historical times under different regional historical patronages. The role of bringing such historical connections to the fore have been played by prehistorians, archaeologists, and historians specializing in social and cultural developments, and specialized art historians among others. Some of them carry details of the dancing body, and yet others write about the way in which the sculpted/painted documentation as remnants keep dancing bodies alive in Indian history. In her article “Artistic labour in dance and painting: revisiting the theory–practice debate via mimesis (Anukrti) and the abject body”,15 Dave Mukherji takes on the term “Labour or s´rama, a loaded term by itself,” to explore it “in its complex sense of not only involving labour as skill that informs acts of painting, acting-dancing but also as a thematic of representation” by asking the question, “Are the labouring bodies of dancers and painters ‘dancing’ to the tune of the patrons or the (theorists) or do their acts inflect the making of these codes?” (2022). Through her detailed analysis of the aesthetics and mimetic readings of Anukriti or mimesis, as discussed in the three Sanskrit texts of Natyashastra, Chitrasutra of the Vi¸sn¸ udharmottarapur¯an¸ a and Abhinavabharati, she sees the meaning-making and communicative powers of the acting/dancing bodies represented in their artistic versions: It is via the strategic salience attached to action or Kriy¯a that the actor-dancer could lay full claim to his own creative agency. That the actor-dancer could claim cultural competence equal to any s´a¯ strak¯ara while foregrounding his artistic labour; that there were many slippages between the domains of theory and practice; that an actor-dancer could move beyond the high Sanskrit knowledge system and hold up the world of everyday experience as an equally valid source of knowledge are some of the astounding lessons that the early medieval treatises offer to our contemporary present and its own inequalities. (2022)

Dave Mukherji’s observations contribute to ways of reading the tense relationship of manual/artistic labour and ritual labour of the performing body—both in its artistic and physical sense. It proposes a methodology for looking beyond the artistic creations that have fed into various Brahmanical imaginations of the dancing body and classical dance grammars, so that the bodies are celebrated for their aesthetic contribution by linking them to the larger cultural politics of caste, class and power. 15

Dave Mukherji’s article ‘Artistic labour in Dance and Painting: Revisiting the Theory–Practice Debate via Mimesis (Anuk¸rti) and the Abject Body’ sees Anuk¸rti as [performative] mimesis in terms of references from the Indian classical Brahminic context, linking dancing, acting and painting as a common thread. (2023: 140 - 152)

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To move from the process of reading the moving bodies to one of the most detailed analyses of sculpted dancing bodies, one needs to read Kapila Vatsyayan’s detailed analysis of dancing bodies constructed from the references/documentations that have survived to tell us the story of dancing bodies of the past. According to Vatsyayan, Indian dance training emphasized a certain structure of body and movement training. Guided by writings in the Natyasastra, she uses the terms ‘Nrtta technique’ as the term to mean ‘the laws of human movement’ (Vatsyayan, 2007: 27). She also differentiates the Indian and Western dance techniques as different from the point of view of the emphasis they lay on space and time. In her opinion, [T]he Indian dancing has a sculpturesque quality which is rare in the dance styles of the West, for its emphasis is on the pose, the stance, and not on a continuous movement in limitless space, as is the impression given by Western classical ballet. In the nrtta technique, we find that a series of poses, sculpturesque in quality and almost static in impression, are connected by movement in a given metrical cycle. Indian dancing seeks to depict the perfect point or the moment of balance along the brahmasutra (the vertical median, so much so that all movement emerges from the sama (the point of perfect balance, akin to the samabhanga of the sculpture and comes back to it (Vatsyayan, 2007: 27).

Vatsyayan’s reference to the centre of gravity is used to justify a generalization and absence of any mention of leaps and movements against gravity in Natyasastra, which she sees as a deliberate philosophical choice for Bharata. In her opinion, the Indian dancer is taught to move through specific patterns of composite movements to arrive at a perfect and stable pose, which is in accordance as well as in adjustment with the centre of gravity. In contrast, his/her attention is not so much on space, which is absorbed within the structure of the timelessness of the pose, that is the moment of perfection and stability (Ibid, 2007: 27). This of course also points to a certain form of body preparation that is distinct from the preparation of the athletic bodies in martial forms such as Chhau, Thangta, Kalaripayattu, as bodies in and of dance. Such forms of body preparation help dancers to negotiate complex and often prolonged/repeated jumps, somersaults, and other challenging in-between moments to arrive at the pose. Vatsyayan writes: The Indian dancer, like the Indian sculptor, does not lay much emphasis on the muscles of the human body, but takes the joints and the fundamentals of the joints and the fundamentals of the bone structure as its basis. It enables the dancer to suggest an abstract form without drawing attention to the individual features of the muscles. In so far as the dancing was a Yoga, this was inevitable, as the muscles could not suggest absolute form or create abstract geometric patterns (Vatsyayan, 2007: 28).

Vatsyayan’s references to the dancing body are predominantly based on Natyasastra and Abhinayadarpana. One is left without much choice when it comes to concrete references to the moving body in past writings on dance. A socio-political critique of the canonical existence of the classical dancing bodies in the current times is only possible if one can establish the discourse through references to particular dancing bodies, and their pedagogical/aesthetic/referential readings built with care through writings over the years. Hence, the next section shall refer to Vatsyayan’s

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writings. Many others16 have written on the same topic, but for the scope of this chapter Vatsyayan’s writings very appropriately set the stage. Vatsyayan’s detailed descriptions gives us a clear picture of different body parts and their training principles, with reference to the kind of movement possibilities they are expected to train in. This detailed revisiting of Natyasastra gives us an idea of the way in which such texts were used as prescriptive manuals in the post-colonial moment to develop the movement principles, and the elaborate and gradual trainings required by neoclassical dances. These principles have been lauded and perceived as essential strategies to create excellence in the dance forms selected as representatives of ‘Indian’ culture and tradition. Seen as strictly assertive processes that completely segregate dance from the everyday life and its embodied pleasure and leisure, this journey of dance in India made it the specialized art of a few skilled individuals. These processes of specialization needed high levels of skill, long-term focussed dedication, and training under master-teachers (Gurus). They also focussed on developing the disciplined body in neoclassical dances. Vatsyayan’s preoccupation with the five sutras (principles) of establishing a singular principle for manipulating parts of the Indian dancing bodies is foregrounded when she writes: “It is when human movement is conditioned by the five vertical sutras and the three horizontal sutras that the different types of poses, both in Indian sculpture and Indian dancing results” (Vatsyayan, 2013: 109). Such claims of conscious engagement of body elements in and for themselves may be identified as the basis of the hierarchies that got consolidated in the claims of the policy makers. They may have thus caused a severe marginalization of other knowledge systems that could not be fitted in these principals around the perpetuation of the sculpted body. According to her, “the work of art” is created on the principle that the actor’s or dancer’s own emotions and feelings remain completely detached from the performance that they are a part of. Thus, there is an impersonal manner of involvement/ enjoyment for the performer as well as the audience, whereby “[t]he work of art and also the artist and the actor thus become participants in a ritual where the work of art is the yantra—the device through which the sadhaka (artist) sees the vision of the Absolute as much as the audience to who the work of art is presented” (Vatsyayan, 2007: pp 9). The idea of reception clearly lies at the core of the aesthetic understanding which is aimed at the presentation of the Absolute (as a form that is not in process at all, but instead is a finished product that has reached the maximum level of its potential), both in sculpture and dance. This leads us to the concept of ’presentation’ for an audience as being a completely oppositional one to ’participation’ as an in-group activity for participatory bodies in any community space (See Chap. 3 for more details). Kapila Vatsyayan provides a review of historical texts that have created the archival references for the dance and theatrical arts, in the large history of Sanskrit writings that have survived. Of course, one is completely confused regarding the hegemonic preference to Sanskrit over all the regional texts, which also have their own archives. 16

See Padma Subramanium’s article “Dance Notations of Adavus” (2007: pp. 44–77).

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Even if these regional archives are not as large, they are significant in the context of regional histories. She writes, “[t]he history of theoretical literature on Indian dancing begins with the Natyasutras referred to by Panini. Silalin and Krasasva were authors of these sutras… these works contained the first codification of the technique of dance and drama”. (Vatsyayan, 2007: 34) Vatsyayan refers to Natyasastra as “the first extant text on Dramaturgy and Histrionics,” in which “techniques of Nrtta (dance) and Nrtya (mime) have been discussed in detail”. Vatsyayan mentions many other texts, as lost and only known because they are mentioned in the writings of others. She highlights the importance of Bharatabhasya of Nanyadeva, King of Mithila, and the Abhinayadarpana of Nandikeshwara, in all their different versions, as the most important works on dance and dancing. Abhinayadarpana is considered “by far the most complete text on dance exclusively” (Vatsyayan, 2007: 35), and remain one of the most detailed texts on acting as well. According to Vatsyayan, there is a significant gap of almost four hundred years between the time when the Natyasastra was put together or written, and the time when the Abhinayadarpana was produced, in 6th or 7th Century AD. Vatsyayan mentions the numerous regional texts in passing, but does not go beyond their names and the region they come from (Ibid, 2007: 35). In her opinion, There is an abundance of material on dancing in our religious, theological, sociological and literary works. Through them we can recreate a history of this art, when no written history exists, and in them, we find descriptions as it must have been in varying periods of history. Beginning with non-specialized references in the earlier texts, we go on to discover specific references to technique; and from the common performer of a simple community, we go on to observe the classical artist, who exercised a profound influence on various levels of thought in a complex society. (Vatsyayan, 2007: 144)

Another important space to look at the use of the dancing bodies in depicting life, devotion and everyday are the Buddhist caves. A detailed analysis of the dancing bodies on these caves by Mulk Raj Anand is available in Marg (June 1972. pp 1–16), with descriptions of paintings and sculptures created in the fifth–sixth century A.D. at the Bagh caves of Madhya Pradesh. The timing of this art is placed on the same scale as the later Ajanta sculptures (Figs. 2.5 and 2.6). One of the descriptions that become particularly relevant is the acknowledgment of dedicative actions and postures that are documented in these sculpted bodies, besides the references to everyday and aesthetic representations. In Mulk Raj Anand’s imaginative description of Plate One of Cave IV of Bagh, we read a description of the largest surviving panel that shows two dancers surrounded by a group of female musicians. The dancer wears necklace of pearls with lapiz lazuli beads, interspersed in the pattern. The hands are tilted upwards in an eloquent movement, beyond the bracelets on the wrists. The tilted head indicates a precise movement rather than wild abandon. One of the seven musicians, a lithe young girl, with a drum strapped to her body on the left of the dancer, is involved in active play, as is indicated by the three fingers of her left hand in the movement of striking the Mridang. Her face is rapt, intense and concentrated. The burnt earth brown colour and the slim, resilient body indicates that she may be a Bhil girl (1972: 9).

Anand goes beyond the descriptions of the figures to imagine/read the “twists and turns” of dance movements in the body created by the painter. He writes, “All the

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Fig. 2.5 Sculpture in Ajanta Cave 20, marking a specific and deliberate presence, different from everyday activities. © Author

figures in the composition are in dynamic relation to each other, their bodies and faces and gestures activised by the rhythm of the music which compels the mood of the dancer as well as gives the tala-beats for her expressionism” (1972: 10). Building on the search for concrete reasons for the need to use dancing bodies in spaces of ritual importance, the assumption of rituality, rather than excesses such as leisure and pleasure, can itself be the focus of a separate book. This also brings us to reflect on the gestures and their interpretations—the use and meaning of which are susceptible to class, caste, gender, and other culturally specific readings in time

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Fig. 2.6 One of many sculpted figures at the Ajanta caves that projects a female body with exaggerated and stylized angularities, consciously created with a reference to the body’s negotiated relationship with the centre of gravity. © Author

and space. Hence scholarship on the dancing body must, in my mind, be treated as a temporary as well as a subjective reading, that must go through reinterpretations rather than be perpetuated as they have been in many books written on classical dance forms in India. The historical frameworks established by earlier writings about dance in India helped establish the control of the Sanskritic and Brahminic aesthetics. This has been successful in erasing many bodies from the ecology of dance, helping to propagate myths and mytho-histories as the real history or origins of dances, to create demigods of Gurus or master-teachers as carriers of tradition, and to create aesthetically

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and socially empowered patrons, i.e., the Government of India, the policymakers and the educated upper-class elite.17 In my view, the natural progression from the references built around dance in India from the historically available bodies of the past is to go into a discussion on the contemporary dancing bodies that are shaped directly with references to these bodies of the past. Thus, the next section carries on with the historical references that continue to control and burden the realities of today.

2.8 Docility Through Knowledge: Bodies in Training While scores of artmakers registered their opposition to the environment of intolerance, performing “politics by other means” and becoming a counter-hegemonic public in the terms Roy and Beshty describe, the dance community was strangely silent.18 (Banerji, 2023). These lines represent a very recent observation by scholar Anurima Banerji, in her essay on the returning of State-given awards by many artists who were protesting against the atmosphere of fear and violence perpetrated by the political agendas of the current government. In this section on docility and discipline, the idea of training emerges as the principal mental scape conditioning for dancing. Banerji’s reference to the absence of dancers (except Maya Krishna Rao) in the list of the artists who returned their awards connects the docility of their bodies to that of the minds and makes us think of the complexities of governmentality and self-surveillance. It also compels us to understand the reluctance of the dance community to engage with politically problematic spaces of everyday life in India. Banerji explains this reluctance/fear of going against the state by writing: Entrenched within the system is a valuation of conformity, the deep regulation and restraint of the body, the replication of essentialist models of cultural heritage, the honouring of social hierarchies, and the practice of deference to authority. By internalizing and physicalizing these tenets through the guru-shishya system, the classical dancer is taught to become a “docile body,” to obey the demands of power. (Banerji, 2023)

As I have written in the past (2010), learning any form of dance begins with the fashioning of its principal tool, i.e., the body. It is not just a process of becoming skilled in the art, but actually begins with the preparation of a docile and disciplined body. Following Foucault’s idea of “discipline”, one can frame the dancing body within triangular ideas of docility, self-discipline, and compliance. The rigid training that one submits to in dance produces the readiness for submission to a systemic disciplining that is taken as inescapable and inevitable in the process of preparing the body for learning a particular dance. Linked to this is the concept of dance 17

See Sarkar Munsi’s article “Natyashastra: Emerging (Gender) Codes and the Woman Dancer”. Dutt & Sarkar Munsi, 2010: 165–184). 18 Banerji’s article becomes an important reference to this section, as well as Chapter 7, while discussing the politics and social roles of dance and dancers. (2023: 263–284).

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institutions, and the flow of the knowledge system from the Guru (master-teacher) to the Shishya (student/disciple) which is an approved system of power and ownership of knowledge by the teacher that legitimizes the creation of the “docile bodies” (Foucault, 135–136). Foucault’s ideas on discipline are important to understand the concept of training the body in dance, which controls the individuals by making them docile and self- regulatory. Thus, there is a similarity in the way a soldier (according to Foucault) and a trained classical dancer shows knowledge and control, through the way they stand, walk, gesture, and reproduce movement grammars. The power and regulations of teaching systems in dance operates through the disciple’s acceptance of absolute submission within the Guru-Shishya training system in India. In my writings in the past, I have discussed the term ‘classical’ (Dutt & Sarkar Munsi, 2010) in the context of dance in India, and the training process involved in the pedagogical structures that have been created for these forms, along with the restructuring of their repertoire, training and presentation process. I have also written about the way in which the Indian nation-state uses dancing bodies to animate its history and past glory (2018). The bodies in the world of the neoclassical dances in India carry a lot of responsibilities, to carry on the glamourous presence they have been granted by the post-colonial nation-state. These bodies are of interest not only as stereotypically aestheticized and engendered presences, but also as the embodiment of the cultural reclamations of a deeply conservative art ecology trying to shape itself through references of a religious (Brahminic) tradition, while claiming a contemporary presence through the tokenistic façade of a secular present. The ideal body in classical dances are largely shaped by the controlling text of Natyashastra. In my chapter on Natyashastra (2010: 165–184) I wrote, Who benefits from Natyasastra being the rule-book of gender and caste/class behaviour? In the Brahmanical representation of Indian culture, references to Natyasastra, introduced a rigidity and exactness towards dance teaching and technique, almost completely restricted the scope of spontaneity that any art or artiste takes for granted in the contemporary times. It is essential to reassess the influence this process has had in restricting the creativity and vitality of Indian dancers, who remain unquestioningly bound to their so-called great tradition and past, without learning the great scope of dramaturgy and bodily techniques that Natyasastra as a manual of performance may have been able to offer. (2010: 183)

The development of the body discourse ignores the liveness and responsive kinesthesia of bodies, and foregrounds references to the historic bodies of the dancer enmeshed within the Sanskritic discourse around dance. It is carefully developed by the cultural planners who invented themselves as visionaries of the forms, that were then given incentives to mutate and assimilate freely from existing living traditions under the privilege accorded to them through the process of classicisation. The neoclassical forms are called so by one such leading pioneer Kapila Vatsyayan, who was a sanskritist as well as a philosopher, and had apparently trained in many dance forms from different parts of India. In the deliberate structuring of post-independence India—with predominantly Brahminic social systems being put in place, the deeprooted hierarchical system based on caste discrimination led to the creation and consolidation of the idea of the body in Indian classical dances.

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In my chapter "Natyasastra: Emerging (Gender) Codes and the Woman Dancer" (Dutt & Sarkar Munsi, 2010: 165–184), I have discussed in detail the way Natyasastra creates a structure of behavioural instructions, alongside instructions and definitions regarding performance rules and aesthetic principles to be followed in dance. The use of Natyasastra as the rule book of all dances has ensured a certain form of selective understanding of the dancing body across all training in the classical dance pedagogies. Y. S. Alone calls it a deliberately created, nurtured, and protected ignorance whereby the Brahminic aesthetic was established as the only acceptable option, ensuring the creation of a high caste hegemony in embodied representations within the realms of art. (2017: 140). While critiquing the established perpetuation of the upper-caste aesthetic readings of the body, one must acknowledge the science of linking the mind and body, which in the Western world was read in Merleau-Ponty’s theorized alternative to the Cartesian duality between the mind and the body. In the Indian context, deeply embedded within the pedagogical mobilization of different parts of the body in connection to each other, are the mind and memory-building principals. The process of leading the uninitiated dancer through establishing contact, and then control over different permutations and combinations of movements involving different muscular networks, gestures, body images, narratives and emotions, requires both specific, and then integrated training of hand gestures, a range of facial expressions, upper and lower body movements, the steps and the complex movement sequences. The trainee learns to divide his or her body into small parts for the training, while being challenged through different permutations and combinations of initiating partnerships between two or more skills invested in different parts of the body. A common bond that holds the dancer’s body together in classical dance training, in a message commonly passed on from one generation to the other, is: “Yatho Hasta thatho Drishti, Yatho Drishti thatho Manah; Yatho Manah thatho Bhaava, Yatho Bhaava thatho Rasa” (Natysastra). Roughly, these lines mean—Where the hands go, the eyes follow; Where the eyes go, the mind follows; Where the mind goes, there emotions are produced; Where emotions are produced, rasa is experienced.

2.9 Everyday Bodies: Labour and Socialization in the Practices of Everyday Bodies and their images are products of deep-rooted socialization processes, operating in socio-cultural micro and macrocosms that human beings belong to by birth and associations. Bodies have a close relationship with work. They are shaped by work. With a large number of people still living in villages in India, the relationship with the land and the close community bonding—the experience of everyday work/ toil is inevitably the mould that creates and continues to shape the body. Land-based occupations continue to follow the seasonal calendar, even when the agricultural

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fields no longer give a sustainable occupation, that have become part of the ritual/ celebrational calendar. Such bodies are not of expert dancers, they are not formally trained in dance. But they are systematically created bodies, which respond to the daily experience of work and countless community and social events. Dancing and dance-making seek and refer to past experiences and fall back continuously on muscle memory acquired through repeated experiencing—from rituals, rites of passage and work. Increasing economic vulnerabilities and loss of occupation and livelihood in villages have affected these communities, as their ecology provides lesser and lesser support to their life and their community ‘body,’ that is a part of the close-knit spheres of rural areas. This includes loss of stability, large-scale migration and movement from villages to cities in search of alternate occupations, and also a severe disconnect between the past and the present ways of life. Bodies begin changing, and so do intents and calendars. Thematic changes, loss of motifs and gestures, change in the words of songs, change in musical instruments, and change in the dresses and ornamentations of the bodies in the new spaces that the migrants shift to, creating a new ecology for the bodies on the move—not in dance but actually through geographical distancing. Eventually the bodies carry some memories of the past, but they do not get passed on to the next generations. This creates a sense of complete or at least partial culture loss. Eventually, new collective bodies are produced in newer ecologies of work, where much of the older motifs, symbols, and movements are replaced by newer movement assemblages, under newer socializations, commands, needs, adjustments, and habits. The body discourse lies in the centre of most discourses on the physicality, skill, control, and power in dance, and yet the fact is that the body in dance can never be taken as a fixed unchangeable entity. Dancing bodies are neither unified in their registers of lived realities, nor are their experiences similar in their skill, control, power, physicality, gender, and sexuality. They are not invested or related to the dance ecology in any common manner and are not expected to have the same attitude, preparedness, or emotions that they invest in their dancing. Even the same body does not remain the same through time, because of health conditions, emotional states, sense of well-being, levels of commitment. In the Indian context, with frequent migrations of communities from their place of origin to cities for work and education, there is a consistent sense of nostalgia that accompanies any community event, both among the communities at home and in the new spaces of settlement, with constant efforts to recreate the ‘authentic’ or the ‘original’ form. The reference point becomes blurred, as the memories overlap and scatter from one generation to the other. Unless documented, the ‘real’ dance vanishes and gets replaced in the bodies of the present dancers through a process of kinesthetic recreation, as no ‘body’ can dance in the past. Using specific examples, this section of the chapter brings into focus the different bodies in the dance ecology of India.

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Example 1: Thinking Through the Example of Thabal Chongba19 : The Context and a Decontextualized Space A large field has been designated for the yearly gathering around Yaoshang Festival, usually celebrated around the same time as the festival of colours (Holi) in North India. A huge crowd of students have gathered. Traditional live music is playing on the loudspeaker. It could very well be a field in Manipur. Young men and women are dancing in a huge circle. Some steps that people seem to follow easily enough are repeated in rhythm. They include side-wise hopping and stepping in a simple rhythmic cycle. Holding hands is common in the circle, but not compulsory. Most women attendees are in their traditional long wrapped skirts (Phaneg). The dancers are facing the centre and not towards the right which is the direction the circle constantly keeps moving in. No changes in the movements seem to be necessary, the simple repetition of joyful steps, holding hands, and moving together is in more ways than one an assertion of identity—a reunion/reaffirmation of common belonging and the common ‘home’ and ‘habitus’ left back in Manipur. At the same time, it is also a place that remains welcoming of outsiders—the students from other states—in a way signifying a larger circle for possible friendship, courtship and a more open environment of a significantly more cosmopolitan life in a multi-ethnic university space. The above paragraph is a brief description of the Thabal Chongba dance during the celebrations of the Yaoshang Festival, in the decontextualized space of Jawaharlal Nehru University, which I attend regularly for my love of dancing with a large community of dancers. Thabal Chongba (Fig. 2.7) is a community event in the form of a dance by young Meitei men and women. The event is especially popular among the Meitei youth of Manipur and is held on the day of the annual Yaoshang Festival. The literal meaning of Thabal Chongba is ‘dancing by moonlight’. A recent Editorial in the Imphal Free Press, on 13 March 2021, begins with the heading, “IFP Editorial: The yearly ritual of Thabal Chongba is not just about holding hands and dancing.” (IFP Bureau, 13 March, 2021). It reports that for two consecutive years this particular event has been banned by an order issued by the state’s Chief Secretary, where the reason given was that the proximity of large number of people might increase chance of increase in Covid19 cases. A growing resistance to the festival and its events may have roots in the differing opinions regarding appropriate social conducts, as the Meitei community finds itself in different cultural, social, and economic milieus, with rapidly increasing mobility with the passing of time within a changing ecology. Thus, the reinvention of orthodoxy faces increasing provincial emphasis on community knowledge, with

19

A particular festival of specific importance to the Meitei community in Manipur has been used as an example of the changes in the forms of identity assertion and resultant alterations in the notions of the utility and functions of the particular yearly event.

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Fig. 2.7 Thabal Chongba at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2023. © Author

visible repercussions felt and seen on traditional practices such as Thabal Chongba.20 The Editorial describes the Thabal Chongba saying, It serves as one of the socially sanctioned forms of courtship between adolescent boys and girls, with roots in the creation myths and fertility rites of yore. Being a conservative society, courting is usually allowed at the girl’s home under parental supervision. Yet, socially sanctioned spaces are also created for boys and girls to meet and get to know each other. Thabal Chongba is one such space which continues till today although the forms and settings have evolved. But, it is always under the watchful eyes of the brothers and mothers as it is always held at the locality of the girl. It merely coincides with the Yaoshang festivities, the Manipuri Vaishnavite version of Holi. The only other occasion existing till today albeit only in some rural areas is ‘Likkon-Saanaba’ where young boys and girls gather for a game of dice. (IFP Bureau, 13 March, 2021)21

In the absence of detailed research available to me in English, I have interviewed several JNU students and faculty belonging to the Meitei community from Manipur and also regularly followed the Imphal Free Press online. Its Editorial from 30 March 2022 provides seven important characteristics that they suggest that the event should be identified by. I would like to foreground these points as they are, without looking at the historical or sociological implications of each of them here. I would like them to help us understand the contemporary expressive space for the dancing body of the youth in such (once) sanctioned spaces of ensemble congregation, where one sees the emergence of a community body in contemporary times. The seven ‘facts,’ as highlighted by the Editorial, are:

20

My entry point here is the way I witness, and am allowed to participate in, the festivities of one evening of Thabal Chongba celebrated in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus every year. Though I have witnessed two such occasions in Imphal in the years, 2008 and 2009, I cannot claim to have seen the changes in recent times, in post-Covid Manipur. 21 See https://www.ifp.co.in/editorial/thabal-chongba-dance-with-a-purpose (Accessed on 03-012023).

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1. The Yaoshang festival ushers in the joy of spring and is traditionally celebrated for five days in the spring season. The festival begins on full moon of Lamta, the last month of the Meitei Lunar calendar (March 28, 2021). 2. Yaoshang means a hut made of bamboo and the festival begins just after sunset in every village with the Yaoshang mei thaaba, or burning of the straw hut by the locals. Then the children go from house to house collecting monetary donations, called Nakatheng. 3. As a part of the ritualistic celebration during the festival, locals perform sankritan in the Govindagee Temple located in Imphal-East district of Manipur on the second day. 4. On the second and third days, girls go to their relatives for Nakatheng and block roads with ropes for collecting money. The collection of this money is used for the purpose of making merry and enjoying. 5. On the fourth and fifth days, people playfully pour or splash water on one another. A number of sporting events like tug of war and football are also organised on this occasion. 6. Apart from feasting in each household, local delicacies are also shared with neighbours during the festival. 7. Another more popular and important feature of the festival is Thabal Chongba, i.e., dancing in the moonlight. Young boys and girls from various places come to the festival site in each leikai (locality) and dance into the night in big circles, holding hands, to the beat of traditional drumming. (IFP Bureau, 30 March, 2021).22 In Imphal, there is a mixed reaction to these changes. Many families feel that this space of traditionally allowed courting and encouraging inter-sex mixing is a threat and is misused for sexual freedom by young men and women. They feel that this is being used by the young people who have moved to the larger cities in different parts of India in manners that are harmful for the youth back home who have lesser exposure. The restrictions / ban on Thabal Chongba among the Meitei community in Manipur in last few years is seen by some as renewed conservatism that wants to restrict socially sanctioned courtship processes, while being viewed by others as a way to stop the youth from having an excuse to indulge in public drinking, use of drugs and “immoral” activities. To continue then, one is struck by the change in the functions of the body in the same social event when it comes to the decontextualized body, in the two circumstances mentioned above. In case of the geographical space that is identified as the community’s own space, Thangal Chongba brings to the fore the community’s everyday realities. The socialization process of the youth—where the festival worked as a space for normative ways of gendered bodies coming together with the intention of getting to know each other within the community’s own safe ambit in and for itself, is no longer seen as a safe space. The community’s youth get sharply by divided class and privileges into at least two distinct categories, between the people 22

See https://www.ifp.co.in/manipur/yaoshang-festival-of-manipur-seven-fascinating-facts-cul ture-and-tradition (Accessed on 03-01-2023).

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who have either permanently or temporarily moved out for education, work, and other purposes to become part of the migrant population in other cities and states and even countries, and are now considered differently aligned to conventional rules and norms from those usually practiced by those who have remained back. Some of the local people are of the opinion that these spaces have become threatening and unsafe, simply because of the large number of young people who now lead different lives as migrants. Pointing out to acculturation-related changes in the migrant population, the seniors in Meitei society now often debate regarding the continuity of this event. A contrast is clearly experienced in JNU, where the Meitei student community finds itself in an island of relative seclusion in the midst of the North Indian hypermasculine space of Delhi, where their bodies are often racially identified as outsiders. The diversity and its celebration within the JNU campus is a space for safe ways to assert their identity and solidarity, while being able to safely celebrate the community’s ensemble presence by participating in this particular community celebration, to create a home away from home. It is thus important to think critically regarding bodies from the same spaces of origin responding to varied lived realities and evolving different moving mechanisms to cope with a range of different functions. It is then natural that a range of similar stories unfold on bodies of the migrant students from different areas, as well as the socio-cultural milieu in JNU and other such areas of assimilation where different migrant bodies connect through proxemic cognition generated by similar geographies, calendars, life, and work associated to the new place. It often creates a separate microcosm that is specific for that multi-ethnic migrant community, thus necessitating specific research on practices of identity assertion/assimilation. Some of the contemporary discourses have become conscious of the political implications of the large-scale museumization of human cultural practices in India that usually are seen as activities and events which yield dual profits for the nation and the local community in focus through tourism, local development, and a certain form of intra/ intercommunity communication. Example 2: Congregational Bodies in Festive Spaces In this section on regional festival and the ‘trained’ and ‘untrained’ bodies on display, I shall focus on the space of display and its use of embodied practices. In the vast range of differently enabled dancing bodies in India, one needs to see an array of abilities, which is not always specifically identified as an ability or skill to dance. Let us, for example, take the often-visited annual regional festivals in different states of India, such as Sangai Festival of Manipur,23 Hornbill Festival of Nagaland,24 Kullu Dussehra of Himachal Pradesh,25 Dessert Festival of Jaisalmer.26 Many such events are planned and executed by the tourism departments of the state governments, and often aided/supported by grants from the Ministry of Culture, Government of 23

See http://sangaifestival.gov.in/ for details. (Accessed on 09-04-2022). See https://www.hornbillfestival.com/ for details. (Accessed on 09-04-2022). 25 See http://kulludussehra.hp.gov.in/ for details. (Accessed on 09-04-2022). 26 See https://www.tourism.rajasthan.gov.in/fairs-and-festivals.html (Accessed on 09-04-2022). 24

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India. The festivals—across states showcase performing arts traditions of the particular state—working towards and with the idea of highlighting the ‘unity in diversity,’ using a range of expressions among different communities whose practices are curated as real and continued presences in current times. The idea is also to curate the ‘present’ and the ‘real’ through a direct reference to the past. The bodies showcased are carefully chosen and curated. They show ‘tradition and transition’ through the multi-vocality and staged plurality that becomes essential contemporary truths that the state aims to project. The bodies show unity and a choice, choreographed for the creation of a packaged product that is presented as the ‘culture’, therefore building and depending at the same time on the faith such exhibition spaces have been able to build over years of post-colonial projections of the country. These bodies highlight and bring forth community knowledge as a product through their ensemble performances, referring to an auto-transmission, and a smooth and continuous flow of ‘culture’ from the past to the present. The traditional dances and songs, often competitively showcased, also highlight choreographies of ‘staged’ everyday realities, often referring to a nostalgia for many of the older participants and a theatrical reenactment of the same for the younger generation, who get a chance to embody the past on such occasions. The bodies here are projected as inheritors and holders of the traditional knowledge, but the reality is often far from it. For many bodies there is a distance from the so-called roots of reference already, through migration and other forms of decontextualization. They know it and the planners know it. Therefore, one of the unwritten agendas of such festivals is to reeducate the local youth, as well as create touristic interests in the area. The tag lines for each of the festivals draw your attention to the way the planning foregrounds presences. The Sangai Festival (held yearly since 2010) website clearly states fixed dates—21st to 30th November—as their calendar presence on their website, declaring as its mandate: The ‘Festival’ is named after the State animal, Sangai, the brow-antlered deer found only in Manipur. It started in the year 2010 and has grown over the years into a big platform for Manipur to showcase its rich tradition and culture to the world. The festival is labeled as the grandest festival of the State today and helps promote Manipur as a world class tourism destination. Every edition of the festival showcases the tourism potential of the state in the field of Arts & Culture, Handloom, Handicrafts, Indigenous Sports, Cuisine, Music and Adventure sports of the state etc. (Sangai Festival website http://sangaifestival.gov.in/) .

The photos on the website are pertaining to the events highlighted in the above proclamation, for promoting international and national tourism, and also with the idea of making available a regular space of reference where local stakeholders can almost see the state as a performance of their own lived or ideal realities. Here, the idea of the authentic is nurtured with small curatorial changes introduced through state incentives and choices. However, one finds a live and strong critique in the local community, which is reflected in the Imphal Free Press Editorial, “Lakhs of rupees are invested in preparing infrastructure related to the festivals, while follow up infrastructural support for the products are at a minimum. The Sangai festival was conceived some years back by the government as a way of showcasing the tourism potential of the state and huge amounts of money is spent in building festival infrastructure and improving roads leading to the venues. Yet, it is still uncertain as

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to whether such festivals are yielding positive results in enhancing tourism revenue for the state. Other varied festivals like Singju festivals have come up in the last few years.”27 The Hornbill Festival (since 2007) is the oldest of the government organized festivals in India’s North-East. The website projects “Taking you to a whole new tribal experience” as its principle tagline, highlighting the Naga Heritage village28 as a site that projects the protection and preservation of “all ethnic cultural heritages by establishing a common management approach…” (see the Naga Heritage Village website). The village—by its very claim as a space for everyday life for different embodied realities—is a space for accommodating, showcasing and promoting the performance of an idea of harmony. This is in no way different from an elaborate choreography with active moving bodies. The website claims that the event aims to encourage the differently lived realities of the 16 officially recognized Naga tribes to recognize and be at peace with each other. The website states, “Songs and dances form the soul of these festivals through which their oral history has been passed down to generations”. (https://www.hornbillfestival.com/naga-heritage-village). The Kullu Dussehra Festival is one of the most popular festivals and has as its website tagline ‘The folk flavour of the festivities, rituals and traditions here make it totally different from the Dussehra celebrations elsewhere in the country”. One of the pages of the website29 claims the birth of the festival in Kullu in seventeenth century, while a recent incarnation of the same claims the following: Kullu Dussehra provides an ideal platform to showcase, protect and preserve thecountry’s diverse folk culture. Kullu Dussehra was declared an ‘international festival’ in 1972 and since then it has assumed a multilingual dimension and cultural troupes from abroad also perform during the festival, besides from various regions of the country. The weeklong colourful extravaganza is held at Lal Chandra Prarthi Kala Kendra.

The festival sees the hosting of an assembly of around 400 gods from all over the valley on the fair ground for 7 days, as the annual activity managed and sponsored by the government of Himachal Pradesh. The gods arrive on palanquins carried by the kardars (who see themselves as the devotees of the gods from different villages of the valley). The bodies that animate such a space are mixed in their complexities of presence and representation. Their presences become complicated through the roles they play as agents of multiple representations. One such clear representation is the segregation one finds in the way the space is differently available to gendered bodies, who are ruled socially, and controlled and regulated by the unwritten but unquestioningly accepted powers and roles in the ritual space. The allocation of space to different castes clearly shows the hierarchy of the caste-segregated bodies in the fair’s geography—from high caste (read Brahmin and Kshatriya) presences in select areas close to the epicentre of the ritual ground around the chariot and the temporary 27

See https://www.ifp.co.in/editorial/in-la-la-land (Accessed on 03-01-2023). See https://www.hornbillfestival.com/naga-heritage-village for details. (Accessed on 10-042022). 29 See http://kulludussehra.hp.gov.in/history-of-kullu-dussehra/ and http://kulludussehra.hp.gov.in/ international-folk-dance-festival/ for details. (Accessed on 10-04-2022). 28

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abode of Raghunath (Ram), to the peripheral arrangement accommodating other gods according to a hierarchy that seems to be applicable to gods as well as the humans. The anomaly of the global reality of the emerging class structure, that is now visible in the difference between the economically enabled bodies and their confidence in overstepping traditionally imposed caste hierarchies, is a parallel reality in the same space as well. The undeniable contemporaneity of economically empowered bodies that are free to roam and buy (as long as they have the buying power) any of the global commodities available in the commercial space speaks loud and clear, denying and defying the impositions identified as traditional. In comparison to economically empowered individual bodies, one needs to view the performing bodies through a different lens. They are invited to fit and display the agenda of the state as an organizer of an ‘international’ cultural festival (Fig. 2.8). A large-scale all-female participation in the reenergized dance form of the valley, named Kullu Nati—an extremely popular event that established Kullu Dussehra’s presence in Guinness Book of World Records—is also another space that requires the registration of a contemporary assertion (Fig. 2.9). This 2016 event and its associated implications of global visibility is also charged by assertion and the projection of women as the main actors in it. It plays into the biopower and body politic of the state, where it is no longer enough to appear traditionally empowered. Instead, the message is loud and clear—the state is in transition and in conversation with emerging debates across international geographies at a very contemporary time and space.

Fig. 2.8 Nati dance in 2012, as a part of the International Dance Festival during Dussehra in Kullu. © Author

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Fig. 2.9 Nati, a community dance from Kullu is now in Guinness Book of World Records since 2016, for record participation of women in traditional costumes. © Author

The Maru Mahotsav or the desert Festival of Jaisalmer, a three-day festival, is celebrated in the month of February every year. Its website claims a different experience—of offering the visitors nothing but the authentic taste of food art, dance, music, ambiance architecture, history, and desert experience. The main attractions, as per the websites, are: Kalbeliya Dance, musical performances by the expert Manganiyar community performers, puppetry, moustache competition, fire dancing, camel racing, acrobatics, and many more such activities. Once again, the process is a particular way of placing bodies and their authentic belonging in the space, in a time that bridges the past, present, and future with a bond of authenticity. This process is body-dependent. The authenticity is in the oral history, the bodily belonging and power of perpetuation that is a common claim of all communities. The anthropological value these projects have been able to give to the performance of identity, in these particular cases and in all such events across the country, is undeniable. But what it also brings to the fore is the unskilled embodied knowledge systems that performing traditions are dependent on, where the state does not have to create a workforce of artists who will have to be employed specifically because of their skilled artistic (dance/music) training. That work is already done by the community, largely through socialization. These unregistered, invisible training processes make the state’s work easy, by producing home-grown artistic labour that can be utilized as an unpaid workforce, who would be fighting largely for their own survival. In the process, it will also enhance the tourism possibilities of the state. In my earlier chapter on the performance sites/sights30 I analyzed the showcasing of the national culture in Republic Day Parades (Fig. 2.10) and local festivals, to frame the untrained bodies in spaces 30

See my chapter “Performance Sites/Sights: Framing the Woman Dancer” in Moving Space: The Women in Dance, 2018: 105–122.

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Fig. 2.10 A tableau during the republic day Parade © Avinash Pasricha

of celebrating the nation and its cultural ‘body’. In continuing what Patricia Uberoi called “pan Indian cultural reality” (Patricia Uberoi, 1990, pp. 43), my analysis was that the Republic Day Celebrations, as the birthday of the ‘motherland,’ was initially planned as a display of power and progress. Such exhibitions of cultural practices are often political rather than cultural and described as museumization by Jain (Jain, 2007: 24–39).31 It is a space where bodies are used as a condensed and authenticated display of military might, alongside a spectacular performance of ’unity in diversity’ and obedience of both, the states and the citizen subjects (Sarkar Munsi, 2009: 105–122). Most of the forms known as community dances have specific identifiable communicative movement systems that are followed by the dancers, even if they are not forms taught by teachers. They have also been considered timeless, repetitive, and simplistic by dance critics in the past, who happily categorized all forms of community performances under the umbrella term of ‘folk’. In contrast, there shall always be the comparative projection of the normative upper-class-upper-caste trained bodies of the classical dancers, displayed against backdrops of internationally identified scenographies of a temple or a historical architecture (Fig. 2.11), such as the Khajuraho temple complex (UNESCO recognized site). In my chapter32 on “The Performance Sites/Sights: Framing the Dancer” I wrote about the specific visibility and legitimacy granted to bodies that are trained in certain institutionally legitimized and government-recognized forms of dance. 31

See Jyotindra Jain’s “India’s Republic Day Parade, India’s Republic Day Parade: Restoring Identities, Constructing the Nation” (2007: 24–39). 32 See “Performance Sites/Sights: Framing the Woman Dancer”. (2018: 18)

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“This narrative, woven with the help of sculpted dance figures, is already there when the dancer enters the space, as the overarching reference and stays on after the dancer finishes her presentation” (Sarkar Munsi, 2018: 109). Such sculpturesaturated spaces within an archaeological site or a historical temple is already a powerful presence, allowing the dancer’s body to animate sculpted bodies for a limited amount of time, in specific performative times. By inviting the audience and the performer into the historic space, the receptiveness as well as the performativity of the bodies is controlled. A hegemonic narrative is established as the controlled bodies reaffirm their disciplinability, with the “(willing) obedience coming from inside” (Baliber, 1994, pp. 9). Example 3: Politics of Economic/legal Erasure of Bodies in Dance Bars The word erasure sounds rather disturbing in the context of live bodies. It points towards wiping out of traces, histories, memories, and even all possible reference to liveness. It is not a strange concept in the Indian dance ecology. Histories of dancing bodies are erased, along with the occupational and legal status of dance communities, whenever those live bodies create a rupture in the dominant cultural politics and tries to delegitimize the claims of the government in power. More of this shall be discussed

Fig. 2.11 A poster of the Khajuraho Dance Festival 2018 (Collected from Twitter on 15–04-2023, juxtaposing immovable antiquity and live dancing bodies. https://twitter.com/MP_MyGov/status/ 964341119524974592)

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in later chapters. In this section, we specifically discuss the case of the bar dancers, to focus on the criticality of the discourse that has appeared very frequently in women’s studies and social sciences, but not really as a focus of discussion in dance studies. The conceptual understanding of dance as work may be seen in the idea of taleem or practice. Many specialized classical dancers from the highest castes and class positions in Indian society may be professionally making a living by depending on their prowess as dancers, as do dancers from economically weaker sections of the society. It is this lack of rights to call themselves dancers that makes this critical intervention necessary. On 31 March 2005, the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly registered a motion on the need to ban bar dancing. On the 15th of August, a ban was imposed on dance bars throughout the state of Maharashtra. On record, the ban rendered jobless more than seventy-five thousand women who were employed and identified as bar dancers, known as Mumbai’s leisure industry. In the legal battle, the dance bars lost their rights for renewing their licences until further notification. By supporting the rights of the state to apply tactics of moral-policing, the Supreme Court deprived the bar dancers of the right to earn their living, and in an indirect manner stopped them from supporting their economically vulnerable families. The state of Maharashtra had successfully created a vicious public opinion against bar dancers, by describing dance bars as a pornographic site of vice and corruption. The Supreme Court had also announced that the owners of bars shall be imprisoned for three years in case the dancers are found to be using ‘obscene’ dance movements. One wonders if the term ‘obscene’ has a particular definition in case of dance bars, when the same city is home to the enormous film industry which thrives on selling the commercialized and sexualized dancing bodies of women without them being considered as ‘obscene’. Sameena Dalwai, in her essay “Caste and the Bar Dancer” explains the situation that the bar dancers from Maharashtra had created for themselves, as opportunities and access to economic/occupational and related social mobility. According to her, the bar girls, “majority of whom come from the Bhatu caste cluster…. traditionally earn the family livelihood through sexual and erotic labour including dancing, singing, entertaining and sex work. They redeploy these hereditary skills to suit the new market of the dance bar provided by globalisation and earn unprecedented amounts of money. The money, in turn, offers possibilities of freedom from poverty and sex work, a chance at a middle-class lifestyle and opportunities of education for the next generation. (Dalwai, 2013: 131)

Dalwai further specified that the ban was not on alcohol or even dance bars, it was only on the dance. She emphasized that the state was reacting to the occupational mobility that the bar dancing has made possible for women dancers, and was therefore indirectly pushing women to opt for prostitution by forcing them to stop dancing in bars. She wrote, “The obscenity and easy money, then, can be seen as an apparel of the politics of caste and gender that determines the value of labour of the lower-caste women at the lowest monetary denominator.” (Dalwai, 2013: 132). The debate around the state’s introduction of the later “Maharashtra Prohibition of Obscene Dance in Hotels, Restaurant and Bar Rooms and Protection of Dignity

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of Women (Working therein) Rules, 2016”33 continues even now. Meanwhile, the lives of women who once began their journey up the economic ladder and began to realize the dreams of living middle-class lives got completely derailed, as the last eighteen years were spent in court cases and petitions. Dalwai’s contextualization of bar dance as a profession for the hereditary dancer communities of Maharashtra does not fit the stories about the lives of the population of young women, who travelled or were trafficked from the different border states of India, including West Bengal. A young girl’s narrative lays the ground for this part of my writing on the labouring body of the migrant dancers, who work for a living in cities that are far away from their homes. There are debates about whether these women’s dancing bodies—present in the particular spaces of dance bars (labelled differently from those of the receptionists, and waitresses) may be considered as ‘cultural labour’,34 by the clients, the owner of the bars, by the dancers themselves or the lawmakers. Before taking on that discussion on labelling of ‘working’ bodies, the narrative of Mini (name changed as per request from the narrator herself) will lay down some structures of the space within which her specific body was shaped, while it acquired a skill that could demand a specific price for its labour. I knew Mini as her mother came to work as a house help to many of the apartments in a middle-class residential society. She accompanied her mother to work and usually did her homework sitting with me at the dining table. She had an alcoholic father, two older siblings, and a super-busy mother who worked all day to make a living. She was in 3rd class when she left school. One day I heard that she had been sent away with a family to Mumbai, where she would be taken care of well. She was hardly nine years of age. The mother was secretive and cagey about her whereabouts, while often saying that she missed the youngest of her children. After much insistence, I got a phone number from the mother and called repeatedly, until I finally connected to a voice that I could hear over extremely loud music. Mini came online and said she was working in an STD booth, somewhere in Ghatkopar East, near Mumbai. I tried following up, the mother resisted, and told me to back off. She told me, and I quote, “pet bhorchhe, barite poisha ashchhe, tumi matha golio na” (The stomach is filled, and there is money flowing in, do not interfere in this). That shut me up. By the time she was fourteen years of age Mini was regularly able to bring/send a large sum of money home. I wrote the deposit slips for depositing the money in a bank account that was opened in her mother’s name. The money would travel with Mini to Kolkata, and would be counted and recounted by the mother by straightening the rolls one by one. It would have me as the mute and helpless spectator, going on nagging her mother with the possibilities of health disaster and crises that Mini was being exposed to on a daily basis. On an average, about three hundred thousand rupees in Indian currency would be deposited through those slips yearly in Mini’s mother’s account, while an emergency sum was stacked away at home by the mother herself. Mini had forgotten 33

Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association v. State of Maharashtra, WRIT PETITION (CIVIL) NO. 576 OF 2016 (SC 2019). Available at www.livelaw.in. 34 See Brahma Prakash’s book Cultural Labour (2019).

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how to sign, and neither did the mother want to have a joint account with her. I insisted on her making Mini a nominee and she agreed very reluctantly. Mini had two abortions by the time she was 17, leaving the mother distraught with worry temporarily, but she still refused to hear the warnings about Mini’s health. Mini matured into a decision-making woman, dressing well, and bringing gifts for all her family members. The mother was looking at a small apartment to buy in a multistoried low-income housing complex. I felt suitably chastised, when she told me one day, “partey oke emon chakri ditey, jekhane er awrdhek o rojgar hoy? Pete khele pith e shoy.” (Would you have been able to get her a job where she would get to earn even half of this amount? One can digest abuse when the stomach is full). The mother had adjusted to the ‘works’ (consisting of interdependent ways of earning through dancing and sex work) her daughter now had started openly professing on doing. And then, the dance bars were banned from functioning in Mumbai. To cut a long story short, things went downhill for Mini and many others as we know. While previously the dancing was what she saw as her profession, it became replaced by sex work with the delegitimisation of bar dancing. Mini was by then a twenty-one year old adult with voting rights, but her body was in the middle of an upheaval which for her meant that her ‘work’ was illegal and a polluting, punishable offense, and she had no rights over her future. In cases such as this, the vulnerabilityled inevitability was what decided the way the two kinds of labours would be seen as available to the individuals, depending on their ability to navigate the legal/social/ economic barbed fences erected around them. This trafficked woman-worker/dancer and many others like her operated in a space that her vulnerability forced her to adjust to. The little choice that these women had about deciding what her work would be, as she progressed through her life, was taken away with the banning of her right to sell her dance. Do we get to call these her ‘choices’ regarding her body? That remains a matter of debate, and as Lakkimsetti35 noted, ‘to reinstate dancing as a legitimate form of labour, bar dancers and their advocates dissociated labour from any association with eroticization and sex’ (Lakkimsetti, 2017: 468). The reason for this, according to Prakash, is that “the division comes about on account of moral anxieties in the context of which art and culture have to be de-sexualized” (Prakash: 2022).36 Just as a closure, let us end the story of Mini. In 2017, She returned to her mother and family, who now live in a small one room apartment in a multi-storied building in Kolkata bought with her income, to start a life filled with uncertainty. She was ailing with severe tuberculosis when she returned and remains untrained in any form of ‘work’ that is acceptable in this new life of respectability. The mother continues as a domestic worker, while Mini struggles with her ill, tired body and hopes to go back to her ‘life’ someday soon. She will soon be forty years old.37 35

See Lakkimsetti’s essay “Home and Beautiful Things: Aspirational Politics in Dance Bars in India.” 2017: 468. 36 See Prakash’s essay, “The erotic power of the dancer: labour of the erotic and the bodies of the sensory in the Arkestra of North India”. (2023: 186 - 201). 37 The person who I have named Mini has been in close contact with me, and has talked regarding general situations as well as her specific experiences. Her story has been shared here with her

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According to Aishika Chakraborty, “Dancers in the erotic service sector navigate a precarious work space at the interface of gender, consumption, production, capitalism and desire.” (Chakraborty, 2022:46) Agreeing with Chakraborty’s observation, I would like to add the ideas of uncertainty and hope to the existential multipolarity she brings together. It may also be pertinent to see the power versus the precarity of the dancing body that seemed immensely potent as a tool for continuing a life of independence, and the enabling apparatus that facilitates the wish to remain outside the accepted norms of domestic conjugality. What were the movements that Mini and her codancers danced? How were they taught? Who taught them and for how long? Where does the eroticism get centred in a woman’s dancing body? How is it displayed, and how much of this skill makes a dancer stand out as the better or the best in using erotic elements of attraction? How did such movements become designated as acceptable to pass the Censor Board in commercial Bollywood movies and shown in numerous item numbers while they are shown in public screenings in expensive multiplexes? Why do these movements, (copied and reproduced to the best of their capacity by bar dancers) get defined as ‘obscene,’ when replicated by the women dancing in dance bars to the live presence of consumers? There is not much detail available in the scholarship on the movements used in ‘erotic’ dancing. But this seems to be an important area of study, where the specific activation of erotic zones, such as the chest, the hips and the back remain common zones of movement generation in Bollywood heroines and the ‘obscene’ bodies. Such questions brought a cynical smile on Mini’s face. She showed how she just imitated the senior dancers at the bar when she was first taken as an apprentice. These seniors seemed to have mastered the techniques of isolating movements of the hip, chest, and the hands, and could move to the rhythm of particular songs. She also learned by watching Sridevi, Madhuri Dixit, Tabu, and many others on screen. She names particular films—repeatedly watched on television—that helped her in becoming one of the dancers that clients sought out and tipped the most. Her dancelabour (she certainly does not understand the word ‘cultural’) paid off well, as she got extra tips, and invitations to dance at private parties in hotel rooms. This past life still beckons to her. She dreams of dancing and is often overtaken by the desire to dance as clients watch her. However, she does not talk about it to anyone in her family or friends except me, as she sees me as a person who had been a dancer in the past.

informed consent. I have selected only parts that gives out general situational information, and nothing particularly personal or emotional.

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2.10 Ableism, Age, and Differently Abled Bodies in Dance The trained dancer is always trying to reach the plateau of maximum expertise, control, and excellence. Most dancing bodies at the height of their active lives are in constant practice, with a goal to become and then remain, in the best of readiness for dancing. Anything that challenges a dancer’s ability and control over their skill, is thought of as their personal failure. Therefore, it is their own responsibility to come back to where her/his dancing body can reclaim complete control over the kinaesthetic realms. The constant need to increase ability (of the body and the mind)—through training and practice—creates a list of ‘must acquire’, ‘must do’, and ‘must be’ for the dancer. This discourse around ableism needs to help us in creating a critical discourse on the ableist biases that very often (de)value certain bodies and minds over others in the world of sports and dance. This in turn creates a vulnerability and insecurity regarding the span of stage-worthiness and reception, and a constant anxiety of vanishing without trace for the ageing dancers. This particular problem is not so much about gerontological changes that happen in an ageing dancer’s body, but is rather a critique of the dance pedagogies that often become sources of mental and physical trauma. From childhood, the training in classical dances depend on creating a comparative and competitive ecology, where learners (1) understand the process of survival based on where one has to strive to become a better dancer than all the others and (2) becomes almost completely obsessed with keeping the body as able as possible. The body also gets used to hiding discomforts, tiredness, aches, breathlessness, sweatiness, pains, and all other signs of physical problems that may show weaknesses and health/age-related inabilities. Dancers also become hyper-critical of their own bodies, and all signs of diminishing abilities. In most cases, this is the way they also look at bodies around them. This fear of short-lived careers is tangible in many dancers worldwide, especially as they age. As their bodies age, dancers need different ways to engage with the idea of ‘fitness.’ In the unforgiving world created and nurtured by the dancing community in India, these ageing bodies are doubly vulnerable. Unless extremely privileged in economic status, or highly lauded through governmental bodies and awards, dancing bodies tend to disappear, as soon as they stop dancing or teaching. The idea of readjustments, retirements, etc., are dependent on the economic stability that the dancer has been able to create in his or her active dance career, and this is often all that is left for them to survive on. Reinventing the dancing body is most often not an option, as the dance forms have no such space for adjusting movement principals according to (diminishing) abilities. Dance may be seen as a systemic embodied knowledge that is created by stages of cognition and absorption, where seeing/imaging/creating, assimilating, embodying, and remembering come either one at a time or in different clusters. Related to each of these phases is the conceptual understanding of the word ‘ability,’ in the world of dance. It begins to be added to the dancer’s vocabulary when they begin to train under any teacher. In the unforgiving world of stage performance, the dancer must have an able body and an able mind. The teachers often point out the lack of ‘ability’

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related to any one stage of teaching, and compare the abilities of the students as a way to introduce a sense of (often unhealthy) competitiveness, through the idea of a scale to hierarchize bodily control, memory, and ability. People with special needs and differently abled bodies confront these ableist tropes throughout their lives, despite all the woke correctness that one encounters in the dance academies in India. Within the ableist universe of dance in India, ‘dancing with disabilities’ is misunderstood as ‘dancing to show abilities’ or ‘dancing ably in spite of disabilities.’ This becomes a space for ableism to all dancing bodies, often causing distress and extreme trauma in the process. I argue that what is important at this critical juncture of growing experiments with dance and movement-based inclusive spaces is promoting and nurturing consciousness about different abilities. It is an investment in specific methods of providing inclusive, non-judgemental, nonageist, non-ableist movement experiences of moving in/with different abilities. An advocacy of creative experimentations, through a process that is open to alternate aesthetic and varied corporeal experiences, needs a lot of unlearning on the part of (1) the learner/participant and their families/friends, (2) the instructor/facilitator; (3) the audience; and finally (4) the funding bodies, if any. The desirable outcome then is not a pre-planned product, i.e., a choreography that is imagined through the dance movements fixed from before. It is instead the experience that is important and therefore celebrated through inverting the fixedness of the logic of efficiency and competitiveness which is so intrinsic to the learning and performing of classical dances. The aim is to give free rein to creativity and the experience of different ways of moving. For the facilitator, it is essential to have a process that involves multiple well-thought-out alternatives that are consciously constructed as anti-ableist, anti-ageist and non-judgemental steps of facilitation. It is also important to think through the process and its outcome—as a simple experiential workshop or a choreography that makes the journey and the distance they covered together evident to the participants. It may sometimes help both the participants as well as the facilitator, to not have a fixed desire for any choreographic outcome, and to set off on a trip without knowing how and where to get to. In a way, the pursuit of fixed objectives may be the desired outcome for funders, and therefore unavoidable for facilitators. However, that need not stop the facilitation process from being non-prescribed and non-judgemental. One such effort—the Victory Arts Foundation—is by the popular Bollywood choreographer-dancer Shiamak Davar, whose classes for disabled people started more than fifteen years ago. According to his website these classes are meant “to provide a platform to address social causes and concerns, making dance available across age, gender, caste, class and ability; without prejudice.” It uses dance as a “therapeutic medium to bring joy to individuals from lower economic backgrounds, individuals with intellectual disability, developmental disability, visual impairment, hearing impairment, speech impairment and makes dance a viable and respected career option,” while providing “educational and medical support.”38 38

See Davar’s website http://www.victoryartsfoundation.org/ for details of his dance related social work projects.

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Keeping in mind the difference in the roles of the dancer/dance instructor/ choreographer, and the dance and movement therapist, understanding the limitations of each of these two roles is essential for any facilitator while working with a population with specific abilities and age-based needs. Ableism has to be actively resisted, or else these alternated spaces would continue to take Indian classical dance as their ideal model. One of the appropriate examples is the article https://www.thebetterindia.com/ 16449/famous-indians-with-disability/ which projects profiles of sixteen famous Indians who live with their disabilities. The first name is that of Sudha Chandran, an internationally known Bharatanatyam dancer and movie actress from Kerala. Driven by a need to go on dancing after one of her legs got amputated, she became famous as the Bharatanatyam dancer using a prosthetic leg. She has been an example of the self-imposed goals that pushed her to perform as an able-bodied dancer, with the highest of skills and abilities. Chandran has also had a long and successful career in the Indian television and film industry. She is an ideal example of a person with exceptional ‘ability,’ referred to repeatedly by dancers and actors as belonging to the film and television industry of India.39

2.11 Resistive Bodies: “Critical Moves. Steps We Must Take” It is necessary to preserve a space where new formations germinate, to avoid assimilation and co-optation of the energies and demands that issue from social movements, to refuse to unsee what difference it makes in the world. (Martin, 1998: 13). In this section of the chapter, I continue to draw upon examples from contemporary times, as there can never be enough importance given to create criticality within the body discourse in dance and its connection to the here and now, as well as the struggling bodies of dancers, who counter the restrictions that the trainings in dance and the resultant ecology imposes on them. Most dance institutions are like (somewhat milder forms of) military training camps, usually following a model also found in prisons, schools, and hospitals. All these structures are built on the idea of creating a successful mechanism of control. It is therefore not surprising that bodies trained in classical dances can be, and usually are, extraordinarily docile. They move together with ease, comply to rhythmic prompts and directions almost instinctively, and when required can submit to the higher authorities without stopping to think. Often these authorities could be supernatural powers. These bodies are the tools with which their owners remember the reason they are dancing, and for whom. Bowing to the power of knowledge materializes often by making the master-teacher or the Guru the receiver of such acts of dedication.

39

See https://www.thebetterindia.com/16449/famous-indians-with-disability/ (Accessed on 12-012023).

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Just as docility marks itself in and on the body, so does resistance and resilience. Referring to Erdem Gunduz’s now famous performance at the Taksim Square in Istanbul (2013), Susanne Foellmer, in her essay “Choreography as a Medium of Protest,” asks: “from when, or in which moment, a movement, in this case an everyday gesture, namely, standing and waiting—becomes political”. She continues: “Several clues may be drawn from the act. First, there is the length of the action, which exceeds that of a usual waiting situation, and yet, how long can a person wait while still functioning within the social framework of everyday gestures? How long is needed to convert an ordinary event in a public space into an unusual one?” (Foellmer, 2016: 58). With the following examples, I highlight the creation/utilization of bodies mobilized in putting on public display the increasingly vulnerable act of resistance as an organized action coming out of a common resolve of showing embodied dissent that has been experienced time and again in recent times.

2.12 The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Flashmob There have been extraordinary shows of embodied resistance in the capital of India in the last few years. According to Santhosh (2020), “This moment opens up the possibilities of a pedagogical turn in art”40 . One of the recent and important examples of a choreographed resistance is a Flashmob (Fig. 2.12) that was organized at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 2017. The University—known for its progressive and secular stance and its excellence in academic achievements—was under severe attack by its right-wing administration. A planned manipulated mediaaided misinformation campaign led to the arrest of three students and repeated largescale violence by the police within the campus space. The faculty, supported by a large group of student protesters, were out on the streets protesting. The university administration was imposing rules and regulations to restrict the freedom to dissent and protest. JNU teachers and students gathered every day on and around the stairs leading up to the administrative section of the main block of offices. The building was a symbol of the unjust use of power and had already been nicknamed the Pink Palace. The period of unrest began on the day the elected president of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union and a few others were arrested, on the 12th of February 2016, under Sect. 124A of the Indian Penal Code on charges of sedition. Through inflammatory social media posts, as well as television and news media, a planned attack was launched to spread misinformation and anger against the University’s faculty and students. In the face of a violent and malicious public campaign, the JNU teachers’ Association decided to protest, through a series of Teach-In lectures at the protest site, entitled “What the Nation Really Needs to Know: India, the Nation and 40

See S. Santhosh’s article “Politics as Pedagogy” (March, 2020). Accessed on 20-04-2020, from https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/education/322666/politics-as-pedagogy/.

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Fig. 2.12 JNU Flashmob protest at the main gate of the University, 2017. © Author

Nationalism”. These lectures continued till the 17th of March, 2016. The next series of lectures “Azadi—Many Meanings of Freedom” continued for two more weeks (Nair, 2016: x–xi). The Freedom Square was full of students, faculty and many people from all over Delhi, who came to listen and debate. That time of complete hopelessness made us reach the Square on time for all those 24 lectures—come what may. In resistance, we relearnt what many of us had forgotten about the nation, nationalism, and the constitution that gave us rights as the sovereign subject. I had never managed to learn these facts in such detail before. It turned into a resiliencebuilding exercise. As the weather changed slowly from winter to spring, our bodies got adjusted to sitting on the stairs, or on the ground of the tarred car park. This was a form of protest against the violent and misinformed propaganda of nationalism. But there were many other forms of resistance as well. Theatre, music, dance, and posters were utilized. What was striking, however, was the fact that in the increasing threat of surveillance and recurring violence, the bodies were together. We knew we had to be together, as one body. One of the steps taken by the administration was to stop any protest, within 100 m of the administrative building. The faculty put up many protests in defiance of this draconian rule, but to no avail. Ultimately it was decided that the next protest would be a novel one. While I suggested the idea of a Flashmob that we could hold near the main entrance of the University campus, it was not certain whether such an outlandish idea would gain currency among serious academic people. But we

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planned to go ahead anyway. Large Bose speakers were ordered, and we created a five-minute piece, with a medley of lively and popular songs. I was nervous but chose to take a risk. We would go into the Flashmob without any rehearsal. In an announcement, we requested the teachers to assemble at the gate at 6 pm, just before it became totally dark. Everyone was asked to carry their mobile phones that had a torch installed in it. It was getting dark, I asked three of our students—two dancers and one theatre artist—to stand in three places within the crowd, not identifying themselves as leaders, but providing a lead to those who were comfortable following someone standing close by. The crowd was made up of approximately 150 faculty members, of ages ranging between 38 and 65. They were already excited. They knew that the people who were ready to take the risk were to lie down on the road. Those who could sit on the ground should do so. Those with knee or hip problems could stand at the back. I stood on a raised platform that was two and a half metres higher than the ground the faculty were standing on, feeling a rush of adrenalin. Trained in classical and experimental dance styles, this was an adventure into the unknown, but it was for a cause we all felt passionate about. We were fighting for our university, the release of our students from jail, and for restoring the rights of free movement and thoughts in this very special place of learning. As the music started, I turned on the torch. The Flashmob went on like a well-oiled machine, with all faculty lying down on the ground, defying age and physical ailments. We were moving as one. We made a memory that evening that resurfaces every year as social media lights up with those torch lights of JNU. Example 2: The Body Flow: Community Art’s Mindful Assimilation in “The Warli Revolt”41 The Warli tribe, residing in Mumbai, Maharashtra, practice a specific form of art, now known worldwide as one of the earliest examples of pictorial art forms that use geometric shapes like circles, triangles, squares, and lines, to depict different elements of their ecology. This art is symbolic of most of the elements that surround them in their everyday life—and motifs from life, labour and leisure are common in the elaborate arrangements that become part of the choreography for each of their paintings. These paintings are about the community, and the living and non-living elements that are important to them, often moving freely between everyday mundane spaces to ritual ones. Human figures are created out of two triangles for the chests and the hips, with hands and legs as lines, and are only sometimes of identifiable gender because of specific accessories. Besides portraying scenes of rituals, farming, and hunting that include human as well as animal figures, it is common to find large congregations of dancers and musicians performing the tarpa dance in scenes of festivals and celebrations.

41

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYADNgIkelY for the “Warli Revolt” video. (Accessed on 18-01-2023). See also for details, Archana Prasad’s book Red Flag of the Warlis: History of an Ongoing Struggle (2017).

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Fig. 2.13 Screen-grabs of from the video available on YouTube for the animated performance “The Warli Revolt” Accessed on 15 April, 2023. https://www.animationxpress.com/latest-news/natureconservation-looking-beyond-virtual-life-ekabhuya-animation-raises-strong-voice/

One recent example of an innovative resistance is that of the rap presentation The Warli Revolt, (Fig. 2.13) which included members of the Warli tribe who have been threatened with eviction and deforestation, as a consequence of one of the important development plans that would lead to large-scale deforestation and loss of livelihood for this community. At the end of 2019, The Government of Maharashtra, in consultation with some corporate houses and builders, planned to get rid of the trees in the Aarey Forest to construct a metro shed. As a show of resistance, a group of activists, socially conscious rap artists, writers, and performers got together to produce an anthem on the destruction of their precious forest. An Adivasi activist Prakash Bhoir, along with Mumbai-based rappers MC Tod Fod, MC Mawali, and 100RBH created and made the recording of-The Warli Revolt. Referring to the Warli Revolt—the 1945 Adivasi uprising in Zari village of Talasari taluka, Maharashtra—this single uses Warli art showcasing a large number of traditional human and nonhuman stick figures existing and dancing in harmony in the natural ecology of the forest in the video that was conceptualized by Jagmeet Singh. The figures depict the dancing bodies, making the words come alive. The figures resonate with liveness and precarity at the same time, with the looming threat of the vanishing space and environmental destruction becoming the reference for an ideal past and the resistance against the mindless attack on their future. What the English translation of the Marathi lyrics narrate is the experience of the Adivasi community. In this case, it is a body-story that is playing out in real time. The complete lyrics may be found in Marathi42 and in English.43 42

See https://gullygangs.com/the-warli-revolt-rap-lyrics-prakash-bhoir/ for the “Warli Revolt” lyrics in Marathi. (Accessed on 18-01-2023). 43 See https://www.facebook.com/adivasi.resurgence/posts/1911187579007963/ for the “Warli Revolt” lyrics in English. (Accessed on 18-01-2023).

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The lyrics is a first-person narrative of a member of the Warli Adivasi community. Talking about the ecology that the community shares with the forest, the animals and the rest of the world, the singer laments the lack of understanding of the ruthless exploiters and evil politicians involved in the destruction of the environment of the area, and accuses them of selling the dreams of a fake and dangerous plan of progress. “Who even wants a metro in a forest? Why should we step aside? How long should we watch you trample our pride?” the singer asks. The song and its illustrated performative bodies that are drawn against a changing ecology, promise a revolution, a resistance in which members of the community are ready to lay down their lives to save the environment, the animals, the community’s home, land, and occupation. The song continues to describe the life of the community which has lived at peace with all other living beings on the land, that the greedy outsiders are now trying to destroy. As the song progresses, the lyrics offer a series of challenges, seeking answers to important questions such as the reason for buying guns and ammunition when there are so many people dying of hunger in the country, and the price of the thoughtless attitude regarding environmental destruction and deforestation. The song ends with “The jungle is our mother, to save her we will lay down our lives. To save her, we will lay down our lives. You chop our trees in front of our eyes, then why do you ask us to be the sacrifice? You call yourselves patriotic. Then why do you ask us to be the sacrifice?”44 These questions posed poetically and in rhythm, become powerful with the illustrations that create signatures of resistive human entities. The media-based spread of the resistance continued its own journey, as the Adivasi revolt marked itself as a significant non-erasable presence. Example 3: Choreographing Resistance/Representation: “The Secular Project” of Mandeep Raikhy (Fig. 2.14). Date and time: 12 February 2023, 6 pm, Convention Centre Entrance that has a flag post in the Centre, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Campus, New Delhi. A drum beat starts arrhythmically. It is not theatrical, nor rhythmic, but it casually continues to draw attention to four moving human bodies that are rolling down the stairs holding a piece of cloth. The bold assertion on the cloth draws attention— SECULAR INDIA. The act of keeping the words visible as a powerful declaration is the central effort immediately communicated to the audience, making all micromovements to do so a part of the laborious act of keeping on the assertions of India, as a secular geopolitical entity, constantly in thoughts and actions. The choreographer, Mandeep Raikhy, accompanied by Akansha Kumari, Manju Sharma, and Meghna Bhardwaj continue to roll down the stairs till they reach the flat ground, and ask people to join them. Students and audience members who were standing around tentatively join in. Slowly, the number of people increases to sixteen. The bodies on the ground claim space, and in lying motionless, they are strong—unmoving and ready to be challenged in their commitment to secularism as a way of being together.

44

Ibid.

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Fig. 2.14 “The Secular Project” by Mandeep Raikhy at the JNU Teacher’s Association event Mosaic in front of its Convention Centre in February, 2023. © Author

The moment starts making a set of meanings to the audience, who may be usually searching for a clear text to direct them into reading and understanding performance art/moving bodies. The movers/dancers are skilled, and their technique is a consistent, continuous, and seemingly effortless transitioning, so that they can be constantly seen as engaging with and carrying the message, and a belief in, a SECULAR INDIA. The movement flow, which is conceived as a public art project, lasts for one and a half hours. In that time the movers get up from the ground and start moving through the large crowd, displacing them and forcing them to swiftly readjust to the ways in which they would now engage with the changing circumstances of viewing and being with the needs of the moment. One student from the School of Engineering remarked, “Being secular cannot mean the same thing at all times, we must adjust and become more visible in our commitment.” My eyes watered. I told him how glad I was to have met him in this moment. He asked me my name, and I asked him his. His observations shook me out of my complacency about making meanings through performative acts. “Is this Rasa” I asked myself. The dancers had by now

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moved across the Ring Road of JNU, and people were now walking with the movers, watching intently. They had stopped talking. The crowd intensified as it got dark. Cars and bikes and evening walkers passed by, some of them stopped, some apologized for interrupting. Meanwhile, the message on the cloth kept demanding attention, through the movements of the four artists who were often on the ground, and often uptight against the walls, or on the road. The duration was being marked by many in the audience, and some of them approached me now. “Ma’am, can it be that this long duration for the event is to tell us about the way we must be constantly engaged in assertions of secularism? Am I reading it right? Maybe I could be certain if there was some text.” The answer came from an elderly gentleman, “Yeh jo hum itna time dey rahe hein isi barey me ke secularism ko keise jatana, samajhna or samjhana hein—ye hi to yeh performance ka success hei, don’t you think?” (That we are spending so much time thinking about how to mark ourselves as secular, and also understand and spread the meaning of secularism is the success of this endeavour, don’t you think?). The flow and moving remained unaffected until they moved to the flag post where the flag of India has been hoisted a year and a half back. The movers—two at a time—now circled the post, holding the message clearly visible, while constantly exploring the limits of movements at different levels. They kept the visible shifts between low level, medium/crouching and upright positions, with an ongoing, consistent, continuous, and flowing texture. It was 7.10 pm, and the crowd had caught on to its intensity and was immersed in the affect created by the praxis—some whispering and sharing their thoughts in a group, some reticent and standing there to absorb as much as they could. One young student of the School of Arts and Aesthetics whispered, “I feel so charged, I so want to hold up SECULAR INDIA”. She seemed startled at what her comment seemed to imply, and broke out into a nervous giggle, “I mean… I really want to show my commitment—somehow.” I again felt my throat constrict with emotions. Such is the space of praxis. We all become a voice. The movers were now moving across the road to stand holding SECULAR INDIA straight and still, and inviting people to form a human chain. We all joined. Here was our chance to become that voice, that force, and feel the commitment that hopefully will carry on being with all those present there—to create an affective aftermath that would be helpful in creating a forceful ‘presence’ of/for secularism. According to Mandeep Raikhy’s website.45 “The Secular Project” is conceived of as a public art initiative that consists of a series of performative interventions across public spaces in India and other parts of the world. In response to the thriving right-wing politics in India that aims to assert Hindutva as the Indian cultural, national, and religious identity (whereby a true ‘Indian’ is one who partakes of this ‘Hindu-ness’), “The Secular Project” aims to build an embodied dialogue around the secular as a key value enshrined in the constitution of India, which prohibits religious discrimination against its citizens, and guarantees all persons equality before the law and equal protection of the law.46

45 46

See https://mandeepraikhy.wordpress.com/ (Accessed on 03-11-2022). See https://mandeepraikhy.wordpress.com/thesecularproject/ (Accessed on 03-11-2022).

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Since the end of 2020, Raikhy has visited different parts of India for carrying out this embodied experiment at recognizable landmarks in many places in the state of Rajasthan, and in Lucknow, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Agra, Khajuraho, Gujarat, Goa and more, with the aim to create public performances around choreographies of “secular principles through the moving body and its performative potential in public and private spaces”, for building awareness about the rights and duties of the citizens of a secular country. He builds his performance around the following questions, in the program note displayed on his website: How do we build casual intimacy with a term such as the secular? What does it mean to inhabit the secular, to live and breathe with it, to wear, touch, caress and hold on to it? If every belief comes into existence only when it is repeatedly performed as ritualistic practice, how then do we perform the secular as citizens of India?47

In the performance two large banners with ’Dharamnirpeksh Bharat’ in Hindi, and its translation ’SECULAR INDIA” in English, become props, while he often invites his friends, performance artists, and strangers to have an embodied dialogue with him and the banners in different spaces. Carrying the cloth to different locations, and performing with it in open spaces amidst a shifting audience, Raikhy hopes to draw attention to the immediate and urgent need to mobilize around questions such as, How do we negotiate, assert and experience the secular through our bodies in the times that we live in? In what ways can the moving body make an argument for this key value enshrined in our constitution? At a time when secularism is in a severe crisis, how do a diverse range of performing bodies come together to uphold its spirit?

Raikhy’s questions became urgent in 2019–2020, during the massive protests against the imposition of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). Raikhy’s performance can be seen as a way to draw attention to the Indian constitution, and the importance of guarding the secular spirit of the country (Fig. 2.15). According to Anishaa Tavag’s report in The Hindu Business Line (June 1 2021), with “The Secular Project”, Raikhy invites the audience to explore our relationship with the secular and compels us to experience it through our bodies. In her report she writes, A belief only exists because it’s performed, he says, indicating the plethora of religious rites and rituals that reiterate our varied faiths…. “Protests can be exhausting… There has to be something [in] between going to jail and going completely silent,” he says, alluding to the scores of activists and journalists who have been harassed, threatened and thrown in jail for expressing dissent against the ruling dispensation.

In opposition to the reiteration of religious faith in different ways, Raikhy’s intervention invites the performance of secularism—of the secular as an embodied 47

See the videos of “The Secular Project” at https://fulkonst.se/The-Secular-Project (Accessed on 03-11-2022), and Anisha Tavag’s article “Dance. How Mandeep Raikhey Embarked on a quest for a Secular India” (June 1, 2021) in The Hindu BusinessLine at https://thehindubusinessline.com/ blink/watch/how-mandeep-raikhey-embarked-on-a-quest-for-a-secular-india/article34696122.ece (Accessed on 03-11-2022).

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Fig. 2.15 In an improvised response to the site in “The Secular Project”, the performance space soon shifts to the base of the recently erected flag post at the same venue. © Author

attribute or faith in the constitution, in freedom of thought—through a deep and immersive introspection of the relationship each of the audience members and participants have with the idea of secularism. According to Andre Lepecki, choreopolitics is the way to strategize the planning and activation of alternative modes of collective resistance that defy the large-scale policing aimed at producing tame and disciplined bodies. Choeropolitics, according to Lepecki “requires a redistribution and reinvention of bodies, affects, and senses through which one may learn how to move politically, how to invent, activate, seek, or experiment with a movement whose only sense (meaning and direction) is the experimental exercise of freedom” (Lepecki, 2013: 20). Can choreopolitics be used as a tool for curating embodied resistance? The political, then, emerges out of the uncertain pathways of collective mobilization. This is in and for itself the way to generate and sustain the feeling of freedom. Such mobilizations generate and continue to keep the bodies invested in the ‘exhausting’ choreography of protest, against stronger forces, threats and active

References

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policing, as has been witnessed in many occasions across the world. To find a way to engage with the theme of his ongoing resistive journey as a dancer/choreographer, Raikhy has left us with a question on his Instagram page, “The Secular Project”— “How do we negotiate, assert and experience the secular through our bodies in the times that we live in?”.48 There does not seem to be one right answer. Just like protests that do not see a positive end, it is exhausting to find ways of subverting and resisting as well, especially in an environment where the one who subverts, tends to feel isolated and unsure of any support or audience. But even when support is inconsistent or uncertain, the commitment one makes through embodied involvement becomes the starting point of such choreopolitical interventions.

References Anand, M.R. (June 1972). “Rhythm of Dance and Music in the Bagh Caves”. Marg, XXV (3), 2–16. Archaeological Survey of India. (2003). Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka Continuity through Antiquity, Art & Environment: A proposal for nomination for inclusion in the World Heritage List. https:// whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/925.pdf. Accessed on 20–05–2022. Baliber, E. (1994). Subjection and subjectivation. In J. Copjek (Ed.), Supposing the Subject (pp. 1– 18). Verso Books. Banerji, A. (2023). The award-wapsi controversy and the politics of dance. South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 263–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2101761 Chakraborty, A. (2022). “Dancing the night away: Erotic outlaws of the democracy. Economic and Political Weekly, 57(22), 45–52. Dalwai, S. (2013,). “Caste and the Bar Dancer”. The Economic and Political Weekly, 48(48), 131– 132. Dave Mukherji, P. (2023). “Artistic labour in dance and painting: Revisiting the theory-practice debate via Mimesis (Anukrti) and the abject body”. South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 140–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2142898. Dreyfus, H. (1992). What computers still can’t do: A critique of artificial reason. MIT Press. Dubey-Pathak, M. (2014). “Rock art of the Bhimbetka period in India”. Adoranten 2014. Sweden: Tanums Hällristningsmuseum Underslös. Dutt, B. & Sarkar Munsi, U. (2010). Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers in Search of an Identity. New Delhi: SAGE. Foellmer, S. (2016). Choreography as a medium of protest. Dance Research Journal, 48(3), 58–68. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Random House. IFP, B. (2021, March 13). Editorial: Thabal Chongba: Dance with a purpose. Retrieved from Imphal Free Press: https://www.ifp.co.in/editorial/thabal-chongba-dance-with-a-purpose IFP, B. (2021, March 30). Editorial: Yaoshang Festival of Manipur: Seven fascinating facts—culture and tradition. Retrieved from Imphal Free Press: https://www.ifp.co.in/manipur/yaoshang-fes tival-of-manipur-seven-fascinating-facts-culture-and-tradition. IFP, B. (2022, November 09). In La La Land. Retrieved from Imphal Free Press: https://www.ifp. co.in/editorial/in-la-la-land

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See https://www.instagram.com/thesecularproject/ for the interactive space created as a part of the ongoing conversation that flows alongside the performances of “The Secular Project” in different locations.

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Jain, J. (2007). India’s republic day parade: Restoring identities, constructing the nation. Marg, 59(2), 24201339. Khullar, S.(2018) “Almora dreams: Art and dreams at Uday Shankar India culture centre”, 1939– 1944”. Marg, 69(4), 14–31. Lakkimsetti, C. (2017). Home and beautiful things: Aspirational politics in dance bars in India. Sexualities, 20(4), 463–481. Langer, M. M. (1989). Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception: A guide and commentary. Palgrave Macmillan. Lepecki, A. (2013). “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: or, the task of the dancer”. TDR: The Drama Review, 57(4), 13–27. Martin, R. (1998). Critical moves: Dance studies in theory and politics. Duke University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. ([1945] 2002). The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Nair, J. (2016). “Introduction: A teach-in for a JNU Spring”. In R. Azad, J. Nair, M. Singh, M. Sinha Roy (eds.), What the Nation Really Needs to Know: The JNU Nationalism Lectures, pp. ix–xxv). India: HarperCollins Publishers. Possehl, G. (2002). The Indus civilization: A contemporary perspective. AltaMira Press. Prakash, B. (2019). Cultural labour: Conceptualizing the ‘Folk Performance’ in India. Oxford University Press. Prakash, B. (2023). The erotic power of the dancer: Labour of the erotic and the bodies of the sensory in the Arkestra of North India. South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 186–201. https://doi. org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2097424 Prasad, A. (2017). Red Flag of the Warlis: History of an ongoing struggle (LeftWord, 2017). Delhi: Leftword. Purser, A. (2017).”’Getting it into the body’: Understanding skill acquisition through MerleauPonty and the embodied practice of dance”. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2017.1377756. Purser, A. (2019,). “Dancing intercorporeality: A health humanities perspective on dance as a healing art”. The Journal of Medical Humanities, 40(2), 253–263. Santhosh, S. (2020, March). “Architectures of education—Politics as Pedagogy”. e—flux Architecture. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/education/322666/politics-as-pedagogy/. Accessed on April 20, 2020. Sarkar Munsi, U., & Burridge, S. (2011). Traversing Tradition: Celebrating Dance in India. Delhi, New York, and London: Routledge. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2009). Another time, another space: Does the dance remain the same. In P. Chakravorty & N. Gupta (Eds.), Dance Matters (pp. 26–39). Routledge. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2017). “Performing sites/sights: Framing the women dancers.“ In: U. Sarkar Munsi & A. Chakraborty (eds.) The Moving Space: Women in Dance, pp. 105–122. New Delhi: Primus Books. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2020). Towards a pedagogic analysis of dance and movement therapy. – Brazil, West Africa, South and South East Asia, United Kingdom, and the Arab WorldIn T. Prentki & A. Breed (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance (Vol. Two, pp. 198–208). Routledge. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2021). “Revisiting “Being Rama:” playing a god in changing times”. In: P. Richman, & R. Bharucha (eds.), Performing the Ramayana Traditions: Enactment, Interpretation, and Argument (pp. online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 June 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780197552506.003.0014, accessed 14 Mar. 2023). New York:: Oxford University Press. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2022). “Complexities of the ‘folk’/classical binary: Dance and hierarchies in contemporary India”. Medinipur: Vidyasagar University Publication Division (for Centre for Adivasi Studies and Museum). Sarkar Munsi, U. (2022b). Uday Shankar and His Transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Modernity. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Sarkar Munsi, U. (2023). “Becoming the Body”. South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 124–139. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2077804 . Subrahmanyam, P. (1979). “Dance Notation of Adavus”. In: Kothari, S (ed.). Bharata Natyam: Indian Classical Dance Art, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 35–70. Mumbai :Marg Publications Tavag, A. (2021, June 1 ). “Dance. How Mandeep Raikhy embarked on a quest for a secular India”. The Hindu Businessline. Uberoi, P. (1990). “Feminine identity and national ethos in Indian calendar art”. Economic and Political Weekly, 25(17), 41–48. Vatsyayan, K. (2007, 3rd ed). Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts. Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi. Vatsyayan, K. (2012). Dance in Indian Painting. Abhinav Publications. Vatsyayan, K. (2013). “Sculpture and Dancing”. In: Kothari, S. (ed.) Papers From the First Dance Seminar. 1958. Delhi: Sangeet Natak XLVII (1 -4).

Online sources: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dancing_girl.jpg. Accessed on 10-02-2023. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bronze_dancing_girl_(back_view).jpg. Accessed on 1002-2023. http://nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/en/collections/index/6. Accessed on 10-02-2023. https://www.ifp.co.in/editorial/thabal-chongba-dance-with-a-purpose. Accessed on 03-01-2023. https://www.ifp.co.in/editorial/in-la-la-land. Accessed on 03-01-2023. http://sangaifestival.gov.in/. Accessed on 09-04-2022. https://www.hornbillfestival.com/. Accessed on 09-04-2022. http://kulludussehra.hp.gov.in/ for details. Accessed on 09–04–2022. --https://www.tourism.rajasthan.gov.in/fairs-and-festivals.html. Accessed on 09–04–2022. https://www.hornbillfestival.com/naga-heritage-village. Accessed on 10-04-2022. http://kulludussehra.hp.gov.in/history-of-kullu-dussehra/. Accessed on 10–04–2022. http://kulludussehra.hp.gov.in/international-folk-dance-festival/. Accessed on 10-04-2022. https://www.thebetterindia.com/16449/famous-indians-with-disability/. Accessed 10-04-2022. http://www.victoryartsfoundation.org/. Accessed on 10–04–2022. https://www.animationxpress.com/latest-news/nature-conservation-looking-beyond-virtual-lifeekabhuya-animation-raises-strong-voice/. Accessed on 15-04-2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYADNgIkelY. Accessed on 18–01–2023. https://gullygangs.com/the-warli-revolt-rap-lyrics-prakash-bhoir/. Accessed on 18-01-2023. https://www.facebook.com/adivasi.resurgence/posts/1911187579007963/. Accessed on 18–01– 2023. https://mandeepraikhy.wordpress.com/. Accessed on 03-11-2022. https://mandeepraikhy.wordpress.com/thesecularproject/. Accessed on 03-11-2022. https://fulkonst.se/The-Secular-Project. Accessed on 03-11-2022. https://www.instagram.com/thesecularproject/. (Accessed on 24-04-2023)

Chapter 3

Understanding Categorization—The ‘Tribal,’ the ‘Folk’, and the ‘Classical’ Dance Forms

For me, the concerns about the categories of tribal (Fig. 3.1), folk, and classical dance come with an intense uneasiness. While the economic implications of being categorized as either of the three have always been glossed over by governmental policymaking or implementing bodies such as Sangeet Natak Akademi, the livelihood options and visibility of any form designated as tribal or folk are undeniably different and lower in possibilities than the classical forms. In the context of the recognition of classical forms as superior in presentational possibilities, skills, and public appeal, there are ample evidence of hierarchization in the way these two forms are treated differently within the cultural policies in the country. The still-evolving field of dance studies in India takes such a hierarchy as a given. To begin with, there is the presupposition that there are eight classical dance forms, and the rest of whatever exists as structured movement systems in the form of embodied practices are merely insignificant practices that can be placed in an ethnochoreological space for epistemological analysis. In the realm of this upper-caste/upper-class-dominated scholarship, these ritual/social practices neither deserve nor can be allocated the same discursive and analytic space that classical dances deserve by default. Although there are some scholarships, including that of Kapila Vatsyayan, that clearly link classical dances to their contributory sources in the form of different lesser-known regional community practices, the hierarchy is reaffirmed over and over again by the visibility, popularity, and textual/ historical weightage reinforced by cultural policies and scholarship. Vatsyayan observes in her article ‘The Future of Dance Scholarship in India’ that: Another area of dance scholarship is the area of what has been roughly called tribal and folk dances. The forms themselves, as also the scholarship of these forms, faced a threat because the dance or a dance festival is actually a culmination of a long series of rituals within a community. (Vatsyayan 1995: 489)

In her opinion, the existing writings on community festivals and ritual practices see the movements of such dances of these communities as mostly ‘unstructured movements’ (Ibid. 1995: 489). It is also in her writing that one finds the earliest © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_3

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Fig. 3.1 Santhal dancers near Bolpur, West Bengal, during Basanta Utsab, 2022. © Author

acknowledgement of the need for further research on these forms, to understand them as the “bedrock of the forms called ‘classical’” (Ibid 1995: 489).

3.1 Setting the Context This chapter begins with an acknowledgement that my embodied knowledge of dancing is specific to the genres of dance I have learned, performed, and taught. Not all the dances that I conduct my research on are part of my expert vocabulary. I also acknowledge that being able to describe, analyse, and write about a dance form is not necessarily part of any embodied knowledge or history. Some of my research is on embodied practices that I have neither learned nor danced as an amateur, except in days of sharing space, dance and daily lives with the owners of those knowledge systems as a researcher. I began engaging with the dance ecology in India from the late 1980s, in all possible spaces, both as an anthropologist (seeing dance as a way of being present as a gendered, social, and political being) and as a practitioner (trying to understand the link between everyday life and specific movement praxis that the interaction with my life, hierarchies, and identity generated). The case studies focus on narratives gathered through interviews and participation in selected events. They are ethnographically constructed from multiple participatory/ observational/interactive methods. The following discussions are configured as the lived experiences of those who continue to move in the same way as they have learned from their earlier generations or in manners that they have redevised such embodied knowledge, to remain meaningfully and gainfully engaged. The observations were shared with the community time and again and with the people who have patiently listened to my arguments and provided extremely pertinent additions, often with very specific counterarguments. I tried to divide those learnings and observations into five

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areas of concern, to begin with but failed to create any clear compartmentalization under specific titles. Hence, I put forth the observations with references and notes and hope that they make sense through the following concerns: (1) dance as socialization; (2) dance as a reflection of local cultural ecology and the changes that matter; (3) dance as a documentation of culture loss; (4) dance as a mode of identity assertion; and (5) dancing as the representation of the past in the present. There has been a sea of change in dance ecology in India, due to advanced and unchecked capitalism, increased vulnerabilities in the people who are never quite given a space within the mainstream life, and an increasing decontextualization due to migration, loss of land, and livelihood leading to displacement and disengagement with past practices, which has resulted in a loss of culture. Many members of Adivasi and agrarian communities have moved to industrial townships or large cities in search of work, away from their safe socio-cultural ecology and to a more cosmopolitan space. This displacement left the first generation still holding their dance knowledge in their bodies, but many a time without any idea about how to continue to be in touch with ‘home’ culture. The performance practice, i.e. theatre, music, and dance of the migrant family struggled to continue during the time of the first generation migrants because of their nostalgia, but slowly adjusted and responded to the multiethnic cultural practices brought and added to the experiences of everyday lives in the new space. In city spaces, the multi-ethnic and linguistically diverse community had little or no idea about the cultural practices of the new settlers. Instead, they had a set of stereotypical expectations of presentations that would represent a museumized world of the unknown cultures. This shift rarely allotted any space or time to cull out a new settlers’ space of comfort, within the fast-changing workleisure-ritual dynamics of the Adivasi or agrarian communities that now engaged in non-traditional occupations. There are some spaces where the settler-communities continue to dance on social/religious occasions, such as marriage, name-giving ceremonies, community gatherings, or ritual occasions. However, in some others, such occasions have already become a nostalgic reference that makes people refer to ‘the past’ as differently configured in terms of aesthetics and perspectives of leisure and pleasure. Some dances have become formalized under the categorization of ‘folk’ that are already placed in a changed location away from the community’s secure private world, as a marketed product that generates revenues for the tourism industry or is given the responsibility of representing the nation in internationally relevant culture productions. Decontextualization is extensive and intensely competitive. Those who miss the opportunity for their representation to be formalized through governmental or nongovernmental brokerage systems have lost their chance for creating a place for the dance and also the performing community, in the times to come. Hence, it is no simple matter to talk about the dances that live double or triple lives—as living traditions and practices within a community, in writings of the past, and in the records of the UNESCO documentation of forms (such as Chhau and Kalbeliya) that get recognition as Intangible Cultural Heritage Masterpieces. As many of the milieus have changed, some of the dances have changed from the past as the performers have tried their best to address the new functional perspective that has become relevant to their

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survival. To begin an engagement with issues of complexities around ‘folk and tribal’ dances, I rely on a series of ethnographic engagements and prolonged documentation conducted in Kullu (Himachal Pradesh), Jaipur and Jaisalmer (Rajasthan), Purulia (West Bengal), and the north-eastern states of Manipur and Nagaland over 10 years. I also build some of these observations based on my experiences of Sangai festival and a number of sites for Lai Haraoba (Manipur), Hornbill Festival (Aizawl), Dussehra Festival (Himachal Pradesh), Khajurajo Festival (Madhya Pradesh), and Puri Beach Festival. The following examples are from the categories of ‘tribal’, ‘folk’, and ‘classical’ dances, to set the stage for a critical discussion on the categorization in the last section of this chapter.

3.2 Case Study 1—Hornbill Festival1 My first introduction to the Hornbill Festival was in 2010, through the sports event that happens in the stadium adjacent to the exhibition ground. The gate was open, and the entrance was a spectacle, due to the two lines of male and female participants standing on both sides of the path in two parallel lines. They were dressed in tribe-specific fineries, in three colours—red, white, and black, with small geometric designs that seem to make a public assertion about the tribe the person wearing it belongs to. They were greeting the special guests, and I happened to be a part of a large group of visitors. Organized as a 10-day festival, the event offered a large range of performances, including dances in solo, duet, and group presentations, traditional music and song ensembles as well as rock bands, dramatic, and choreographic presentations from different performing groups of Nagaland as well as its neighbouring states. The emphasis was on a self-representation—important for those from the Naga community, and uninformed outsiders like me who were missing out on the readings of the body and attire, as well as the microculture specific connections of the contextual elements of the words, tunes, and rhythms. Hence, for me, as an enamoured outsider, the festival was a glimpse into the exotic world of the Naga ‘tribes’, whose cultural practices were made available (or I thought so) to outsiders for a while. Until I went back the next time, I remained happily satisfied that I now had witnessed some parts of the traditional performances of the Naga community.2 Different Naga tribes maintained their distance from each other, clearly flagging their differences by wearing their traditional dresses. For many Naga participants this seemed to be an occasion to assert the identity, which is important in such a space. The dances also were tribe-specific and presented as a curated event. For most participants, dancing was a necessary projection of authentic belonging. Such 1

See https://www.hornbillfestival.com/about-hornbill-festival. Accessed on 07–02-2023. See https://www.outlookindia.com/outlooktraveller/tag/hornbill-festival. Accessed on 07–022023.

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embodied knowledge provided a kinaesthetic signature of validation for the generational transmission of embodied knowledge. For sharing the festival space with other Naga groups, even for the limited time of the festival—this projection of ingroup solidarity was practised and choreographed to music and rhythm. The festival spaces—of the open field for large group dances in circles or long lines, the proscenium built for smaller more contained presentations, and also the festival entrance, where the members of different tribes stood to greet special guests were all far removed from the original lived realities of the villages as well as the cities where many of the participants are now settled. My second trip was to review a film project, and it involved sitting for four long days reviewing craft practices by women of different Naga tribes from six villages. The livelihood options shared were in sharp contrast to my previous experience at Hornbill festival, and needed to be understood based on the identities of each of the six villages from Nagaland. This was a wake-up call. Performative Naga-ness was something that I had to then start thinking of as a temporary display, never inauthentic but not in regular use. The clothes, ornaments, and cultural knowledge were dusted, cleaned, and reused on special occasions. This temporary traditionality is a practice we are all now a part of. Evoking it for tourism or creating channels for transmitting intergenerational knowledge is not bad practice either. But what troubled me was the way that sets this land and its people in a time warp, inviting a particular form of spectatorship through the lens of museumization. The Hornbill Festival is the most important feature of the tourism-related activities of the state of Nagaland, held in the Heritage Village Kisama, which is about 12 kms away from Kohima, the state’s capital. It promotes intercommunity harmony and awareness (between different Naga communities, and among the state’s population). It aspires to promote local, national, and international tourism and the cottage industries, while providing an opportunity for the Nagas and the outsiders to learn more about the state, its people, and its cultural traditions. The space is utilized as a temporary museum/exhibition ground for performing identities, as well as the past practices that have long since been lost in the rapidly changing lifestyle of the Naga population. The festival has completed its 23rd year as of December 2022 and has been lauded as an ever-growing attraction that changes young Naga lives for the better. The news website https://www.sentinelassam.com// reported that “the Chief Minister appreciated the coming together of all the tribes and sub-tribes, government, NGOs, businessmen, women, artists, artisans, farmers” for the occasion and “requested the tourists and visitors to be ambassadors of the unique Naga experience so that more people will experience the Hornbill Festival in the coming years”.3 The festival includes traditional dormitories of the Morung system4 within the festival space and living quarters built by different Naga tribes with displays of utensils, textiles, and other forms of art and utility items from their everyday use. Visitors are invited to experience/participate in traditional activities, taste specific Naga food items from 3 4

See https://www.hornbillfestival.com/about-hornbill-festival. Accessed on 07–02-2023. Traditional Naga youth houses or dormitories.

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different kitchens, besides crafts, sporting events, games, music, and food festivals. It also features contemporary fashion, beauty pageants, traditional wrestling, and archery, among other representations. The agenda of the rejuvenation of a shared historical relationship, based on the shared ecological system and cultural heritage, is common for a large number of festivals that have been taken up as state programmes in twenty-first century India. The act of reviving the declining age-old traditions of the Nagas in the Hornbill Festival is being identified as an element that can contribute to the opening up of new channels for the Naga people’s solidarity and collective identification. An important term to remember while studying community events such as Hornbill Festival that involve pre-ordained and choreographed embodied behaviours, including music-making, dancing, and sports, is ‘cohesion.’ Cohesion is an identifiable effort and process that is consciously sought and maintained by a group of human beings, for remaining and working together in the pursuit of certain goals, objectives, and commonly identified affective needs and aspirations. Brandebo, Börjesson, and Hilmarsson write that, according to Siebold (2007), social cohesion “captures the emotional bonds of friendship, liking, caring, and closeness among group members” (Brandebo et al., 2022). According to the same authors, in the military context, the idea of working towards cohesion “refers to the shared commitment of members to achieve a goal that requires the collective efforts of the group” (Brandebo et al., 2022). These two dimensions of cohesion are put in implementation in such exhibitive spaces created for generating social as well as economic value, spaces that need to simultaneously work as a social outcome, as well as an eventive outcome. The idea of ‘heritage’ thus becomes a tool for generating a cohesive regional identity within and for the people of Nagaland and for tourism. This identity relies on displays of intangible and tangible cultural heritage in terms of oral traditions, performing arts, athletic activities and once-discarded social practices and objects, rituals and celebrations, and the skills and knowledge of traditional arts and crafts. Festivals such as this are important. The heritage industry “exports” its product through tourism. Tourism is an export industry and one of the world’s largest. Unlike other export industries, however, tourism does not export goods for consumption elsewhere. Rather, it imports visitors to locally consume goods and services. Hence, a range of Naga performances are clumped together, with no way to decolonize the deeply colonized knowledge around the Naga communities even for the rest of India and of course for the crowd of foreigners who still visit the ‘land of the exotic Nagas’ with a particular image created through the colonial knowledge system. Such decontextualized curated spaces remind us of colonial expositions of the early 1900s, where the houses, lifestyles, and community members were put on display, from different corners of the colonies. Pushing Bharucha’s emphasis on the sharp divide between ‘folklore’ and ‘popular culture’ (Bharucha 2003:266), which is commercially produced in a standardized form for encouraging interethnic bonding, knowledge exchange as well as to encourage tourism, one can look at festivals such as Hornbill as a curated product for mass consumption. This is supposedly to help reactivating and reaffirming the social bonds within the community for the continuation of knowledge and space sharing. While seen in a positive manner for the immediate

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national and global popularity, voices of discomfort are being increasingly heard from regional artists who feel that their particular and special knowledge system is no longer specifically theirs. Survival of tribal knowledge systems and dance forms is a tricky question and not necessarily ensured by such activities. Many tribal forms are not ‘special enough’ and thus stand no chance in a fast-changing world, where their survival is linked to the far more basic questions of changing occupation, the place called ‘home’ and ongoing linguistic hegemonies that generate certain cultural renditions. In the larger context Longkumar’s words place the festival in the regional/national perspective, The state of Nagaland capitalises on the colourful image of the Festival as an ‘exotic’ location, which plays on the warrior and tribal identity often associated with the Nagas ….. the Festival provides a creative public space where all sections of society—urban/rural; students/ politicians/administrators; Indian army/Naga nationalists—can freely mingle, a temporary lull from the otherwise pervasive militarised landscape. (Longkumar, 2013: 88).

3.3 Case Study 2: Kalbeliya—Past to Present My first encounter with two female children accompanying their father and uncle in the sand dunes of Sam dessert near Jaisalmer, in October 1979, was very different from whom we see as Kalbeliya dancers (Fig. 3.2) now. The men introduced themselves as snake-charmers from a community named Kalbeliya. One of them was playing the wind instrument with double reed they call pu˙ngi, while the other was singing. The girls danced to the music, and their sense of rhythm was noticeable. The movements consisted of repeated footsteps consisting of a stamping with the right foot and a response from the left one using the toes. What I noticed was the near-perfect right angle between the heel and the toes, created by pressing all the toes of the left feet to the ground. These were dancers too young to have trained formally, but they were dancing on the shifting sands, trying their best to hold their balance, but occasionally falling and controlling their balance. The hands were either raised over the head or spread to the sides or in front with the wrist and the fingers moving with agility to the rhythm. They kept looking at their elders, looking a bit scared or as if following their unspoken orders, and kept dancing till the music stopped each time. ‘Child labour’, I thought. The uncle explained that performing for the tourists and in the neighbouring villages was their family’s traditional way of earning, and the girls accompanied the adults as they loved travelling. I asked why they were not in any village school. There was no clear answer. It sparked an interest in what was called performance among the Kalbeliya, and I soon found that the women in the community often went to neighbouring localities to dance and sing in order to ask for alms. They were sometimes accompanied by men. The music was slow and concerned with myths and folktales. A lot of the lyrics for the same songs varied from group to group and even from one performance to the other. There was almost no understanding of a formal training for the dance

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Fig. 3.2 Kalbeliya dance is popular and sought after in tourist destinations in Rajasthan. This photograph is of an evening programme where a single woman performer and five male accompanists were performing for visitors and guests at the Neemrana Fort Hotel. © Author

movements. They were kept simple and repetitive and were learned along with the songs, almost as an informal inheritance. The women covered their heads and faces, when dancing in public—where the ‘public’ was understood as everything outside of family wedding occasions, attended only by women. A lot has changed since then. In my repeated fieldworks, I see how the movement repertoire, the accompanists, the music, and the patrons are changing into skills that have to be acquired through learning and practice. It is well documented how Gulabo Sapera, now famous in and outside India in the ‘folk’ dance circuit, almost singlehandedly (of course with the help of her creative and ambitious father) transformed the performance by introducing different idioms, as well as skills such as dancing on plates, nails, and earthen pots; juggling, balancing multiple utensils on the head; and acrobatics, using eye lids to pick up notes of money and small ornaments from the ground while dancing. Kalbeliya is globally famous now. The first-known public performer of the form, Gulabo Sapera, received the Padma Shri Award5 in 2016 for her dance.6 She has become the first individual from her community to receive this award and is considered a role model for women from her community, who now no longer face female foeticide, but are earning a living through dance and are the breadearners for their families. In her interview7 she says, “I feel more responsible now”. She goes on to explain how her dance, her choice of the dress and ornaments, her 5

Padma Shree is the fourth highest civilian award of India. In numerous interviews, she has repeatedly told the listeners about the attempted female foeticide by her community to get rid of her soon after her birth. She survived the attempt because of her family and went on to learn dancing. 7 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf4VdcVdCDw for details. Accessed on 20/05/2023. 6

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choice of songs and movements, and her style have constructed the initial repertoire of the Kalbeliya, after her successful tour of North America in 1985. She hopes that her example will improve the condition of women in India. This dance form is known for its rhythmic footwork, serpentine movements, and the extensive use of fast turns maximizing the effect of the larger rotational spread of the skirt, made with the intention of spreading them parallel to the ground, as the dancer goes into the spins each time. The use of rhythm and the ‘bin’ (the snakecharmer’s instrument) even while juggling utensils or picking rupee notes or coins with the help of eye lids creates an in-between space for the performance that clearly shows the intent of entertaining, enticing, and stunning the audience and ultimately earns a respectable living through the process. The current version of the dance is a highly evolved form, different from when it was first used as a ‘folk’ dance by women dancers. The transformation is significant, even though the Kalbeliya women are mentioned with casual disrespect and dismissal by the local people. A lot of recent writings and films are available on this form. One of the sources that mentioned the little-known form in 2003 was Rustom Bharucha’s book Rajasthan, where he begins speaking about the Kalbeliya by saying, ‘[t]here are approximately eighty different types of nomads in Rajasthan. Under the generic category of Jogi, who provide different technical services, we have different nomadic groups like the Kalbeliya….’ (Bharucha 2003:52). The community is still known for the practice of asking for alms. Bharucha differentiated them from beggars who are vagrants who beg for a livelihood. He says: they provide certain types of services for which society is obliged to provide them with food… So, at one level, for example, the Kalbeliyas are recognized as snake-charmers…. They carry their makeshift snake shrines to local neighbourhoods, where they play on the gourd-pipe (pungi or bin), while offerings of milk and donations are made by individual families. This ritual is not for entertainment purposes. (Bharucha 2003: 53)

It is still commonly believed by many that after the banning of snake charming as a profession, the Kalbeliya women began dancing to create an alternative occupation. While this story has many takers, it also gives this chapter its logic of analysing cultural representations and the economic complexities and agencies that are related to the cultural marketplace. There is a 10-min film available on the UNESCO website, where the story of Kalbeliya is mentioned as the tale of a community dance form that has changed itself with time and requirements of survival. This claim is as fair as it can get, given the complexities of the changes and how the stories of individuations and representations are almost impossible to get into within a short ten minutes ‘documentation,’ that is a requirement for any such UNESCO recognition. About the invisible role of governmental and non-governmental agents Ayla Joncheere writes, ‘those folkloristmanagers [who] transformed the dance into a form of attractive folklore and relabeled it as a “traditional folk dance” of Rajasthan. Its alleged ancestry and authenticity lend this dance form credibility on Indian stages. To establish a sense of continuity, an artificial link was introduced between the dance and the practice of snake charming.’ (Joncheere 2017:39).

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Joncheere further writes, In India, multiple local artist communities have now ostensibly reified and commercially transformed their former nomadic lifestyle in an assimilation process referred to by Kovalcsik (1987, 47) as a “Gypsifying process.” In particular, artist communities associate themselves with other imagined “gypsy” communities because it is socioeconomically beneficial for them to be affiliated with the “Gypsy world.” Benefits for Kalbeliya dancers and their families range from being remarkably wealthier, having more access to education, achieving social and economic emancipation of women, etc. (Joncheere 2017: 44)

In what may be termed as ‘promissory representation’, the traditional forms usually began with a promise and perhaps a very idealized plan of saving endangered dance forms. This followed what Bharucha has mentioned as the performer— jajman system (Bharucha 2003: 266), where the handing over of knowledge was seen by many activists and enthusiastic saviours, such as Komal Kothari, as something that would pave the way to ensuring the survival of the dances and dancers. In his recorded dialogues with Bharucha, written as part of a section named ‘The international context’ in Rajasthan (Bharucha 2003: 243–249), Kothari mentions that. This first phase of our international exposure was made possible only because of the direct involvement of our foreign research collaborators. The second phase, from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, was organized by the Festivals of India under the administration of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). (Bharucha 2003: 245)

Kothari mentioned his coming in contact with other folklorists and ethnomusicologists, who made it possible for the Rupayan Sansthan8 to use sophisticated technology for recording interviews, music, and dance. He says, Even though we were not very well established in our early years, we always insisted on certain conditions when we collaborated with foreign researchers on any project. One, we made it clear that we needed to have a copy of whatever had been recorded during any field trip. This extended to prints of all photographs and photocopies of all notes. Two, if for any reason we needed access to the original material, this would be made available to us. (Ibid: 244)

He also mentions how slowly the growing contacts with foreign scholars made foreign travel of practitioners easier and funds available, for archives to be handed over to individuals, archival agencies, or universities abroad. However uneasy, this moment needs to be registered as the time for a changing of agency in asserting control over the choices of the dancers. What to dance, where to travel, how to change the dance, what dress to wear, along with a cultural distance, and loss of control over one’s own material and immaterial knowledge system were now continued through agents from the home country, for making the package attractive and worth storing and buying for ‘others’ from foreign cultures. This is not to be put as blame on the shoulders of private individuals, but on national policies that 8

Komal Kothari set up Rupayan Sansthan which focused on Rajasthani performance traditions and worked on their documentation, presentation, and preservation. It had its main base in the village of Borunda.

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operated through arbitrary ‘saviour politics,’ for which the availability and using of funding (often from non-governmental sources) were exercised without thinking of the rights of and benefits to the stake holders. The relationship between the performer and the jajman, as I have already explained, is a form of an agreement where there is always a sense of control that the practitioner exercises on the jajman, who is bound by that agreement to prioritize and respond to the desires of the performer. There is no doubt whatsoever, about the power asymmetry that exists between the government and non-government Jajmans, or agents who became increasingly controlling in case of unlettered performers, or the tribal and folk communities. Thus, the responsibility that is usually taken as contractual in case of ‘promissory representation’ is violated as a regular occurrence, in view of all and sundry, to perpetuate a form of neocolonization that creates dispossessions by accumulation—in the form of archive, knowledge, and a problematic but regularized transfer of rights to represent. Rustom Bharucha talks in detail about Komal Kothari’s interventions that changed the participation and representation from Rajasthan. This is directly witnessed in the transition of Kalbeliya dance talked about in the earlier sections. The 1980s and 1990s are seen as a distinct time of growth in international cultural exchange and the sending of folk troupes outside the country for different festivals. He mentions this as ‘the actual marketing of the ‘folk’ in the age of mechanical and electronic reproduction’ (Bharucha 2003:266). He observes that with the change in patronage, as well as the expansion of the audience base that is seen as essential for the economic gains and survival of the forms, there were new patrons as well as ‘new modes of mechanical reproduction’ (Ibid).

3.4 Case Study 3: On Invention and Commitment to Classical Dances—Authoring and Authenticating the Portrayal of National Culture The third case study is different. It looks at the works and dedicated efforts of two performers, Rukmini Devi and Bijoyini Sathpathi through their own written texts or interviews. In continuation to the much-discussed topic of cultural reforms and canonization/classicization of dances in India, this small section is a continuation of the framing of functions in case of the tribal and folk dances from the two earlier case studies. For this particular discussion, it is important to understand that the change in movements, patterns of teaching, the accepting and welcoming of Sanskritization, and marginalization of hereditary performers are only a few of the prices that dance as a genre and dancers paid for being allowed to become a part of the national cultural ecology. Through the glimpses of experiences shared by two dancers belonging to two different decades, I put forth yet another way of looking at the functions that the classical dances perform in the context of India and its image as a nation. Both dancers are known for their active engagement in pedagogies and institutions that

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have made a difference in nurturing, performing, and teaching classical dances as a process that begins to create what would become a life-long imprint of certain methodologies of embodiment and identification. Of the eight genres of classical dances9 Bharatanatyam and Odissi are arguably the most popular. Rukmini Devi (1904–1986) is known for her active interventions in the canonization and classicization of the Bharatanatyam repertoire. In her short essay, presented and later published in Sangeet Natak’s First Dance Seminar 1958,10 Rukmini Devi claimed her knowledge and respect for traditional practices and practitioners while protecting her work as the person who reconstructed the vocabulary of Sadir and literally became known as the creator of the for the form now known as Bharatanatyam. She wrote, “[I]f you follow the spirit properly it is possible to be completely creative” (2013: 64). To explain her wish to change the embodied vocabulary, music, use of expressive bhavas, and costumes, she further wrote, “it was not possible for me to do everything that I was asked to do. In the Shringara Bhava and so on, in the Sanchari Bhava, all kinds of meanings were brought in which were suggestive, which to me was quite vulgar and also many things I wanted to avoid” (2013: 64). Her statement, “I tried to take only such items that were of what I called the Bhakti rasa” (2013: 65) clarifies her active curatorial role in selective restructuring of a traditional practice to create the form now known as Bharatanatyam worldwide. The essay portrays a deep prejudice guided by a Brahminic understanding of what is “acceptable” as a dance vocabulary, that is facilitated and legitimized in every step as “inspiring, noble, and uplifting” (2013:65) and created “in the spirit of the old as if it has existed thousand years ago though it didn’t” (Ibid.) There are references to what Devi was taught and what she thought needed interventions in the form of change. She further wrote that she began learning from Smt. Gauri Amma, who was known for her strength in abhinaya (acting), and then by Shri Meenakshisundaram Pillai, known as one of the famous nattuvanar (hereditary male teacher/accompanist). Devi wrote, “He was of course a genious, he had the most perfect sense of rhythm, tala, and laya, and at the same time he was a great creative artist…. Now though I learned all this traditionally, I want to say to you that there were many things at that time which I felt had to be changed” (2013: 64). It is the next quote that draws our attention to the constant reference to the traditions for validation, while using selective privileges that some people have had to change performance practices of communities that they did not even belong to. She wrote, “And I thought, well if a certain tradition had been started then it means that they were able to take the spirit of the shastras and work it out in a particular way. So why should I also not work it out in my own way. Therefore there is no harm in changing a little” (2013: 67). The problem that the upper-caste reformers have steadfastly refused to acknowledge is that such rights were given to arbitrarily chosen people, who became enabled by the rights they got to wipe out practices and practitioners, and often replaced hereditary artists with new communities, all the 9

The eight classical dance forms are: Kathakali, Bharatanatyam, Manipuri, Kathak, Mohiniattam, Kuchipudi, Odissi, and Sattriya. 10 See Sangeet Natak, Vol XLVIL. Nos. 1 – 4 (2013: 63 - 68).

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while portraying and claiming the newly changed forms as traditions/unchangeable/ canons. Regardless of how internationally appreciated the results are and accepting the fact that Bharatanatyam remains the most practised form of classical dance, one must engage in the questioning of such uncontested upper-class/caste patterns of violence that irradicate, replace, and change the histories of embodied practices, by framing them as “needing change”. Bijoyini Satpathy, born in the early seventies, was associated with Nrityagram, the famous Odissi dance institution established by Protima Bedi, for 25 years—first as a trainee, and then as one of its two principle dancers, and finally as one of the directors. According to the Nrityagram website11 : Bijayini’s research on the moving body in all its possibilities resulted in a scientific body training program for Nrityagram, source from Yoga, Natyashastra, Kalaripayattu, Western fitness methods, and Odissi body-conditioning exercises. She also developed Nrityagram’s expanded training program for Odissi dancers, which is equally valuable for beginners, advanced learners, performers, and teachers.12

As a background for Bijoyini Satpathy’s dance, it is important to know some details about Nrityagram. For 25 years, Nrityagram continued to function as a dance community, with Surupa Sen and Bijoyini Satpathy as the principal dancers and Lynne Fernandez as its Administrator and Lighting Director. The institution charted its path as “India’s first modern Gurukul… where dance is a way of life”.13 According to Anurima Banerji,14 Nrityagram has never been accepted as an institution that follows “the codes of Odissi as a genre established by a coterie of preeminent dance specialists during Odissi’s reconstruction as a classical form” (2017:63), although it is “of special interest as a visible and respected presence on the national stage and international platforms and have won wide acclaim for their innovative interventions” (Ibid). In her 2017 essay, Banerji also mentioned that Nrityagram could also be described as a “Gurukul without Gurus” (2017: 98). Known for the rigour and the dedicated effort by its teachers as well as apprentice dancers, the institution evoked a live and ongoing conversation between tradition and transition, without appearing to be a forceful and mindless propagator of a canonical form that is left without any ability to readjust to new bodies, time, and space. The recent changes, however, have forced the dance community to see the institution as a space that may have created differential experiences in reality for its community. Bijoyini Satpathy left Nrityagram in 2018. Her presence since then is as a solo performer, presenting her performances in India and abroad, organizing and holding Odissi workshops all over the world, online and offline, and also teaching students from different parts of the world. In her interviews and articles written on her 11

See https://nrityagram.org/bijoyini.html. Accessed on 23/05/2023. Ibid. 13 See https://nrityagram.org/history.html. Accessed on 23/05/2023. 14 In the recent times, Nrityagram continues its performances—mostly collaborating with Chitrasena Dance Company from Sri Lanka. Rigorously training own students as well as auditioned dancers trained elsewhere, the institution is well-known for its signature ensemble choreographies. 12

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in recent times,15 her changing style of performing Odissi and the evolving solo work have been discussed in detail. Satpathy’s evolving association with Odissi signifies her quest to chart out a new territory within the older grammatical frame, of a new range of physical as well as cognitive principals. As she changes her relationship with the movements she used as a part of her journey with Nrityagram, she documents, perhaps as a form of resistance, the emerging experimentations with angular, technically precise, “spiralling and almost balletic”16 movements. Her reasons for walking alone are said to be her wish to chart a solo career. In all her interviews since moving away from Nrityagram, she acknowledged the difficulty in leaving the familiar community and a dance world that she felt at home in. At the same time, she expressed her satisfaction at being able to bring the practice, her extensive movement research, and her own choreographic endeavour together in her own body for a change, after having worked and provided expertise and movements in other people’s choreographies during her long stint in Nrityagram. For traditionalists, her new work seems to be one step further away from the already innovative work of Nrityagram. Satpathy is quoted by Nair as saying, “Odissi is believed to be one of the most demanding of forms: its signature stance, the tribhangi, is a twist that demands symmetry in asymmetry and a central axis that stays steady at all times between shifts. The emphasis on working the body into submission, Satpathy says, frees her body and gives her fearless control and range.”17 Here one clearly identifies “signs of the attention then paid to the body—to the body that is manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skilful and increases its forces” (Foucault, 1977: 136). Disciplining and punishing (Ibid), along with controlling through references of tradition and authenticity, seem to be the mechanisms in classical dance teachings. The dedication that is demanded by the pedagogy pushes for extreme form of imposition of self-discipline and self-punishing. With an intensely personal and yet presentational zeal activated specifically to create a space for recognition for herself and for her audience, Satpathy’s self-documentation has created a steady audience who have become witness to her unrelenting and demanding routine of restructuring her practice. In pushing boundaries of expertise and endurance, her dance also establishes new records for skills, perfection, and specific vocabularies, often far beyond the realms of movement regimens in the classicized form of Odissi. Andre Lepachi’s words may be used to describe Satpathy’s post-Nrityagram practice and her choice to share it as a part of her public life, as a resistive act against “a threat to dance’s “tomorrow,” and to enhance dance’s capacity to smoothly reproduce itself into the future within its familiar parameters” (2006: 2). 15

See article by in The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/arts/dance/bij oyini-satpathy-odissi.html; and, by Malini Nair in https://scroll.in/magazine/1051773/bijayini-sat pathy-is-pushing-the-boundaries-of-odissi-some-think-too-far; Her performance “Doha” recorded on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art dated https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=ww_spjJm3RY, accessed on 23/05/2023. 16 See https://scroll.in/magazine/1051773/bijayini-satpathy-is-pushing-the-boundaries-of-odissisome-think-too-far. Accessed on 23/05/2023. 17 Ibid.

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The above case studies highlight consistent interventions by individuals in shaping the journeys of classical dances. In the national perspective, these forms of dances have been used to authenticate Indian aesthetic structures, cultural roots, and an upper-class-specific Indian-ness (in case of Devi), while becoming powerful tool for self-assertion, identity formation, and possibilities of disciplined skill acquisition (as portrayed through Sapathy’s work). Through years of formalization of the pedagogies, classical dances prescribe a period of methodical training under a master teacher, a strong control over the basic system of movements, and dedicated practice. Many dancers have made their name over the period of 75 years in the post-independence times. As proud authenticators of historical greatness, the classical dance forms have been made visible through systematic patronage from the government, internationally known dance academies, and the popularity of dancers who have made their names in India and outside. Even before independence urban upper-class/caste families sent their daughters, and also sometimes their sons, to the training institutes for specialized trainings in dance, and most of the institutions had a certain focus on classical dances. Training in dance and music became a part of an inclusive modern educational plan for urban elites and over the years have also spread to certain peripheral towns around these cities as well. The system of learning from a master teacher and reaching a stage-worthy level is usually a long process. It is an extremely expensive one in terms of time, as well for people coming from non-elite working-class families. Hence there is a class-based divide in the clientele who can afford such a training for their children. The master teachers (Gurus) attract students from different class, caste, and religious backgrounds. Women students are larger in number and are generally from urban middle- and upper-class backgrounds having no or scant knowledge about the history of the dance they are beginning to learn. The urban schools are not gurukuls, even if they claim to be so. Time-bound involvement during weekends and a few days after school is what the young dance students can afford. This is also curtailed as the students reach higher classes in their educational institutions. As I reflect on my personal memory, it strikes me that like many students learning classical forms of dances, I grew up not knowing anything about the history of the dance I had started learning. I therefore never imagined anything beyond those times spent in class, and neither did I ever think of whom I was inheriting it from. My first exposure to the proscenium performance came from the arangetrum of a senior dancer which we all were invited to.18 In the Kathakali class, the scene was different. We were made to practice hard and were often told that the performances lasted all night, and that females were not part of the ‘serious’ performances. We were shown photographs, costumes, ornaments, and frequently saw our teacher perform for guests. The time spent in all those classes remains as beautiful memories. They shaped my dance practice and range of mobility and the skilled execution of dance movements and agility that my body has danced, innovated, and developed on. The 18

The first proscenium performance is a way of signalling the completion of basic training in Bharatanatyam.

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vocabularies were varied, and the freedom that it lent us was endless. As we grew older and began performing with the school troupe, we were given a strict warning about the distilled purity of the classical forms and were told that we must never ever dilute, change, and create a fusion of these vocabularies because they were ‘classical’ dances. The histories of the hereditary communities of dancers remained untold in all those occasions. The painful histories of marginalization, exploitation, and assimilation escaped the narratives built by the post-independence state. I danced from 1966 till 2006 regularly, learning and mostly loving the rigour and strength of the classical dance vocabularies, although the term “classical” and its applicability remained an enigma.

3.5 Making Sense of Standard19 Categorization: Folk, Tribal, and Classical Dances as [De]contextualized Terms The categorizations of dance are arbitrary and deeply problematic due to the severe lack of knowledge, protected ignorance,20 and the elitist misinformation spread by educated upper-caste members of the society, who were part of the planning for the nation-building project for independent India. The records of many such public presentations are available in the publications of the national academies. One such presentation by K. Vasudeva Shastri at the First Dance Seminar of 1958 mentions: When the arts of dance and music are developed without the aid of those who have experienced the perennial dance and music of the heart, by yogic process, its development is haphazard and crude, reaching real heights by accident only. This we call folk dance and folk music. But if they are developed with the help of Yogis who have heard and seen the Anahata Nada and the Dance of the Lord, then it is real Art. You call it Classical Dance and Classical Music. (2013: 94).

Critical dance studies must pose questions regarding the arbitrary classist and hierarchical writings of the past scholars and planners, as these have become the truths that are perpetuated through the generations of dance practitioners. On the one hand, one must ask questions regarding the rights to assess the ‘haphazardness’ and ‘crudeness’ of inherited traditional performative practices, while on the other hand, there must be questions regarding the right to set hierarchical levels for knowledge systems, aesthetics, and rights to intervene. While such acts of cultural violence may be relegated to history as of now, there are appropriations and acculturative coercions that continue to be active and are continuously legitimized, as a part of privileged behavioural structures and protected ignorance21 —even in contemporary India. This section begins by referring to the cultural policies of post-Independence India, as a result of which one finds officially designated space for ‘Folk and Tribal’ 19

I shall refer to the Sangeet Natak Akademi categorizations as the ‘standard’ classification. See Y. S. Alone, 2017: 140 –169. 21 Ibid. 20

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dance music and theatre on the website of the Sangeet Natak Akademi (the administrative setup for the promotion and preservation of dance, music, and theatre in India). While the details of the Akademi’s work (published as part of previous research, and no longer available on the Sangeet Natak Akademi website) shall be discussed later, it is useful to take note of the updated details about the folk and tribal section. Under the heading ‘Folk and Tribal’ the Akademi website declares: Since its inception, the Folk and Tribal Section has been working in the field of performing arts in the country, preserving and promoting the vast intangible heritage of India’s diverse culture expressed in forms of traditional, folk & tribal music, dance and drama.

The currently recreated website contains write-ups providing details of festivals celebrated under the name ‘Desaj’ (meaning indigenous) held from the year 2013 to 2019, in different parts of the country. It projects specific events such as ‘Lok Jan Pratha Utsav’ (festival of folk and tribal traditions), ‘Lok Sangam’ (festival promoting senior artists from folk and tribal performing arts), ‘Lok Pratibha’—projecting young and emerging artists from different community performances, and ‘Rang Swadhinta’ (colours of freedom). One is taken aback by the information regarding ‘Training and Preservation of Traditional, Folk and Tribal Performing Arts,’ that mentions non-formal training programmes based on Guru-Shishya Parampara. The absurdity of learning the participatory kinaesthetic communications of a circular, semi-circular, or line dance that continuously follows rhythms generated by the musicians facing them in a rhythmic conversational exchange, through a Guru-to-Shishya transmission of fixed and structured dance, seems wrong to anyone who understands the process of knowledge transmission that entails community participation and socialization. What exactly could be taught through the Guru’s instructions, of a form that involves body-tobody transmission and is largely dependent on the haptic and proxemic connection through holding hands, or dancing closely with one’s community, with other bodies that are occupying an intimate shared kinaesthetic microcosm? Is it not absurd that such an important form of knowledge transfer is not acknowledged on the Sangeet Natak Akademi website? Why does this feel like there is miscommunication and lack of knowledge regarding how important touch is for moving together with other moving bodies, in certain community dances? Folk and tribal dances are clumped together and referenced as local and folkloric practices, which are claimed as an exotic category of dances that are not really representative of mainstream India. They are categorized as some remnants that can help us celebrate the diversity of lifestyles and practices as museum products, ignoring the harsh everyday realities of socio-cultural hierarchies that allow, as well as legitimize, the existence of these forms in the fringes of the mainstream dance forms that are showcased as ‘India’s antiquity’. Roma Chatterji sees the term ‘folk’ as ‘a way of referring to tradition as it coexists with modern social formations’ (Chatterji, 2016: 390). In the same essay, “Scripting the Folk: History, Folklore, and the Imagination of Place in Bengal,” while discussing the diversity of folk practices, Chatterji writes, ‘[i]nstead of constituting India as spiritual other to the materialistic West by foregrounding its classical past, an orientation to the folk allows for a conception of India that is less totalizing’

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(Chatterji, 2016: 389). In Chatterji’s opinion, Coomaraswamy’s ‘classification of art forms into marga and desi arts is useful in understanding the thinking that went into the codification of dance in the early modern period’ (Chatterji, 2016: 380). The idea of classical dances as a ‘pan-Indian sacred resource rather than as forms associated with particular communities’ (Chatterji, 2016: 380) was further clarified by Kapila Vatsyayan in her writing on classical and folk dances as Margi and Desi. According to her, The classical dance styles of contemporary India are largely reconstructions of [these] fragments of antiquity. On one level, they have great antiquity which links them with the past, on another they are contemporary and recent, performed outside the traditional milieu and context, each tune recreating the past, but are not the past. Sometimes the content is old, but the form and technique new; at others, new content is infused into an older format. It is a subtle eclectic approach seemingly ancient but in fact an expression of modem sensibility. (Vatsyayan, 1974: 8)

In the decontextualized context of the Sangeet Natak Akademi website, the terms tribal, folk, and classical imply a clear and sharp hierarchization that may not mean anything in their places of origin. But given the status accorded by the most powerful patron of dance in India—the Indian state—these categories have become sources of power and discrimination, where the embodied knowledge for each form is also hierarchized. As a dancer exposed to the genres of classical dances from India from childhood, at one point before starting my M.Sc. dissertation work in the early 1980s, I went to the Department of Anthropology, Calcutta University Library, where the librarian directed me to the monograph section as soon as I asked for the books that might have any mention of ritual performance/dance/music. It took me a while to understand the categories of folk and tribal dances—usually, the dances that are part of everyday life, the rites-de-passage, the calendrical celebrations, yearly festivals, and ritual practices of the different communities from remote, non-urban parts of India. In some of the books on performance practices, the category of folk lumped together numerous diverse embodied practices from different regions and portrayed them as somewhat unchanging, rigid forms that remained safely embedded within the community practices. Book after book on specific tribes included, by default, specific ‘rituals’, ‘rite of passage’ and ‘dance and music’, ‘dress and ornament,’ following the template of descriptions within colonial anthropology, created by missionaries and administrators from pre-independence colonial endeavours to know the unknown. They may have served their purpose well at the time of publication but did not do much in terms of really giving an idea about anything, beyond the fact that the community did have dance as a part of their everyday life. A few of them took special effort to describe the formations of the dance or the structure of the ritual that required these embodied activities. Some included a few songs that gave us a vague idea of the occasion where the community danced together. However, they at least registered that communities used dance as a way of communication, between humans, between human and mythical beings in the supernatural belief system, and of course, to record unwritten knowledge for transferring to the future generations who were yet to inhabit the world defined by generations who have inhabited the same

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world/space in the past. This appeared as a will, a direction for whoever wanted to be directed into a world of myths, histories, and human reactions to those intangible elements that might be of interest or importance in future, as remnants or leftovers. In contrast, when searching the non-digital library records of those times for the word ‘dance,’ especially archives such as the National Library, British Council Library, Central Library of the Calcutta University, one would come across books on classical dances by Ragini Devi, Sunil Kothari, and Kapila Vatsyayan. This in itself may have been the beginning of the process of creating blind spots regarding the definition of ‘dance’ in India. At least, it allowed and encouraged the studies of some dance forms as worthy of inclusion, in a dismal caste and class-affected dance discourse that stayed on for the next 20 years or more. The categories, thus segregated, exist in separated worlds of differential visibility, prestige, and power. It is essential to create a discourse by seeing them as historical intervention-based, imposed categories, with the help of which the classical dances are now portrayed as age-old, pre-colonial forms, without acknowledging their roots in the regional living traditions that are now labelled as ‘folk’. The complications arise due to the hierarchized patronage provided to forms, according to the assessments of their positions in the national categorization. Even in the current times many of the regional dance forms continue their perpetuation through embodied human transmissions within community practices of largely unlettered regional cultures. That the classical dances are newer cocktails produced from older ingredients is a fact conveniently left unmentioned in many of the older uncritical dance histories.

3.6 Colonial Worlding and Perpetuated Exclusions In their ‘Introduction’ to the book Rethinking India, Being Tribal: Existence, Entitlements, Exclusion, Xaxa and Devy assert that the ‘current discourse related to the Adivasis in India owes a great deal to its colonial history’ (Xaxa et al., 2021: xv–xvi). According to them, there is a strong opinion that the marking of a group of people with distinct lifestyle as Adivasi was an administrative move by the colonial authorities in India. As a result, the category ‘indigenous’ was created as ‘an anthropological tag’ to identify ‘numerous local communities in North and South America, Australia and the Pacific, Africa and Asia’ (Xaxa et al., 2021: xv–xvi). They also acknowledge another set of theories where the Adivasis are seen as a social legacy inherited by us from pre-colonial times. According to them, and many other anthropologists, there are a large number of descriptions of forest dwellers in epics, plays, myths, and folktales, giving evidence of communities distinct from the urban and rural Indian societies in existence since pre-historic times. These forest people appear in those narratives and descriptions as being outside the pale of the law, social customs, traditions, and belief systems prevailing in different historical epochs of India’s history. The question of whether these forest-dwelling communities also emerged during the colonial times as ‘tribals’ is difficult to answer with a simple affirmation or negation (Ibid).

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The terms have become even more complicated within the discourse of anthropology and culture, as categorizations are increasingly and inevitably also related to availability and allotment of funds and projects, livelihood possibilities, and representations within and outside India. Such recognitions validate practices of authentic or autochthonous holders of knowledge and therefore are vital to the survival of the art forms and artists. The recent discourses on marginalization are region and form based and remain exclusive. The process of creating a systematic work plan for support of the performance practices of the Adivasis/tribes still is largely unplanned and does not create a nuanced space for the near-silent world of these ‘different’ lives. Therefore, the ignorance continues. Xaxa and Devy observe that in the context of the Adivasi ecosystem in India, “it would not be far off the mark to say that their endangered identity, environment, language, gender sensitivity, belief systems, performance traditions and human rights are some of the more central issues relating to the struggles and the survival of the indigenous all over the country” (Xaxa et al., 2021: xvii). In their opinion, stories of the struggles of the indigenous people vary from one state to the other and also from one community to another, but remain largely identical when referring “to a colonial experience that hammered a break in the long-standing traditions of the indigenous” (Xaxa et al., 2021: xvii). The emphasis that both Xaxa and Devy put in the introduction of their book, Being Adivasi, becomes an important point for my argument regarding dispossession (Harvey 2001: 75–76) in this chapter. Connecting dance-related observations to Xaxa and Devy’s writings, it is important to highlight the fact that in spite of all the consistent and severe marginalization, and the gradual loss of control over their own lives and practices faced by the Adivasis/tribes, they continued their symbiotic relationship with nature and ecology through ritual, material, and social practices. They “continued to clash with a radically different framework of justice, ethics and spirituality” (Xaxa et al., 2021: xvii), as they rapidly lost their ‘world’ and their sense of self-sufficiency, along with most of the possibilities to continue their traditional practices. For the indigenous, invariably, there are two points in time marking their emergence: one that is traced back to a mythological time enshrined in their collective memory and expressed in their community’s ‘story of origin’, the other that is synchronous with a colonial forest officer or beat guard setting foot on the land that was once their dominion. (Xaxa et al., 2021: xvii)

In the story of aesthetic colonization, the Adivasi community bore the brunt of marginalization in the worst manner. They had the least access to urban class mobility, education, and power. The nation’s leaders—even those who were standing up for lower caste groups, such as B.R. Ambedkar—were also not ready to be inclusive of these communities, who held and nurtured a huge variety of cultural expressions— embodied and material. Within the official space, the conflation and overlapping between commonly used terms such as ‘tribe’, ‘agrarian’, and ‘folk’ make the various forms of community dances come together, under variously implicated terms that identify region-based forms associated with daily lives and livelihood, rituals, and festivities. In a strange but scary sense of universalized categorization, the perpetuation of everyday practices has been grouped together with the specialized acquiring

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of skills, in a system that identifies someone as skilled while others are placed below as lesser able/skilled. This system of learning goes completely against the concept of world-making within the Adivasi/tribal communities in most cases, where dancing, singing, and ritual practices are autotransmitted, lived realities, and not specialized skills. Folk dances are a more generalized category that includes dances identified as living traditions in tribal as well as caste-stratified Hindu regional communities and in relatively smaller regional linguistic groups. They have often been universalized according to the skill that is required to become a practitioner of each of these forms. This category also includes different levels of precision and knowledge production, beginning with a socialization-based dissemination of community knowledge that is acquired by experiencing dance within one’s own community and ending with highly skilled dance-theatre involving specialized teaching, voice, music, and textual training, as well as specific modes of knowledge transmission from expert teachers to trainees. The understanding about and reception of these categories have also shifted over the 75 years of independent India. It might be pertinent here to mention the ‘Inaugural Speech’ of P.V. Rajamannar, the then Chairperson of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, on the occasion of the First Dance Seminar22 held in Delhi, in 1958 (Rajamannar, 2013: 7–10). In his speech, one finds the acknowledgement of an almost impossible wish for a centralization of cultural knowledge created for the government and specifically the Akademi: ‘having regard to the vastness of the country and the bewildering cultural wealth which we have inherited’ (Rajamannar, 2013: 7). He continued explaining the task of the SNA, as envisaged by the Ministry of Culture: For the first time, one Central Body has to first ascertain the varieties of art forms prevalent in the different regions of India, to gather information regarding the practice of these art forms and to correlate them, to bring out the essential cultural unity in what may appear to be a perplexing diversity. (Rajamannar, 2013: 7)

The next part of his speech lays out the mapping of the plans of the SNA ‘to avoid duplication as far as possible’ (Ibid), to avoid creating a huge burden on the already stretched budget. Regional centres were therefore made responsible for managing local affairs, and the SNA was made responsible for managing several problems and patronizing ‘functions from an all-India standpoint…. They were designed to present the diversity of systems and traditions pertaining to different regions of this great country at one place and at one point’ (Ibid). While one may want to give this ‘all-India standpoint’ the benefit of the doubt, the obvious lack of an ‘all-India’ understanding and the role of caste/class/gender/ region/religion-based hierarchies need to be examined, with regard to the continued and newly generated forms of automatic selection processes whereby these hierarchies continue to breed practices of exclusion. As a response and resistance against inequalities and exclusions, severe and often conservative identity politics become a tool for defence against the erasures of humans and artistic practices. One also sees an increasing sense of resignation about the inevitability of the loss of culture among regional cultures and communities. 22

The first dance seminar of 1958 was organized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in Delhi.

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Meanwhile, the binaries of folk and classical have strengthened and are supported through the cultural policies of independent India. Nameless ‘folk’ dancers remain representatives of the community. In the First Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Memorial Lecture on ‘Education through the Arts: Values and Skills,’ Kapila Vatsyayan writes: ….the new system of education resulted in the shrinking and de-prioritisation of the then extant indigenous system of education as also the variety of systems of transmitting knowledge, skills and techniques. We all speak about the guru-shishya parampara, but forget that this parampara had an institutional framework, be it tols or the pathasalas or the gurukulam or the madrasas. These traditions were sustained by a variety of chiselled institutional frameworks, such as the gharanas, sampradayas, and banis. There was also a well-established guild system, karakhanas, stapathi, shilpakoodam, for the arts and crafts ranging from architecture, sculpture, metal work, etc. One is not absolutely clear whether the Hunter Commission wanted to stifle all the systems, but it is evident that the Commission did not recommend recognition and certification to those who were educated or trained in the existing system. Thus, the Hunter Commission said: ‘By not recognizing the indigenous system and not giving jobs to those from the system we shall have shrunk the system, so that it will shed of its own accord without our being held responsible’. (Vatsyayan, 2009: 29). According to Vatsyayan this saw the beginning of “a new kind of institutional framework” (ibid) in music and dance.

3.7 Presence and Representation The idea that culture manifests itself as local, community-specific elements that are essential identifiers for the human group it belongs to, is arguably the core of many dialogues around belonging, identification, and appropriation within dance studies. Dance has always been the favourite of all the performing arts practices that are chosen as signifiers of specific communities, in cultural policies around projections of nationhood. In this regard, it becomes absolutely essential to understand how the two processes, i.e. presence and representation, become important to understand the abovementioned phenomenon. Presence, in my opinion, is one of the important terms that helps the conceptualization of a range of performance tools such as nuances of skills, choices of using stage crafts, and enactment, to claim an identity and create a phenomenological space for communication. Phillip Zarilli (2012: 121) mentions, Cormac Power provides a useful account of three main ‘modes of presence’ in theatre— ‘the making-present, the having present and the being-present’ (Power 2008: 11) in order to demonstrate that ‘presence in theatre is not a singular, monolithic entity’ but a complex phenomenon (Power 2008: 13). Goodall writes a history of ‘the poetics of presence— the rhetorics and imagistic language in which presence is evoked in different cultural and historical contexts, and across diverse forms of theatre and performance’ (Goodall 2008: 7).

In the context of this chapter, I would like to use the term ‘presence’ as a term to claim the privilege of the ‘here and now’ of many past performances, while creating a new representation. This often means representing a regional community (denoted as ‘folk’/tribal/regional) in a so-called sophisticated proscenium setting, because of the lack of experience in the original performers, who are seen as unprepared/unable to handle the urban audience. It also means making present what is thought to be

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appropriate in terms of aesthetics and narratives, precisely because of the power ‘presence’ holds, as something that can claim to override many other past renditions in performance. It is essential to understand its role and power in destabilizing the histories of ownership and agency of the ‘folk’ performances that face erasure, when represented (often in a well-meaning endeavour) by powerful agencies such as the Ministry of Culture, of the Government of India. Edward W. Said’s observation in his writings on Orientalism23 becomes important in this context, which gives us one of the many tools for understanding the selforientalizing processes in operation in the nation-building endeavours witnessed in India. The self-projection of otherness was used culturally, more than in anything else. It was easy to continue to use, celebrate, and project the historically inherited cultural exclusivity that was one of the ways in which the colonial power gave some recognition to the pre-independence colony. The post-colonial developments reflected in many of our cultural policies since independence incorporates plans for building a robust national identity that would project and protect traditional knowledge and cultural practices to the outside world, as well as to the citizens of the newly independent nation. Among many other endeavours, the Sangeet Natak Akademi was one of the numerous Akademis established in 1952 that helped as a nodal agency for facilitating such efforts.

3.8 Building the Presence One of the important issues to understand in this context is the way cultural policies were created as operational tools for a curational process. As a result of strategic interventions, often via government-engaged cultural managers such as experts in more sophisticated forms of dance from neighbouring states or expert committees formed by Sangeet Natak Akademi, dance writers (mostly critics), historians, or a stratified organization of the local/community dance practices began to get accepted among dancers. In that list, classical dances with strong pedagogic and kinaesthetic structures were placed at the top. Adivasi dances and ritual enactments were at the bottom. The hierarchy emerged according to the complexities of the movements, rhythmic patterns, presentational skills, and availability of structured and methodically transferable pedagogical knowledge. It divided all that is dance in India into more skilled dance genres, with identifiable grammatical elements as basic movements that needed dedicated learning. This category consisted of the eight classical dances—Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Manipuri, Kathak, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Mohiniattam, and Sattriya. These were followed by other categories that had relatively 23

Said sees Orientalism as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’” (1978: 2) and suggests that “Orientalism offers a marvelous instance of the interrelations between society, history, and textuality” (1978: 24).

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more freedom in terms of participation and lesser distinction between the trained practitioner and the audience (Fig. 3.3). Unlike the list for classical dances, the category of folk dances is ever-changing, both in terms of the rigidity of the presentation and the pedagogy. Gotipua and Chhau are examples of this category. Both forms exemplify a journey through a rough terrain, constantly trying to justify their importance in the Indian dance ecology, with constantly evolving modes of display of the increasingly documented and everevolving skill sets of the embodied grammatical knowledge (Fig. 3.4). This is a matter of life and death for the dance and the dancers, as the precarity of such practices has increased with the growing competition between the elite practitioners of classical dances and the increasing precarity of these so-called folk forms. The ‘unskilled’ community-perpetuated ritual/social performances are related to everyday life and included at the bottom of the stratified layers. These dances are usually part of orally transmitted community knowledge and have been unhesitatingly accepted as part of a specific community’s participatory space. The more generic and inclusive the dance practice, the lesser it is respected as a performing art as exclusivity of skill-based participation has been one of the principal ways of hierarchizing embodied knowledge. The resultant power, agency, and choice are three important words in the context of their absence or presence. This context of power is discussed in this section and further analysed through the anthropological perspective posited by Rebecca Schneider. In the book Archaeologies of Presence, Schneider’s essay ‘Performance Remains Again’ (2012: 69–70) discusses the critical issues around

Fig. 3.3 Madhavi Mudgal at Konark Temple, Odisha © Avinash Pasricha

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Fig. 3.4 Folk dance festival at the Talkatora Stadium, 2007. © Avinash Pasricha

remembering and, thereby, remaining owners of performance practices, rituals, and other enactments. Here, in the context of presences as lived realities and identities to claim acknowledgement through ‘performance’ as an appropriate means of remaining, and of remembering’ Schneider asks ‘Is this perhaps because performance threatens the terms of captive or discrete remains dictated by the archive? Is this in part why the logic of the archive—that utopic ‘operational field of projected total knowledge’— scripts performance as disappearing? (Thomas 1993: 11)’. (2012: 69) Schneider’s arguments in this essay substantiate the analysis of the representation of ‘folk’ living traditions as appropriation, by understanding the legitimization of the process of representation as a state-led initiative that reproduces traditional practices as the ‘performance practices are always decidedly repeated, oral historical practices [that] are always reconstructive, always incomplete, never in thrall to the singular or selfsame origin that buttresses archontic lineage’ (2012: 69). What Schneider calls ‘the pristine selfsameness of an original’ is precisely then how these ‘lesser’ skills are thought to be reusable, with or without the practitioner being involved in the salvaging project. Presence, then, is negotiable through the bodies replacing the ‘original’ dancers once the dance is separated from the dancer, as is seen in many of the community forms that have become state-acknowledged cultural practices. The decontextualized presence is handled by cultural managers, who are not required to have any community-specific knowledge of the dance they are now responsible for.

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3.9 Representation Veena Naregal’s essay ‘Marginality, regional forms and state patronage’ (2008, 33— 39) begins with two appropriate quotes, one from the Haksar Committee Report of 1990 and the other from the Verrier Elwin Lecture delivered by Shiv Vishvanathan in 2006. While the lines chosen from the Haksar Committee Report talk about the roles of the Akademis in conserving and disseminating India’s cultural heritage, the quote from a conversation with Dr. Raphael Horo in Visvanathan’s lecture exposes the agony of invalidation and marginalization in a matter of fact and resigned manner. For me, Visvanathan’s lecture (2006), referred to in Naregal’s essay in detail, becomes the beginning of yet another exploration of the legitimization of the representation of tribal cultures that were seen as inadequately prepared to represent themselves. In his Verrier Elwin Lecture delivered on 14 November 2006, Shiv Visvanathan narrated an independence-era negotiation that took place in 1947, between the representatives on behalf of the tribal communities of Chhotanagpur and the Government of India, ‘that marks the passage of the Adivasis, unheard and unheeded, between two worlds.’ Jaipal Singh had asked, ‘The Constitution is yours. The borders are yours. The sovereignty is yours. The flag is yours. What is ours? What is that is both tribal and Indian in the Constitution? What is the shared legacy, the common weave? You have defined rights, the isms, the industry, the science, let something be ours.’ (2006). These lines may be seen as completely unrelated to the world of dance, but they make a strong connection to the legitimization of the representation that was naturalized to create a museumized, but not an interactive, space for the Adivasi population in Indian cultural policies. Visvanathan quoted Raphael Horo (one of the five representatives who were part of the meeting mentioned above) from a later private conversation. ‘Independence was a time for hope… We wanted to join the festival called freedom, offer our ideas, our philosophies, our vision of India, but we had already been museumised or criminalized. We went as philosophers and were dismissed as savages.’ (ibid) Conversations like the one above are not directly about cultural appropriation and neither are they directly linked to the embodied knowledge that is the focus of this book. However, these are important to connect to the matters of post-independence policies that eventually used to mark places allowed to communities or appropriated from them. These conversations also have direct relevance for any book written on all that is dance in India. Hence, continuing to explore the term ‘representation’ in ways that help us critically understand the processes of appropriation and reimagining/ restaging that lend themselves to dance and other performance practices, I turn to Fabian’s writings on the presence and representation of the ‘other’ within anthropological writing. He sees social sciences, especially anthropology and sociology, usually using the word ‘representation’ in the plural. He writes, ‘The singular would put the emphasis on representation as an activity or process. Instead, by privileging the plural, we invoke entities, products of knowledge or culture’ (1990: 753—754). In Fabian’s opinion, this justification of representation is always reliant on the fact that

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there is bound to be a difference between reality and its representations (‘doubles’). (Ibid). He goes on to clarify: Things are paired with images, concepts or symbols, acts with rules and norms, events with structures. Traditionally, the problem with representations has been in the mind. When philosophers lost the hope of ever determining accuracy (and thus attaining truth), They found consolation in the test of usefulness: a good representation is one that works. The proof of its working is that it enables us to act on the world together. (Ibid)

This itself helps us understand how naturally the aesthetically aimed changes or representations of original enactments are always justified, as something that is being done for the betterment of the form and its practitioners. Representations are conscious takeovers then—of spaces, thoughts, narratives, and the rights to alter/ delete/replicate. It is possible, if there is no resistance or if the resistance can be invisiblized or marginalized, through different acts of silencing. The categorization of practices belonging to orally transmitted cultures of the ‘tribal’ also comes from the sense of ‘objectivity’ that is almost always associated with representations. The removal from the subjective place/community/knowledge seems important for making up a large generic representative category of dance that legitimizes looking at the ‘tribal’ dance as a whole and not some specific embodied knowledge repertoire. Representatives are often seen as agents, but in the case of the state, the insignificant and powerless communities have no control over the representations and neither are they able to bargain on how they desire to be represented. The blanket non-specialized embodied activities, often accommodating ritual as well as social/ cultural expressions from different geographical regions, get fused within the regional identities accommodated under Zonal Cultural Centres in most cases, if at all.

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3.10 Anthropological Implications of the Word ‘Authentic’: Dance as Community Knowledge24 Veena Naregal (2008), Anita Cherian (2009), and many others have written on Indian post-independence cultural policies. To continue with the reorientation of the folk/ classical narrative, based on the identification of multiple processes of dispossession, and linked to the classification and categorization of Indian dance forms into the following categories: tribal, folk, regional, classical, western, modern, contemporary, and Bollywood. It is imperative for critical dance studies to link all of these to the historical/socio-cultural structure of power and patriarchy. While this chapter does not get into detailed descriptions or histories of particular forms, it bases its structures on my previous publications in journals and books over the last two decades, a few of which are referred to in this text. To create a space for a critical discourse of interventions in regional cultural expressions—through the reorganization and allocation of governmental patronage around certain dances/dancers/or both—it is important to look at the enabling process for such life-changing developments, without getting entangled in only the individual histories of each of the so-called classical forms of dance. It is essential to acknowledge regional histories highlighting the dispossessions, losses, and gains of the affected hereditary community of performers unleashed through such interventions. But since there are a number of insightful discussions on such forms, I would like to trace the larger template or standardized design that has emerged over the 75 years of independence and the evolving cultural policies through them. It is important to note that, besides the many colonial endeavours, a major role was played by the MARG25 Magazine, on defining the nature and the territory of cultural assertion of the category ‘folk,’ as it published specific articles on folk dances from different regions.

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This section of the chapter is an edited and revisited version of second ‘Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato Memorial Lecture’ titled “Complexities of the ‘folk’/ classical binary: Dance and hierarchies in contemporary India”, which was delivered online by Dr. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi on 21 December 2020. The lecture was organized by Dr. Pashupati Prasad Mahato Memorial Committee, Kolkata, in collaboration with the Department of Sanskrit, Jadavpur University, and the Centre for Adivasi Studies and Museum, Vidyasagar University. The memorial lecture was held along with a national webinar on ‘Folk Performance, State and Epidemic’. The Lecture was later published as an Occasional Paper (Booklet), in 2022, by the Vidyasagar University Publication Division. I would like to acknowledge with gratitude, The Vidyasagar University and Professor Sumahan Bandyopadhyay, Director, Centre for Adivasi Studies and Museum, Vidyasagar University, Medinipur, West Bengal. 25 Marg Magazine (1946–ongoing) website mentions that it is “India’s oldest art magazine with fresh perspectives and new research from leading academics and practitioners across the globe.” It also mentions under the heading, “MARG AND INDIA”, that the magazine known for its contribution to discourses, documentation, and photographic representation of art, culture, and architecture had come into existence at the same time as India attained independence, and under the founder-editor writer-activist Mulk Raj Anand “Marg’s early issues were a radical forum to nurture/further ideas for nation-building.” See https://marg-art.org/history for details. Accessed on 07–02-2023.

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One such article on folk, written by Kavalam Naryana Panikkar, was titled “Ecstasy of the Folk Dance—The mystical rhythms of the village community” where he mentions, From village to village, tribe to tribe, temple to temple, folk dance has played its indelible part in the heritage of Kerala for countless generations. Man seems to form into groups for aesthetic, recreational and leisurely activities depending upon his ethnic character. Yet the experiences shared by peoples of different climes and times make us realise that life only becomes livable if man can strike a happy balance between its serious and lighter sides. Folk dance provides the ideal opportunity for this since it is genuinely representative of the qualities of the soil to which village people are essentially bound. (Panikkar, 1979: 81).

As seen in this excerpt, such anthropological generalization marks the description applicable to all folk dances from India, though the article is specifically on Kerala, published in a volume dedicated to the particular culture scape of the state. Like most other countries in the world, the categorization of ‘folk’ describes the dances that are seen as simplistic community practices, within restricted social spaces such as homes, weekly markets, local festivities, and to larger events of display, organized as ‘tribal’ or regional festivals, showcasing the small, localized forms of dance practices. In my article “Performing Sites/Sights: Framing the Women Dancers” (2017) I have added an exploitative dimension to the category of folk dance, saying: Another space for the organized display of exotic and unfamiliar cultural traditions is the tourist circuit, where the act of ‘gazing’ at the ‘others’ is becoming increasingly popular and is legitimized within the rubric of the current emphasis on global traffic which translates into capital gains for the state and the region. While such displays for tourists may be defended and read as cultural tourism on one hand, the free rein given to private entrepreneurs and local agents in many cases signifies extreme exploitation of women and children on the other. (Sarkar Munsi 2017: 108)

Thus, the concept of folk dance brings together diverse forms of embodying corporeal expressions. From dancing entirely as a participatory form of corporeality, such dances are also often stylized and ornamentally staged on proscenium spaces— to showcase the so-called authentic and ethnic ways of communicating alternate and less complicated ways of engaging with everyday practices of identity production and maintenance. Both these terms bring in their own complicated historical references. The term ‘authentic’ has been used frequently to fix and define identities for many performance practices of community groups. The stamp of the ‘authentic’ increases a short-term appeal and exoticization of a marginal culture on one hand. On the other hand, it simultaneously renders the helplessly fixed into an unchanged/unchangeable form available in the hand of the museumizing forces and entrepreneurism. As is observed by Kalpana Ram (2001), the politics of dance has actually tried to destabilize and complicate invocations of ‘culture’ as a fixed reference, by looking at the complexities and dualities within marginal communities themselves, regarding dance and its availability as a marker of identity and the inevitability of the embodied responses on the ‘sensuous and embodies practice’ (Ram 2000: 359) that can help us to ‘move away from or at least to muddy a dichotomous understanding of poetics and politics’ (Ibid 2000: 359). Building on Ram’s observations, how does one look at the dual discourses of authenticity which operate either by imposing it to freeze frames

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of reference for marginal community dance practices or dismissing the labelling of dance as authentic or otherwise as essentializing tactics? In the context of the discourses around authenticity in dance Ram observes, ‘… the utterly contradictory demands imposed on subaltern cultures, to simultaneously produce their culture as commodities for the changing ‘tastes’ of the market and as a fixed essence capable of display’. (Ram 2000:360). With regard to the word ‘authentic’ in the context of dance, it is necessary, in my opinion, to understand that both the principal players involved in living and propagating the so-called folk dances. The community of performers, as well as governmental agencies/entrepreneurs/documenters, use the word ‘authentic’ to maximize the utility and apparent advantage to be gained out of making a ‘folk’ dance genre appear fixed in time and space. Ironically, the word has been seen to readjust to changes—making the appearance of the new ‘authentic’ a regular occurrence in the dance world. In a parallel but closely related space, within anthropology itself, the word ‘ethnic’ creates a stereotype for diverse communities to be grouped together under a segregated pre-modern category of people whose lives and ways are seemingly ‘different’. In her much-discussed essay ‘An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance’, Joann Kealiinohomoku wrote, Another troublesome term is that of ‘ethnic dance’, as I have already indicated. In the generally accepted anthropological view, ethnic means a group which holds in common genetic, linguistic, and cultural ties, with special emphasis on cultural tradition. By definition, therefore, every dance form must be an ethnic form. (Kealiinohomoku Reprint 2001: 39)

In the terminology used within the Indian systems of patronage functioning in and around dance, such a distinction is unfortunately found to have deep roots, first as a colonial legacy, and later as a way of hierarchizing dance forms for patronage and visibility within the cultural policies of post-independence India. The idea of liveness is often added to the folk category of dances, using the designation ‘living tradition’ to validate such a category, by creating a reference to the ideas of a form that is still in liveness, circulation, and perpetuation. Such ideas of continuity are vital for the ‘folk’ dance forms, as they also validate the community’s wish to continue its self-projection in the age-old way—referring to and consolidating beliefs on the strength of cultural practices, and the greatness of the patronage that these forms have received. Controversies are rife about which forms of dance are to be categorized as ‘folk’ and which are the ‘ritual’ forms of practice, making these categories and the micromanagement of the allocation of space within them confusing, and without much input from the communities that have nurtured and embodied such forms till date. In reality, many of the ‘folk’ dances belong to both folk and ritual categories—simply because of their seamless availability across the artificially imposed categorization. At most, such cases of survival-led acquisition/appropriation by marketing agencies that sell cultural products or state initiatives for energizing Survival of art, are a result of the vulnerability of marginal communities. This vulnerability pushes them to search for means of ensuring survival for both themselves as well as their arts.

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The state clubs together the ‘survival/restructuring/museumization /packaging’ as a deal, applying a standardizing template to all art forms (Fig. 3.5). In my chapter, “On Performing Sites/Sights,” I have mentioned, …the spaces accorded to these ‘other’ regional forms become appropriated in a very different fashion in the same agenda of exclusivity and exclusionary practices of the state, where these performances of lesser stature are presented by the nationalist project—in sites specifically designed for larger audiences as spectacles of exotic community/‘folk’ culture.. To just name a few as examples, the dance forms such as Chhau and other mask dances from different parts of India, Tera Taali and Kalbeliya from Rajasthan, Bhangra from Punjab, the drumming traditions of Manipur and Kerala, and the ‘exotic’ dances of the ‘head-hunting’ Nagas are all used as tools to reinforce the belief in the concept of ‘unity in diversity’ and the undeniable authority and control of the state since independence, on occasions such as the Republic Day parades,26 Independence Day celebrations, opening and closing ceremonies of Commonwealth games, and similar grand and often-spectacular events. (Sarkar Munsi 2017: 107–108)

Addressing the complexity of the state and its endorsement of artistic practices such as dance, Purnima Shah argues, the processes of nationalism, state patronage, and sponsorship induced the appropriation of certain regional artistic forms and selectively legitimized them as “national" and therefore "classical." The national dance festivals became institutionalized as politicized spaces that endorsed, supported, and gave recognition to the "classicized" forms of artistic performance. The nationalisation of selected intraregional artistic forms as "classical" represented not only the cultural identity of the region, but also the cultural diversity of the newly formed nation-state. (Shah 2002: 126)

Art marketers also often borrow the same framework from the state. While arts of the margins are something to be talked about in the later section of this chapter, for now let it be noted here that this survival/repackaging of an art form and its practice almost always makes it a separate package from the practitioners and their everyday lives. One way of looking at this process of decontextualization and de-linking of dance from its dancers’ bodies is to increase its values as a product and a livelihood option. The delinking conveniently makes the dance a transferable commodity (without much trouble regarding its ownership) as a saleable package. Susan Foster’s recent book introduces the concept of ‘resource’ in the context of dance, by asking in her introductory chapter if dance can be seen as ‘resource-full’ (Foster 2019: 23). She explains, ‘Both a noun and a verb, resource references a reservoir of things and also a way of acting in response to a situation. It suggests a capacity, a potential to become, to respond, to serve a need’ (Ibid). In the continuing explanation, Foster further searches for an expansion of the meaning of resource as a noun and refers to its most frequent use in the context of the earth and its resources, ‘as sets of plentiful provisions that should be controlled and managed’, and ‘objectifies the natural world as a calculable storehouse or stockpile of goods available for exploitation” (Ibid). Foster’s assertion that ‘dance’s resource-fullness cannot be owned, either individually or collectively’ is justified by her argument about the essential process of 26

https://knowindia.india.gov.in/#:~:text=Dance,have%20rigid%20rules%20of%20presentation. Accessed on 07-02-2023.

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Fig. 3.5 Daytime rehearsal for Chhau in the village Pitidiri in Purulia 2012 © Author

owning dance individually or as a community, by utilizing the ‘resource-fullness’ to create a package with a set of transferable vocabularies that can be consolidated as a set of products with a set of ‘designated properties established within a given system of production’ (Foster 2019: 24). When one accesses the numerous publication websites projecting ‘Indian’ culture and festivals in an attempt to understand ‘folk’ dance as a specific category in India, the descriptions of this category almost always start with a disclaimer that such dances are repetitive, simple, and learnt as an easily imitated community practice that can be passed on from one body to another through processes of socialization and not as a skill from a master teacher as in classical dances. This explanation in itself hierarchizes knowledge, by putting one form of knowing over another. Assuming one form of dance knowledge to be lower in skill, aesthetic, intellectual, or bodily capability also indicates a list of expectations that all dances must fulfil, in order to

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be considered as dance enough. Through two basic communicative motivations, i.e. ‘participatory’ and ‘presentational’ as the energies and reasons for dancing, the follwing sections focus on epistemological concerns around the learning, transmission, and appropriation of embodied knowledge that has aided the creation of a hierarchy of the formal learning process in classical dances over the informal learning that characterizes all knowledge transmissions in living traditions.

3.11 Allotment of Spaces for Folk and Classical Dances Popularized through a large number of websites, Indian dance has become a geographically unified and homogenized identified entity, most often divided into three categories—folk (including tribal), classical, and Bollywood. Young contemporary dancers from India would love to see a separate category, specifically designated as contemporary dance in/from India, but it is yet to emerge in its full specificity. I see the opposition to such a categorization coming first from a historically as well as racially constructed divide imposed on dances from traditional cultures, largely in Western scholarship. There is also the consistent resistance from within the dance community in India, which in its myopic view continues to see anything beyond traditional practices as westernized and borrowed. Hence, compared to the extraordinarily visible classical and ‘folk’ dances from India, contemporary dance remains largely invisible in and from the public domain. One of the numerous Government of India websites says, Dance in India has an unbroken tradition of over 2000 years. Its themes are derived from mythology, legends and classical literature, two main divisions being classical and folk. Classical dance forms are based on ancient dance discipline and have rigid rules of presentation…… Folk and tribal dances are of numerous patterns. Both classical and folk dances owe their present popularity to institutions like Sangeet Natak Akademi and other training institutes and cultural organisations. The Akademi gives financial assistance to cultural institutions and awards fellowships to scholars, performers and teachers to promote advanced study and training in different forms of dance and music, especially those which are rare.27 (https://knowindia.gov.in, Accessed on 22/02/2021)

This website portrays the role of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, as one of the principal patrons of classical and folk dances. This chapter situates itself not as a critic of such a claim, but as an analytic space for understanding what gets told through such a claim, and what remains untold. Earlier I have discussed the idea of the folk and the classical and have tried to begin at the basis of the historical moment when the creation of this binary between 27

https://knowindia.gov.in/culture-and-heritage/performing-arts.php#:~:text=Dance%20in%20I ndia%20has%20an,divisions%20being%20classical%20and%20folk.&text=Kathakali%20is% 20a%20dance%20form,Mughal%20influence%20on%20Indian%20culture projected the binary of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ in a factual manner, when accessed on 20–10-2020. Currently, the website has been reconstructed, and the references to the Mughal period have been removed.

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existing forms of dances became necessary and why. I maintain certain things that I said in the past, such as the utilization and encouragement provided by the reforms movements within the soon to be independent nation-state, for the desires of individuals to look at the performative possibilities of local dance forms such as Sadir from Tamil Nadu28 or Raas Leela from Manipur.29 These processes always began with imagining a form much beyond the hereditary bodies or the space that these dances belonged to. The nationalist project of the reformers led to encouraging, highlighting and recontextualizing/reshaping cultural expressions for building an identity and overall idea of India as the richest cultural reservoir of South Asia.30 It changed and readjusted the movements and presentational patterns to suit the needs of urban proscenium spaces inside and outside the country, thus decontextualizing and recontextualizing with an assertion of the rights of the state as the patron/master.31 The state fixed the rules of time/space limits, reception, requirements of presentations that needed now to cater to the short, crisp, high quality, and visibly and aurally suitable presentations for national and international aesthetic requirements. In other words, the art had to be ‘compatible’ to new audiences. The artiste had to learn to cater to the urban patron, who would in most cases be culturally, linguistically, circumstantially, and completely unaware of the cultural context, but would receive the presentation as a finished and packaged product. It was an ultimatum, and the artiste/s or communities had to comply. Questioning the problematic constructions of the concept of ‘folk’ in dance, Rustom Bharucha in “Notes on the Invention of Tradition” had attempted a critical analysis of the term ‘folk,’ in the specific context of theatre traditions in India. His words, “The ‘folk’ became emblematic of our ‘lost heritage’ and ‘authentic history’ that we were determined to reclaim from the British” (1989, pp.1909), are justified by his explanation of the crisis such processes precipitate within the practice, by referring to the changes as ‘environmental changes’: Still more problematic is the transportation of a traditional performance from its own environment to a proscenium-bound, air-conditioned theatre in New Delhi or a mela in Paris. This environmental change alters the very context of the performance. In some extravaganzas, the 28

Bharatanatyam is one of the earliest dance forms to be recognized as a classical dance form of India. The story of the disempowerment of the hereditary community of performers is well-known and amply written about by Amrit Srinivasan (1985), Davesh Soneji (2012), Purnima Shah (2002), among others. 29 Raas Leela, a locally popular ritual form of performance from the state of Manipur, found itself becoming popular beyond the state’s geographical boundaries, due to the attention it got from Rabindranath Tagore and Uday Shankar. After its practitioners were repeatedly invited to perform and teach the ritual dance in Tagore’s University in Santiniketan and Shankar’s Institution in Almora, this local form started getting represented as one of the important cultural expressions of the Meitei community from the state of Manipur. The classical dance status it acquired also required it to get a state-related identification, and the name ‘Manipuri’, literally meaning ‘from Manipur’, was given to it. As a result, it became the sole representative of the distant, little known north-eastern state, at the cost of severe marginalization of other living forms of dance practised by the same community. 30 For more details on reforms and classicization, please see Kapila Vatsyayan’s book Indian Classical Dance, 1974. 31 See ‘Another Time, Another Space: Does the Dance Remain the Same’2009, pp. 26 – 39.

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performers are merely “slotted” into a spectacle over which they have no control. Reduced to exotica, they resemble spots of colour without mind, body, or soul. How does one accept these changes in performances resulting from altered environments? (Ibid 1989: 1908).

The particular case of Chhau is an evolving example that is ever-changing in its relationship with the home community, the state, the region, and the audience in the national and the international space. Chhau is one of the selected forms in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, since 2010. The form and its regional variations live a dual life simultaneously, within the community spaces in Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Odisha, as well as in national and international prosceniums and festivals. The community spaces remain somewhat geared towards catering to a ‘home’ audience, while the new audience in the national and international spaces are served a balanced ‘product’ that is a mix of the older form of performance (with traditional texts, costumes and performative references) and the new spectacular, proscenium-adjusted format (with innovations in music, themes, and stage crafts). The shifting and ever-changing negotiations are as much in anticipation of the audience reception, as the experimentation of assimilating newly acquired knowledge from the exposure to other forms of performing arts. The spaces of community practices—the akhara (the meeting place within the villages), the temples or other ritual spaces, the home, courtyards that cradled the art, and the artistes—failed to qualify as a space that would give adequate support to the form of practice. The inevitability of moving the art from the cradle destabilized the form in different manners. Those forms that could move with ease could adjust themselves in such new spaces of reception and excite and energize themselves and the viewers through their interactions created a new liveness specific to the requirements of the changed milieu of performance. The recordings available with Ministry of Culture of the ‘Apna Utsav’ festivals show the new spaces of prosceniums, television screens, large stadiums, playgrounds, and of course, spaces like the Republic Day parade celebrations all over the country. The functions of the small community rituals and festivities, family celebrations around the rites of passage, or the evening dances during community meetings that seem almost insignificant but have deeper significances of bonding, solidarity, and assertion of presence, have been rendered with a lesser presence in the community lives in contemporary times. Maybe these changes were bound to happen anyway, with the increased urban migration, displacement, economic changes, and the intrusion of celluloid, electronic, and digital media. Maybe the dance would have inevitably vanished. May be these changes need to be normalized now. And maybe we need to stop mourning the loss. However, the loss remains extraordinarily significant, because it is a loss of presence and the rights of expression. Most importantly, the loss is significant because such expressive bonding created and maintained the rights for and of the communities that are now losing their occupation, land, and rights to voice dissent, but have already forgotten how assert their identities. In any way we look at the basic binary of ‘folk’ and ‘classical’, one important thing to note is that the regional differences within India marked significantly different communities whose cultural practices—songs, music, dances, games, myths, and

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tales—have always been ways in which these communities have transmitted important information from one generation to another, in the absence of formal education. While such tools have been cultural markers, acknowledged, and documented for some kind of preservation, they have generally been seen to have lesser significance as they have never been identified as a part of the Sanskritic traditions that became the marker of the post independent India. Hierarchization of such forms was legitimized by the use of the term ‘folk’ that could justify the ordinary everydayness of many such regional lived realities that remained as non-specialized community practices. At best identified as a form of annual community offering to deities, or a celebratory participatory enjoyment, or simply a form of entertainment or time pass, these forms faced tough competition from the form of the fast-increasing list of classical dances. While the proscenium has become almost exclusively occupied by more and more aesthetically rigid forms that are termed as ‘classical,’ mostly unaffected by the everyday realities within India, many community practices have been irreversibly affected by rapid urbanization and the ongoing situations of violence and strife with/ within the nation-state. Theressa Buckland projects Hugh Thurston’s writings in her search for a definition of folk dance. She says, Written in 1954, his understanding of the term… delineates four uses of the term: (i) Dances of folk-lore. The narrowest use. (ii) Dances of the folk. Includes (i) and also popular recreational dances, but not skilled step dances. (iii) Traditional dances. This will differ from (ii) in including step dances, but excluding recreational dances resurrected from old books. (iv) All non-professional dances. The broadest use. (Buckland 1983: 319). The use of the word classical is a colonial acquisition and aspiration, from the way classical music and dance were defined in the history of fifteenth–sixteenth-century Europe, as an imposition on the histories of dance and music in India. According to Buckland, … six ideal characteristics of classical music, each of which is polarized in the ideal category of folk. Firstly, whereas classical music is accompanied by a prescriptive body of literature which legislates the form, folk music relies upon the performance process rather than on written criteria. Secondly, acquisition of the skills and repertoire required for performance or composition occurs in classical music within specifically organized institutions such as schools or academies. Folk music, on the other hand, requires no such specialized institutional control as learning is affected primarily through the imitation of performers. The frequent separation which exists between the creator and the executor of classical music is absent in folk music as is the divorce between performer and audience. Indeed, in folk music, the audience has a freedom of response and behaviour not found in the classical context or listeners may in fact be totally absent. Performances of classical music occur in formal institutions set aside for that purpose whereas no such discrete contexts need to exist for the execution of folk material. Finally, the simple relationship which exists of performer/ audience in a classical situation is compounded in a folk performance by various alternative relationships, for example, those based on the family, residence, or occupation (Buckland 1983: 325).

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The classicization of dance forms began circulating as an idea in the realms of Indian dance at the end of the nineteenth century. Borrowing heavily from the European dance and music history, classicization itself became a process with a specific agenda of the universalization of Indian dance as an embodied proof of its cultural superiority over other parts of the ‘orient’.

3.12 The ‘Bedrocks’ and the Rocky Terrains of Continuity Community-based knowledge transmission is intricately linked to the process of perpetuating participatory forms of dance where dancing is an essential part of important calendrical activities, and everyone takes such activities for granted while growing up, in the small and intimate spaces within a community. As the smaller village communities change place, shape, or character or move away to pursue different occupations, this transmission process becomes disrupted, and as a result the learning process becomes vulnerable. In such cases, essentializing community knowledge transmission is, of course, no longer the ‘natural process’ of learning through socialization. In this context Buckland writes, The transition from a predominantly rural to an industrialized society, accompanied by an increase in social and geographical mobility, led to a feeling of cultural alienation amongst many of the educated middle class. A dichotomy between town and country was seen to exist in which the inhabitants of the latter were believed to be isolated from modern civilisation, closer to Nature, and, through oral tradition and geographical stability, closer to the past. (Ibid. 1983: 315)

Classical dances have been developed as specialized genres where the transfer of embodied skills is accompanied by the textual and historical knowledge that seemingly creates an understanding of the tradition, as a part of the national cultural scenario. In case of these eight genres of dance, the knowledge transmission also is filled with mytho-histories that foreground Sanskritic/Brahminic views, often creating a glorified past. Such a past has nothing to do with the realities of caste, class, and the power structures involved in the creation of the dance genre itself. Apprenticeship, similar to the feudal systems of learning in art guilds, has traditionally been preferred in the classical dance forms in India, making a strong case for systematic, holistic, and long-term engagement with the dance genre, through a systematic and dedicated learning process dependant on transmission through apprenticeship. Kalpana Ram has written regarding Guru-Shishya Parampara: All of these forms of knowing value the importance of practice over time, lengthy periods of time, in coming to understand something about the art form. Apprenticeship is in one sense regarded as life long, but it takes several years of rigourous practice before a student can be said to have acquired gnanam32 …. which entails far more than a theoretical understanding, although is usually a part of the training. They entail the training of the body, its sensory capacities, its kinetic capacities. These are more in evidence in dance, but musical training 32

Meaning ‘knowledge’ in Sanskrit.

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whether of the voice or of instrument entails training the body to sit in certain postures, to hold the spine erect, to practice one’s breathing. (Ram 2008: 2)

Ram emphasizes on the learning of the practice of ‘discipline’ and discipleship in the same essay: We can use Indian performing arts notions of apprenticeship to remind us of the dual meanings of discipline: each discipline involves not only ways of thinking, but also bodily forms of apprenticeship, a disciplining of the body. Equally, there are meanings here of discipleship, of learning and attunement to what has gone before (Ibid 2008: 5).

It is the unsaid reference to the dedication of time and discipline in learning that plagues the community forms of dance practice. While the classical forms emphasize prolonged learning and dedication as proof of arriving at a space of adequate acquisition of knowledge, community practices can never be pushed into the same structure. Even if they are, the slippages and freedom that a community is bound to have, in the way it looks at participation, make it impossible for the form to respond to the rigidity of the classical learning systems.

3.13 Participation Versus Presentation In order to avoid the above essentializing characterizations I shall try to apply two basic communicative principals, i.e. ‘participatory’ and ‘presentational,’ as the energies and motivations for dancing in different regional practices in India. These two categories may also be used to understand the roles of transmission of knowledge in different forms of dance and help us avoid the hierarchizations within dance. Andriy Nahachewsky defines the descriptive terms ‘participatory’ and ‘presentational’ dances as “… those who participate spontaneously in dancing … without pre-planning or rehearsing—and those who present their dancing in a planned effort …” (Andriy Nahachewsky’s personal communication with Elsie Dunin, 1995: 1). Here, any participatory form of dance is essentially a shared corporeal experience of a group, where there is no actual distinction between the audience and the participants. The absence of specialized training makes the participation a voluntary and a welcome activity, where the aim is to participate in a social or ritual activity together. The outcome of such a dance gathering is not gauged in terms of the quality of the presentation, or its evaluation by the audience. Instead, an assertion of social solidarity and the successful completion of the social or ritual process gets the priority. I have mentioned in one of my soon-to-be-published essays—‘Dance as community knowledge: Traditional epistemology vs appropriative constructions of the “folk”’: [i]n contrast, the presentational dances are by themselves the products that make the process of learning important to achieve the goal or the final outcome that is the presentation in and for itself. They have their own accepted ways of setting scales of acceptance, appreciation, skill-assessment, and also either creates or appeals to the audience through presentation of the dance as a product. Skill sets required for presentational dances are much more codified and fixed. Specialized learning and ability to “present” the dance, sets the dancer apart from

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the audience’ (Sarkar Munsi—Accepted for publication in the Oxford Handbook of Indian Dance—in Press).

A further explanation is provided by Adrienne Kaeppler, who wrote, “The dances of participation … have a character of spontaneity and do not require long and arduous training. They do not aim at simultaneous flawless execution of intricate movements, but rather are intended to create a mass rhythmic environment” (Kaeppler 1976: 199–200).

3.14 ‘Training and Preservation’ Versus Increasing Aesthetic Values Classical dances have reached a place where their self-preservation through the teaching techniques, and their survival through governmental patronage, is quite strongly and securely linked to the idea of a national culture. Also important in this survival process is the successful creation of classical dance genres as packages, delinking the form from any particular community. In more ways than one, this independence of the form has meant that it can survive without any particular community to carry it within their embodied knowledge system. Instead, the nation carries, owns, and benefits from the form’s popularity. Ironic as it is, in some manners it legitimizes the existence of the art without the artistic community. In order to be able to grow as dancers in a form of dance that seeks validity and approval from the viewers/patrons, the practitioners need to constantly update their skillset and expertise. An aspiring learner needs to get skilled in his/or her chosen dance genre and then remain in practice, i.e. by putting in repeated labour. Hence, whenever there is any discussion about learning and continuing to dance within the ecology of classical dances, the word practice is flagged as the process one must follow. I would like to unpack the connection between the bodies in dance and the idea of practice as it would also be useful, in this context, to understand what the word ‘practice’ means and what it means in relation to the process of learning classical forms of dance in India. Body training, for each of the classical dances, is structured differently as per the requirements of the specific grammar. The hand gestures (single and double-handed mudras and their meanings), postures, steps, and basic movement routines are taught as a routine introduction to beginners, along with the rhythm cycles. The bodies are moulded and made pliable. As the training progresses, they become accepting, disciplined, and docile through this process. At some point in the training process, the dancer actually becomes the body—a tool that is now available for reproducing the repertoire (Margam) unquestioningly. I began dancing when I was six years old. Though I have changed my routine and path of practice, as I have grown away from my classical training in Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, and Manipuri, I have not stopped practicing. Most part of my first three years at the dance school—Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, was filled with the

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dreaded, repetitive, uninteresting, and reiterative labour that etched the basic postures and expertise into our body and psyche. It was achieved through the practice that we were encouraged to do at home individually and at the dance institution as a group. The bodies were supposed to assimilate all the information that was imparted by the teachers about how to stand, how to take and hold the basic pose without shuffling, how to jump the highest, how to move each of the muscles on the face separately, how to keep the knees bent in the starting position in Kathakali, and so on. The list was long, to be repeated endless times, with a very vague idea of achieving ‘perfection’—the meaning of which remained oppressive and out of reach forever. We began reading and receiving signals for alterations in our bodily postures and movements, without receiving detailed instructions about the required corrections. Even if the body often made mistakes, it had already understood how to attain the perfect postures. The slightest of touch at the back communicated, in a split second, the need to correct the posture by rearranging the spine. Phillip Zarrilli has written extensively about the training imparted in Kalaripayattu, a martial art from Kerala, as well as Kathakali. He locates the embodiment and training in a discursive domain, where there is a constant negotiation between the master teachers, the bodies that are being trained, and the audience/ patron requirements. He writes, What interests me most about this phenomenon is the dynamic and shifting relationship between the body, bodily practice[s], knowledge, power, agency and the practitioner’s ‘self’ or identity, as well as the discourses and images of the body and practice created to represent this shifting relationship. In each context of its practice, presentation or representation the kalarippayattu practitioner’s body, practice, power and self are constantly being repositioned for the practitioner himself, the teacher, and/or cultural consumers, thereby making available quite different images, discourses of power and agency, experiences, knowledge and meanings for them all. (Zarrilli, 2000: 4)

The dilemma around dances is mostly centred around vulnerable community forms’ dances. As the lives and livelihood patterns change for smaller communities in fast-changing rural areas within India, their cultural memory and its transmission become interrupted. Hence, the idea of the ‘perpetuation of tradition’ through socialization becomes an impossibility, even if there was ever such ‘authentic’ and unchanging patterns of social learning realistically possible before. New locales, occupations, and cultural and social ecologies change the relationships of individuals with their ‘home’ space and community. Such crises of regional cultures have become complicated with the powerful presences of classical dance forms, which have now become the hegemonic markers of regional cultures in the states that proudly proclaim their classical dances as their cultural heritage. Layers of complication are added to the above issues by the initiatives of governmental, international agencies that have generated different strategic modes of preservation for different regional forms. The two main players in this field are the SNA and the UNESCO with its Intangible Cultural Heritage initiative. To understand the Government of India initiatives, its policies on folk dances can be read on the SNA’s website https://sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/training.php, (retrieved when I started

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writing this chapter on 07-04-2020, and since taken down for reasons unknown). Here, the SNA declared: The broad objectives for “Training and Preservation of Traditional, Folk & Tribal Performing Arts”: (i) To provide support and sustenance to identified forms of Indian music, dance, and theatre as also crafts associated with performing arts, mainly through specialized training programme under eminent masters. (ii) To encourage the young members of the traditional practicing families and those who may plan to take up the art as their profession. (iii) To provide support to such forms, style, traditions, gharanas, banis, etc. that do not otherwise receive encouragement in the normal course. (iv) To preserve the variegated richness of the performing art traditions of India by providing direct substantial support to their training and performance activities. (v) To sustain one standard of training in identified art forms and to ensure smooth transmission of learning from the older generation to the young.33 The UNESCO website is less prescriptive in matters related to providing support to the art practices that the organization defines as Intangible Cultural Heritage: The “intangible cultural heritage” means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups, and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development. (Text of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Retrieved August 1, 2012, from: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?lg= en&pg=00011&RL=00337#identification).

The UNESCO efforts are seemingly different from the Indian Government’s cultural policies. However, when applied to only a few performing art practices, this process of recognition and validation creates an unnatural competition among already economically vulnerable artistic communities that derive some occupational support from such practices. It also creates a power position for cultural mediators/ dealers. An analysis of the complications associated with such selective processes that choose some arts, from a huge number of practices, as intangible heritage items worth preserving, raises several questions, 33

Sangeet Natak Akademi, mentioned as “India’s national academy for music, dance and drama” on its website https://sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/introduction.php (accessed on 07–04-2020 and now unavailable, referred to in my previous writings), is the first of the National Academies of the arts set up by Ministry of Education of the Government of India after its independence, notified as a resolution of the Ministry in the Gazette of India of June 1952. The “akademi” started as a decision-making and support body for the performing arts in India in 1953.

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… about the process of selection and also the universalisation or simplification/ standardisation of the viewing and selecting procedure, which in its turn gives rise to serious concern about the effect these forms of selection might have on the practitioners and their art’ (Sarkar Munsi 2012: 175).

3.15 Knowledge, Agency, and Accumulation by Dispossession The SNA website mentions a speech (now made unavailable) by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad that he made as the then Union Minister for Education34 (again not from ministry of culture or information, but from education). Azad delivered the opening speech for the SNA in 1953, saying: India’s precious heritage of music, drama and dance is one which we must cherish and develop. We must do so not only for our own sake but also as our contribution to the cultural heritage of mankind. Nowhere is it truer than in the field of art that to sustain means to create. Traditions cannot be preserved but can only be created afresh. It will be the aim of this Akademi to preserve our traditions by offering them an institutional form… (SNA speech by Azad 1953)

The Constitution of the SNA states its objectives on the updated website https:// sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/constitution.php#: – To promote research in the fields of Indian music, dance, and drama and for this purpose, to establish a library and museum, etc. – To cooperate with such similar academies as there may be other institutions and associations for the furtherance of its objects and for the enrichment of Indian culture as a whole. – To encourage the exchange of ideas and enrichment of techniques between the different regions in regard to the arts of music, dance, and drama. – To encourage the setting up of institutions providing training in the art of theatre, including instructions in actor’s training, study of stage-craft, and production of plays. – To revive and preserve folk music, folk dance, and folk drama in different regions of the country and to encourage the development of community music, martial music, and other types of music. – To sponsor music, dance, and drama festivals, seminars, and conferences on an all-India basis and to encourage such regional festivals. 34

The following websites of the Sangeet Natak Akademi that contained Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s speech and much of the other vital information are no longer available after they have been used by many of us in our research repeatedly. The search for the following websites. https://sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/introduction.php, Accessed on 07/04/2020. https://sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/training.php, Accessed on 07/04/2020; and https://sangeetnatak. gov.in/sna/constitution.php#, Accessed on 07/04/2020. gave error 404# report on 07-02-2023.

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– To award prizes and distinctions and to give recognition to individual artists for outstanding achievement in the fields of music, dance, and drama. – To take suitable steps for the maintenance of proper and adequate standards of education in music, dance, and drama and with that object to organize research in the teaching of the said subjects. The role of the SNA is quite clear from the above constitution. By appointing itself as the highest decision-making as well as advisory body regarding patronage, perpetuation, preservation, presentation, and representation, the SNA legitimately transferred the power of deciding the future course of actions regarding form and practice into the hands of ‘experts.’ These ‘experts’ would always be in a higher position than the community, because of their qualification as civil servants or academics. The SNA-appointed committees of experts would conduct selections of ‘forms of music, dance, theatre including crafts associated with the performing arts and allied arts from all over the country would be given support with special attention to training in non-formal and personalized atmosphere in the tradition of Guru-Shishya Parampara.’35 As is specified on the website, the expert committee would be helped by the Gurus and institutions recognized by the SNA to choose their trainees, based on auditions and interviews. In my opinion this system of selection and evaluation-based patronage means an automatic shift of power and agency to the hands of the officials appointed by the SNA and creates a position of subordination for the already marginalized groups of performers, who are forced to depend on the meagre assistance from the SNA. They are therefore bound by its rules and power structures. In the context of power and new mechanisms of accumulation, David Harvey writes regarding ‘wholesale dispossessions’: Wholly new mechanisms of accumulation by dispossession have also opened up… The commodification of cultural forms, histories and intellectual creativity entails wholesale dispossessions—the music industry is notorious for the appropriation and exploitation of grassroots culture and creativity…… Capitalism internalizes cannibalistic as well as predatory and fraudulent practices. But it is, as Luxemburg cogently observed, ‘often hard to determine, within the tangle of violence and contests of power, the stern laws of the economic process.’ Accumulation by dispossession can occur in a variety of ways and there is much that is both contingent and haphazard about its modus operandi. Yet it is omnipresent in no matter what historical period and picks up strongly when crises of over accumulation occur in expanded reproduction, when there seems to be no other exit except devaluation. (Harvey 2001: 75–76)

The consolidation of a monolithic patronage system continued within the world of dance in the post-independence era and in the absence of significant alternatives in terms of support systems. Classical dances fared really well—by way of becoming the nation’s cultural signifiers. Individual classical dancers were easy to patronize and present as cultural ambassadors. The Indian state did a fair bit to project the aesthetic 35

https://sangeetnatak.gov.in/sna/training.php (accessed on 07-04-2020, and now unavailable, referred to in my previous writings) provided details of the training programmes and their requirements for traditional arts.

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imagery of unity in diversity through the presentation of a range of the lesser-known ‘tribal’ and ‘folk’ forms, alongside the classical dances and music. The overall control of the systems of perpetuation, presentation, and transmission of community dance forms, while luring them to move beyond their limited region, is one of the ways I see the regional forms being dispossessed and controlled. Controlling the larger market that the regional dance forms started knowing and hankering for and setting down regulatory standards for performative representation on the new platforms for every regional form of dance wanting any support from government agencies became conditions and tools of regulation and control. Thus, in the light of the above, in order to assess the extent of dispossession, the SNA and other patrons need to be seen as agencies that exert managerial as well as intellectual control that eventually leads to ‘entrepreneurial control’ (Harvey. 2001, 345–365). The dispossession is no longer only due to the acts of reform, museumization, and control of space, time, and contents of dance forms. A far more focused process of dispossession is in operation with private players establishing their stakes on cultural products, through systems of privatized education and institutions for performing and visual arts. Since it is now common practice to separate dance genres as saleable products, teaching them does not necessitate the involvement of the community practitioners. Decontextualized ‘folk’ dance forms can exist without the embodying presence of the ‘folk’ practitioner, to be bought and sold in a cultural marketplace.

3.16 Dance’s Ongoing Problem: Patriarchy-Driven Bias Against Seeing It as ‘Work’ At the end of this chapter, it is important to acknowledge one of the core problems with dance in India—the low self-esteem of the communities that engage in dance practice, pedagogy, and scholarship. The roots of the above problem lie in the patriarchally constituted and prejudice-driven history that is directed through gender constructs, socialized biases, and the remaining legacies of Brahminic judgemental discourses. The socio-cultural structure, even among urban Indians, remains deeply biased and judgemental against bodies in dance. The gendered biases are not aired as freely as before, but let us not get fooled by the façade. The moment there is a woman, or man, or a member of the third gender (in the conventional understanding in India) taking dance up as a profession, we automatically enter a judging mode and start thinking about how this proves that the person is not serious, or that the person is of loose morals (because of course in the value system that has evolved over years of patriarchal socialization, selling labour or intellect in a job that uses physical or intellectual effort is perceived as honourably different from selling one’s effort by dancing). The same value-judgement renders dance as not-as-good-as other professions. Classical dancers are used to the tremendous vulnerability, because they are used to being judged mostly on the basis of the appearance of their dancing bodies and not on their dance or their effort. These bodies, regardless of their class and caste

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affiliations, are judged on the basis of age/appearance-dependant aesthetic appeal, fixed as per the market values produced in the global market. Often dancing bodies are put in competition with those in the fashion or film industries. These value judgements continue to make dance a short-lived occupation in the proscenium-dependent city spaces. This commodification is also more/less severe, depending on the caste, class, and sexuality-related identities. The case of dances that are a part of community lives is even more complicated. What is the value of the effort and time that goes into dancing? At a time when every activity that uses time and space and effort is judged, what is the possibility for community practices to generate new ways values for existing forms? When all ‘free time’ or leisure is strictly accounted for in minutes and recesses between production or generation of value, who is allowed to have unregulated time for spending effort that will not generate value? Could it be said then, that through the value-free exchange and sharing, the process involved in moving and dancing in community spaces becomes a product itself, defying the idea of the fixity of values in the sharing of memory and embodied space and time? Or does this sound too utopic, even for a corporeal act like dancing? Foster says, Whereas commodification pressures all dance to conform to specific standards and types, gift economies are multiple, operating at various levels and in different registers of the social. Most conceptions of the gift identify three components of it—the actions of giving, accepting, and, reciprocating, although there is considerable debate, particularly round the nature and necessity of reciprocation. (Foster 2019: 53)

If we take Foster’s use of the term ‘gift’ in the context of dance—who is this gift for, in a space of sharing? The pooling in of the efforts of a group of people dancing together creates a surplus of course, but not in the real time logic of commodification. Such illogical and value-free surplus are vulnerable and therefore discarded and put aside by the communities as disposable and less essential in the survival process. Dance then becomes an added burden on time and effort—both of which are more important commodities in the everyday struggle to make a living. Foster’s observations on dance as a commodity is useful to understand the idea of dispossession I have already discussed, …. what makes it possible to sell a dance or the act of dancing for financial profit? What kinds of conditions facilitate transactions in which dance makes money? What do dances look and feel like when created, performed, or viewed in an effort to generate surplus value? (Foster 2019: 52)

To add to the above questions, I would like to look at Harvey’s observation on the role of “spatio-temporal fixes” to the inner contradictions of capital accumulation’ and commodification of ‘socially useful tasks’ where he says “If system-wide devaluations (and even destruction) of capital and of labour power are not to follow, then ways must be found to absorb these surpluses” (Harvey 2004: 63). Finally, the dispossession is three-fold: (1) through competitive hierarchies produced around the classical dance discourse—some dances are no longer dance enough, and there is a significant and often severe loss of audience; (2) by their performances being relegated to categories of ‘folk’ and ‘ritual’, community dance

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practitioners lose their status as artiste and become prisoners of the entrepreneurial control of the government and non-government mediators; and (3) while providing validation to the national culture and the frame of ‘unity in diversity’ the community often loses its artistic skill through a process of systematic accumulation by the patrons. For communities, dance itself appears as a surplus and a non-essential commodity since the hierarchization of dance in mainstream culture has set a devaluation process in motion. By hyper-aestheticizing dance as a commodity in the classical and Bollywood forms, a large-scale commodification of the body (and not the dance) has been made inevitable. If dance is not even counted as ‘socially useful tasks’ (Ibid. 2004: 63), then it is easier to fix value to the body rather than the dance itself, as its labour may be more easily commodified.

3.17 Yet Another Look at the World of Classical Dances Indian dance history has remained completely invested in the genre of classical dances, which are supported and patronized, learned, and exported as cultural history and practised much more than any other forms of physical activities. Scattered in all the chapters of this book are the references to the eight forms that are now supported by the Government of India as Classical dances from different regions. Anita Cherian draws our attention to Moulana Azad’s inaugural speech at the inauguration ceremony of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, where Azad promised preliminary moves made by the post-independence government to institutionalize the performing arts by creating an umbrella organization that would henceforth “undertake the … maintenance and the development of the arts”.36 While building on the aspirations of a strong nation-state with active and functional machinery to sustain itself on the idea of a grand narrative around cultural history and unity in diversity, such a project needed active interventions to produce a national cultural identity. It is not surprising that the Sangeet Natak Akademi had its hands full in activating and continuing these processes of interventions at multiple levels. As has been repeatedly argued in stories of canonization in dance, the process of classicization and decontextualization of dance forms embedded within regional cultures, involved: (1) active participation and movement (read migration) by the local communities of artists to urban centres where new teaching systems needed to be established for the classicized form to be given a proper aesthetic, grammatical, and performative structure as well as pedagogy; (2) new forms of assured patronage and processual continuity, whereby once introduced the system shall sustain itself. Thus started the process of classicization. Cherian (Cherian, 2009: 33–34) traces the mention of ‘culture’ in the First Five Year Plan, where “a central function of the educational system was also to ‘satisfy’ the nation’s ‘cultural needs,’ for it was through ‘the growth of the creative faculties’ and 36

Maulana Azad, ‘Speech at the Inauguration of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, 28 January, 1953’, in Sangeet Natak Akademi, December 1997, Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, p. 3.

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through the developing of a ‘spirit of critical appreciation of arts, literature and other creative activities’ that individuals with ‘integrated’ personalities would emerge37 . Rustom Bharucha wrote to further the same line of critique as Cherian (Cherian, 2009: 38). “I am compelled to ask whether we have any right to assume that the peoples in all regions and states of India share the same sense of ‘belonging’ to a larger cultural unity” (Bharucha, 1992: 1668). The answer, already much discussed in the critical writings generated by us in dance studies, remains unchanged. The cultural planners of the Indian nationhood did not actually create a vision of inclusivity, equality, and diversity. In the Editorial for Mandakranta Bose’s book Movement and Mimesis in Indian Dance, The Series Editor for Studies of Classical India, for this Vol.12 Prof. Bimal K. Matilal, wrote, [T]he term ‘Classical India’, covers a vast area both historically and geographically, and embraces various religions and philosophical traditions, such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, and many languages from Vedic and Epic Sanskrit to Pali, Prakrit, and Apabhramsa. We believe that in a profoundly traditional society like India, the study of classical culture is always relevant and important.38

There are assumptions of universal acceptance, accessibility across remote geographies, and understandings of language and aesthetics that remained uncontested for a long time, while reconstruction of cultural history in general and dance history in particular was activated as a part of the reforms, that shaped the first few classical dances, and their aesthetics into a rigid format, that would claim a classical past for the reformed and restructured new dance forms from then on.

3.18 Summing Up: Thinking of Calendars The festival calendars differ for tribal, folk, and classical dances. While classical dancers now look forward to the calendar of national and international festivals such as Khajuraho Festival, Konark Festival, and others where there may be performance opportunities, I am reminded of a different calendar. In a manner of introducing my relationship with the regional dances, I acknowledge that my understanding of different regions began with a research endeavour introduced to me by my supervisor, which led to my studying regional and community calendars and their definitions of calendrical years. During that study, I noticed that the traditional calendars of all regions reflect their deep links with the subsistence pattern of the group living there. The calendars thus reflect their economic activities—both in terms of periodized subsistence and related labour, as well as its acknowledgement in social/ 37

See 1st Five Year Plan, ‘Chap. 4: The Five Year Plan in Outline’, http://planning_commission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/1st/1planch4.html. Accessed on 22-042022 38 Bimal K. Matilal was the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions & Ethics, Oxford University, U.K.

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ritual activities. The calendars hint at the way labour mingles with nature because of farming/agricultural activities, according to the condition/requirements the natural world creates for human aesthetics. The calendars are thus records of a cultural text for the human experience of nature. Agrarian activities work as the contact between human power and natural forces outside human control, and thus the cultural/social calendars move to the rhythm of rainy seasons of sowing seeds and harvesting, seasons of fruits, vegetables and grain, and match them with the periods of leisure, relief, and small respites. These are marked in the calendars as the seasons for festivities, wedding seasons, holidays, or other recreational, religious, and socio/cultural activities like fairs and celebrations. Regional calendars have however lost their relevance, as a large number of communities have moved away, either permanently or temporarily, to urban spaces in search of alternate sources of livelihood, as such land-based earning has stopped being the mainstay of occupations for many. Hence, regional calendars exist as some memory or even some neglected document of timework-festivals, but they are no longer reliable tools for research. This acknowledgement is just to cite cultural anthropology as my basic tool for this research, and to highlight the different ways in which the tribal, the folk and the classical dances mark their times and for whom.

References Alone, Y.S. (2017). “Caste life narratives, visual representation, and protected ignorance”. Biography. Journal of University of Hawaii, 40(1), Winter. 140–169. Azad, M. (1997)‘Speech at the inauguration of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, 28 January, 1953’, In: Sangeet Natak Akademi, December 1997, Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, p. 3. Banerji, A. (2017). Nrityagram: Tradition and the aesthetics of transgression. In V. Roussel & A. Banerji (Eds.), How to do Politics with Arts (pp. 88–114). New York: Routledge. Banerji, A. (2019). Dancing Odissi—Paratopic performances of gender and State. Kolkata: Seagull Books. Bharucha, R. (1989). Notes on the invention of tradition. The Economic and Political Weekly, 24(33), 1907–1914. Bharucha, R. (1992). “Anatomy of official cultural discourse: A non-governmental perspective.” The Economic and Political Weekly, 27(31/32), August 1–8: 1667–1676. Bharucha, R. (2003). Rajasthan: An Oral History: Conversations with Komal Kothari. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Bose, M. (2001). Speaking of Dance: The Indian Critique. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld. Brandebo, M. F., Börjesson, M., & Hilmarsson, H. (2022). Longitudinal studies on cohesion in a military context—A systematic review. Military Psychology., 34(6), 732–741. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/08995605.2022.2041995 Buckland, T. (1983). Definitions of Folk dance: Some exploration. Folk Music Journal, 4(4), 315– 332. Chatterji, R. (2016). Scripting the Folk: History, Folklore, and the imagination of place in Bengal. Annual Review of Anthropology., 45, 377–94. Cherian, A. (2009). Institutional Maneuvers, nationalizing performance, delineating genre: Reading the Sangeet Natak Akademi reports 1953–1959. Third Frame: Literature, Culture and Society, 2(3), (pp. 32–60).

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Devi, R. (2013). “Bharata’s Natyashastra in Practice”, in: S. Kothari (ed.) Sangeet Natak, XLVIL. (1–4), 63–68. Devi, Mahasweta. (2007). “Fundamental human rights for the nautch girls of Purulia”. Durgabai Deshmukh Memorial Lecture. http://csdindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2007. pdf. Accessed on 14 March 2018. Fabian, J. (1990). Presence and representation: the other and anthropological writing. Critical Inquiry., 16, 753–772. Foster, S. L. (2019). Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion. New York: Oxford University Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison. New York: Random House. Ghosh, A, R. Sarkar, S. Manna. (2016). “The ‘Nachni’—Marginalised second sex: A few case studies selected from Purulia district, West Bengal”. In: I. Padhi (ed.), Gender Asymmetry in Contemporary India. Delhi: Manglam Publications. 250–260. Harvey, D. (2001). Spaces of capital: Towards a critical geography. New York: Routledge. Harvey, D. (2004). The ‘new’ imperialism: Accumulation by dispossession. Socialist Register. (Oxford University Press.), 40, 63–87. Joncheere, A. (2015). “Intangible inventions: The Kalbeliya Gypsy dance form, from its creation to UNESCO recognition.“ Archiv Orientalni, 83, 71–93. Joncheere, A. (2017). “Kalbeliya dance from Rajasthan: invented gypsy form or traditional snake charmers’ Folk dance?” Dance Research Journal, 49. (1), 37–54. Kaeppler, A. L. (1976). “Dance and the interpretation of Pacific traditional literature.“ In: A. L. Kaeppler & H. Arlo Nimmo (eds.) Directions in Pacific Traditional Literature: Essays in Honour of Katherine Luomala, 195–216. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press. Kealiinohomoku, J. (2001). “An anthropologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance.“ In: Ann Dils and Ann C. Albright, Ann (eds.), Moving History, Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, 33–43. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press. Lepecki, A. (2006). Exhausting dance: Performance and the politics of movement. New York and London: Routledge. Longkumar, A. (2013). “Who sings for the Hornbill?: the performance and politics of culture in Nagaland, Northeast India”. The South Asianist, 2(2), 87–96. Mansbridge, J. (2003). “Rethinking Representation.“ The American Political Science Review, 97(4), 515–528. Nahachewsky, A. (1995). “Participatory and presentational dance as ethnochoreological categories”. Dance Research Journal, 27(1), 1–15. Naregal, V. (2008). “Marginality, regional forms and stage patronage.“ Seminar 589, 33–39. Panikkar, K.N. (1979). “Ecstasy of the Folk dance—The mystical rhythms of the village community.“ MARG: In Praise of Kerala Heritage. 81–84. Rajamannar, P.V. (2013). “Inaugural speech.“ In: S. Kothari (ed.) Sangeet Natak, XLVIL(1–4). Ram, K. (2000). “Listening to the call of dance: Re-thinking authenticity and essentialism”. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 11(2), 358–364. Ram, K. (2008). “Perspectives from apprentices of skill practices: Performing arts and scholarship”. Elephant House Project @ Macquarie University: https://www.criticalpath.org.au/cms/pdf/ 2008_EHP%20apprentice%20based%20perspectives%20on%20knowledge%20by%20Dr% 20Kalpana%20Ram.pdf. Accessed on 22/02/2021. Said, E. W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Random House. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2008). “Boundaries and beyond: Problems of nomenclature in Indian dance history”. In: U. Sarkar Munsi (ed.), Dance: Transcending Borders (pp. 78–98). Delhi: Tulika Books. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2009). “Another time, another space: Does the dance remain the same”. In: P. Chakravorty & N. Gupta (eds.). Dance Matters (pp. 26–39). Delhi: Routledge. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2012). “The changing stage: Chhau as an intangible cultural heritage.“ The International Journal of Arts, Culture and Heritage, 1, 161–178.

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Sarkar Munsi, U. (2017). “Performing sites/sights: Framing the women dancers.“ In: U. Sarkar Munsi & A. Chakraborty (eds.) Moving SPace: Women in Dance. 105–122. New Delhi: Primus Books. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2022). “Complexities of the ‘folk’/classical binary: Dance and hierarchies in contemporary India”. Published as Pashupati Mahato Memorial Lecture—2020. Medinipur: Vidyasagar University Publication Division (for Centre for Adivasi Studies and Museum). Sarkar Munsi, U. (expected in 2024). “Dance as community knowledge: Traditional epistemology vs appropriative constructions of the “Folk”. In: A. Manerji & P. Purakayastha Banerji (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Indian Dance. New York: Oxford University Press. Schneider, R. (2012). “Performance remains again” In: N. Kaye, M. Shanks & G. Giannachi (eds.), Archaeologies of Presence. (pp. 69–70). New York & London: Routledge. Shah, P. (2002). “State Patronage in India: Appropriation of the “Regional” and “National”. The Dance Chronicle, 25(1), 125–141. Shastri, V. (2003). “Literature and Other Sources in Indian Classical Dances”, in S. Kothari ed. Sangeet Natak, XLVIL(1–4), 94–104. Soneji, D. (2012). Unfinished gestures—Devadasis, memory, and modernity in South India. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Srinivasan, A. (1985). “Reform and revival: The Devadasi and her dance.“ Economic and Political Weekly, November 2: 1869–1876. Vatsyayan, K. (1974). Indian classical dance. Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Vatsyayan, K. (1995). “The future of dance scholarship in India.“ Dance Chronicle, 18(3), 485–490. Vatsyayan, K. (2009). First Kamala Devi Memorial Lecture: Education through the Arts: Values and Skills. Delhi: CCRT. Visvanathan, S. (2006). Verrier Elwin Lecture delivered on 14th November, 2006. (https://indiatoge ther.org/verrier-society. Accessed on 22/01/2023) Xaxa, A., Xaxa, F & Devy, G.N. (2021). Rethinking India, Being Tribal: Existence, Entitlements, Exclusion. Delhi: Penguin Random House. Zarrilli, P. (2000). When the body becomes all eyes. New York, London: Oxford University Press. Zarrilli, P. (2012). “‘... presence ...’ as a question and emergent possibility.“ In N. Kaye, M. Shanks & G. Giannachi (eds.), Archaeologies of Presence. (pp. 119–152). New York & London: Routledge.

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Chapter 4

Patriarchy and the [In]visible Line of Control: Power Structures and Space Making

Anagha Tambe projects an urgent need to Unpack the process of making of folk arts in India on the site of lavani, an erotic dance practice from Maharashtra, customarily performed as hereditary cultural labour by Dalit and lower caste women, placed outside the framework of marriage” (Tambe, “Folk dance/vulgar dance: erotic lavani and the hereditary performance labour, 2022).

Ananya Chatterjea expresses her concerns as a contemporary choreographer, with the words “I realized that in order to show even a small segment of my contemporary choreography, I needed to first establish myself as a “traditional” dancer that would locate me culturally and aesthetically” (Chatterjea, Heat and Alterity in Contemporary Dance: South-South Choreographies, 2020: X).

In my recent commentary, I have yet again reiterated my opinion from a feminist space “Dancers have always been stopped from dancing. The conservative patriarchal rhetoric has stopped women from dancing in the past in a variety of ways. Families have asserted their norms and values to stop male as well female children from dancing for different genderspecific reasons. Colonizers have stopped colonized from dancing, Upper castes reforms have stopped the ones who were designated as lower in caste and class status from dancing. Patriarchal society has been known to forcibly stigmatize any person who danced for a living.” (in Srinivasan, Chakravorty and Sarkar Munsi, “Crossroads”, 2022: 21)

This chapter draws from my previous work1 on dance and marginalities, through the multiple entry points of gender. It begins with the observation that in spite of all the above problems in the world of dance, people continue to dance. I start therefore, by paying a tribute to women dancers from different regions of India and around the 1

“Tale of the Woman Dancer. Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers Searching for Their Identity” (2010); “A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India” (2014); “A corporeal reading of Nachni: Performative presence versus social absence” (2016);

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_4

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world, who have refused to stop, and in fact have fought their way to make and hold a space for us. In continuation to the previous chapters, the references in this chapter weave together history, archival records and ethnographic/anthropological methodologies, in an attempt to understand the intrinsic patriarchal structures and their hierarchizing principles through which the woman dancer’s labour is socially controlled. The focus remains on dispossessions, labour, and privileges within the regulatory categories of caste, class, and gender, while specifically analysing patriarchal family regulations and an overall masculine understanding/assertion of nationhood and rights. Finally, it looks at the economic control over saleable aesthetics and popular entrepreneurism around dance and dancers, placed in differently identifiable locations of power/social categorization/faith, and most importantly, labour. In this contested space that is limited by visibility, patronage and acceptance, patriarchy stays in control of the physical as well as metaphorical discourses around personal and community labour. This chapter highlights the need to foreground multiple dispossessions around women dancers, their labour and contribution, complicating and cautioning against efforts to generalize the concerns through their regional, caste, gender and class, family and individual histories. I bring in my own writings since 19982 as a reference to this often-repeated historical context, but will attempt to focus on the dance ecology that the woman dancer accommodates, encourages, tolerates, exploits, and perpetuates.

4.1 Women Dancers in a Patriarchal Dance Ecology It is important to place the woman dancer of the contemporary geopolitical entity named India as a disciplined/disciplinable aspirant, survivor, inimitable agent, and entrepreneur within the socio-economic landscape of this country. Inevitably, any dance-related discourse on India is conscious of the presence and involvement of a large number of women citizens in it. Much of Indian dance history is about gendering and about roles assigned/reassigned, usurped, and redesigned within the power structure of the patronage, as well as the community of practitioners. The current ecology of critical dance studies in/on India is in trouble due to the past it has to accommodate in its present. Its troubled existence is complicated by its aspirations to be in a reciprocal relationship with many other, more ‘serious’ disciplines within the humanities, such as history, philosophy, anthropology, ethnography, among others. One thing that generates hope is that there has been a systematic resistance against the stereotypical space that dance has been allocated as high art in the post-independence times, within the largely patriarchal narrative of the national culture. This rebellion also has created the need for a new format to study dance as a part of the human social/cultural register. The past trends of producing innumerable coffee-table publications filled with photos and write-ups on neoclassical (Vatsysyan, 1985) and folk dances and their practitioners are also under severe critical scanners. In this evolving discourse, dance has 2

Please see the essays by Sarkar Munsi (1998, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018).

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managed to survive in individual and community bodies, in smaller regional pockets as well as in the national cultural space. ‘Indian’ dance has made its way into the international diaspora presences as identity markers, popular entertainments and the exotic museumized ‘other’—that shares time with Euro-American contemporary dance—but unfortunately never demanding or being allowed the same discursive space. Multiple concerns emerge from such a contestation. In this chapter we take up the issues of patriarchy and gender in the dance space—with two principal methodological concerns around identity and agency. In my opinion, while looking at these two concerns historically, the contemporary understanding of both must be shaped by Walter Benjamin’s words: ‘In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power.’ (Benjamin, 1969: 01). The changing ecology of dance in the current times is to be read within scope of feminist anthropology and dance studies, to acknowledge voices and vulnerabilities that need to be looked at through the ideas of lack of occupational and social justice in dance embedded within the socio-cultural fabric of the specific regional everyday lives controlled by local patronage and power. Inevitably, the focus and visibility in neoclassical dances is on women performers. They have replaced traditional male master teachers who held power by controlling the pedagogical knowledge in the past. I hope to ground my argument in and around the word patriarchy and the intrinsic rules of gender-based decision-making power that privileges the male patron and the patriarchal family’s regulations through an overall masculine understanding/assertion of nationhood, and rights over space and time. It will be important to look at the control over saleable aesthetics and popular entrepreneurism around dance and dancers, that is let loose on/through the dancing bodies of women, in the way that it plays out on women in differently identifiable locations of power/social categorization/faith and most importantly labour. In such a contested space limited by controlled visibility, patronage, and acceptance, patriarchy remain in control of the physical as well as metaphorical discourses around gender and gendering, as well as personal and community labour. This chapter highlights the need to foreground multiple dispossessions around women dancers, their labour and contribution, complicating and cautioning against efforts to generalize the concerns without understanding their regional, caste, gender and class, family and individual histories. The chapter meanders in and out of intersectional arguments, like the earlier ones, trying to place gender at its centre, but failing to create an exclusive space for the gender discourse, in isolation from other intersectional marginalities.

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4.2 A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India3 Dance writing in India has largely centred on or drawn from the issues of social reforms and the Anti-Nautch movement, both initiated in the late nineteenth century. After more than hundred years since the beginning of the reform process, the world of classical dance and most of the writings on it, exhibit an intrinsic uneasiness in dealing with dance as a pleasurable activity or a profession. It is still necessary to reaffirm the sanctity of dance and its dancers (most of whom are women), by drawing visibly and heavily on its ‘high caste’ associations and a reconstructed past to legitimize the dancer’s position as a respectable one in contemporary society. A tremendous amount of resistance is evident even today against women who take up dancing as their career, making it difficult for girls to consider dance as a viable career. The public discourse around dance developed from within the folds of, and as a part of the nationalistic discourse, aligning with all the value systems, normative understandings, and requirements of an Indian society and culture in the process. Dance ethics and dancers, and most importantly, the grammar of dance also had to fit into this mould envisaged by the nationalistic vision. This vision shaped the ‘ideal’ dance, the ‘ideal’ dancing body, the ‘ideal’ dance narrative and the ‘ideal’ dancer—all of which were reiterated by funding bodies, government patronage, writings on dance and many other external factors, such that, in time, this vision became everyone’s idea of the ‘truth’. This was predominantly a Hindu, upper class, patriarchal vision, projected onto a national image of culture, tradition and heritage. The dance community also actively contributed to this image, and struggled tirelessly to reaffirm dance pedagogy into the ‘neoclassical dance’ (Vatsyayan, 1974)4 forms and embrace this as the basis of the process of teaching, in continuation with the Guru Shishya Parampara.5 This process of history-making started with the whole agenda of reform— the sacred task of saving the ‘Devadasis’6 or the women from hereditary dancing communities, devoted to the performing art tradition as part of temple services, as if they 3

This section is an updated version of “A Century of Negotiations: The Changing Sphere of the Woman Dancer in India” (2014: 295–314)). I owe my gratitude to the Editor Subrata Bagchi of a very important book Beyond the Private World: Indian Women in the Public Sphere, published by Primus Books, Delhi. The essay was the chapter 13 of the book. 4 Noted scholar Kapila Vatsyayan refers to the restructured classical dances as the ‘Neo-Classical’ dances, as they were constructed from different sources, and had no single un-interrupted history as other Western classical arts. See Kapila Vatsyayan, Indian Classical Dances, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, Delhi, 1974. 5 The guild-like system of teaching dance, which continues till date, has been highlighted in many contexts by authors. The system is based upon a systematized learning process, an apprenticeship, where the student devotes their attention in entirety to the master-teacher, unquestioningly submitting to the teaching process, till they are pronounced to be an artist on their own right. 6 In recent years there have been an ongoing effort by scholars, activists and members of communities known for their contribution to the temple services, for replacing the term “Devadasis” with “Women dancers from hereditary families”. The term “hereditary” becomes problematic as well

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needed to be saved from themselves. It still remains the popular narrative among the upper caste, socialized by the perpetuated “protected ignorance.” (Alone, 2017)7 Saving the society from the evil influences of such performance practices spread by these ‘public’ women was upon the very brahmin saviours who perpetuated such generational exploitative caste-based practices. Lakshmi Subramanian writes, The Anti-Nautch Campaign drew considerable support from a wide spectrum of opinion; for some it was only a campaign against obscene social practice that offended the moral sensibilities of the educated elite, for others it became part of the larger emancipatory discourse for women, reinforcing the judicial initiative in Madras that was being organized around re-conceptualisation of temple dancing girls in terms of patriarchal Hindu norms and the construction of a Hindu community around marriage. In fact, reformers extensively publicized marriage as a strategy to bring Devadasis into the mainstream. C. Sankaran Nair in his presidential address to the National Social Conference in 1908, mentioned quite enthusiastically that efforts were being made to reclaim dancing girls and that a number of marriages had taken place.8

From the time that dance reforms were activated to the present, Indian dance has come a long way, especially in the last one-hundred years. From temple-dancers to professional women dancers to Bollywood heroines and by-products like item girls, bar dancers and the popular local/regional professional women dancers like the Kalbeliya dancers of Rajasthan or the Nachni women of Bengal, the story of the resistance to exploitation, disenfranchisement and claims of agency grows every day. Surviving, succeeding and earning a livelihood in dance is a story of survival, pain and struggle—of subjugation and subversion repeated across various social strata, location and time, and a conscious resistance against being slotted as decapitated and disenfranchised artists. The dancers’ labour is often slotted and marked very differently, even by warriors who have taken on the representation of dance and dancers. They often do not know how to acknowledge the kind of hidden labour that dancers learn to cover up with different deflective techniques of concealing breath irregularities, tiredness, fatigue, mental and physical discomfort and even pain, as they work/dance in any space or time through their consistent practice. Hence, what does not appear laborious and debilitating, from the celebrated beautiful image of the traditional representative of classical dance to the extreme exaggeration of femininity—portrayed in the Bollywood item numbers and the much-maligned bar dancers who are often put in the same category of sex workers—women in the Indian dance scenario exist together in time and space. However, that is all that they share. The category is not an all-encompassing one, but is instead made up of disparate positions in the public sphere. These professional women performers have all been earning a living, and at the same time, have also been negotiating identities

and is unacceptable for some of the practitioners who resent the double dispossession that is implied by removing the specific historical reference that term “Devadasi” allows them to claim. 7 Y.S. Alone (2017). 8 See Lakshmi Subramanian’s, “From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India” (2000: 129), where the author looks at the history from a socio legal perspective.

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in the public sphere where their presence is always a matter of uneasy speculation— walking on a fine line between being an acceptable representative of culture and tradition to the ‘public,’ and ‘available’ woman of disrepute. In a sphere where, even today, a woman is made to feel that she can only be powerful if she is beautiful, the negotiation of public and private remains an individual struggle as well as a gendered discourse involving the whole community of female dancers, whether or not they see themselves as a united whole. The mythicized history of Indian dance remains a burden that all women dancers continue to carry till today. The uneasiness of their existence becomes evident in all the recent endeavours of choice of patronage, classicization process and writing/ rewriting history, where the state power and the resulting national agenda remains to project dance as ‘high art,’ and the dancers as part of the images and agencies of a responsible representation of history, tradition, identity, transition, dignity, modernity, and respectability. Perhaps, in no other profession does a person have to take upon oneself so much burden. Foucault’s answer to the question “Is there a fantasy body corresponding to different types of institution?” (Power/Knowledge, 1980: 55) was, “I believe the great fantasy is the idea of a social body constituted by the universality of wills. Now the phenomenon of the social body is the effect not of a consensus but of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals.” (Ibid). It is also immensely important to link the above statement to his analysis of power: “[P]ower would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress, if it worked only through the mode of censorship, exclusion, blockage and repression, in the manner of a great Superego, exercising itself only in a negative way. If, on the contrary, power is strong this is because, as we are beginning to realise, it produces effects at the level of desire - and also at the level of knowledge. Far from preventing knowledge, power produces it. If it has been possible to constitute a knowledge of the body, this has been by way of an ensemble of military and educational disciplines. It was on the basis of power over the body that a physiological, organic knowledge of it became possible (1980: 59).

Many changes in the dance world register themselves while writing this chapter. One constantly hears that classical dances are a part of our history, and therefore learning any of the classical forms, entails deep responsibility towards the antiquity and the form itself, which must be respectfully preserved. And yet a memory of learning Kathak at the USICC, Kolkata, continues to remain confusing, where I see a wiping out of the past clearly as a part of systemically rewriting history. I was taught Kathak at USICC, Kolkata for several years by Guru Rajen Bose, along with all students, from the early 1970s till 1978. It had become a compulsory class, and we had a solid training. I never performed this form on stage, but learned it with rigour and passion. Our class began with two forms of salutation: the Salami and the Anjali. Almost every dancer of the time learning in different institutions in India will remember this as a fact. But the Salami is a thing of the past, today the dancers do not even have permission to refer to the Islamic contributions to the dancing body, let alone dance it. This narrative helps us understand the sense of self-surveillance that has become part of the world of dance, such that women dancers now divide themselves into different classes, which implies cultural capitals of the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ kind. Let

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us try and understand this ongoing effort to cleanse dance history by wiping out the contribution of women dancers. A recently consolidated effort to wipe out the history of Mughals from Indian history has further repercussions that are not yet fully fathomable to the dance community. The matter of concern lies in the fact that there is an already existing effort to wipe out the female contribution (by identifying them as Ganika, courtesans, and other professional dancers) to the development of Kathak as a form, that exists as one of the most prominent classical dances. Books and websites claiming Brahminic origins to Kathak are put forth, with statements claiming to remove the pollutant women dancers from its history. Similar histories of overwriting cultural knowledge are often discussed in Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Mohiniattam, and other dances. One other instance of such overwriting in one of the regions9 on Indian dance history records the year 1927, as the year which saw the Council of Delhi discussing the motion of a member from Madras for the prevention of the dedication of girls as Devadasis. The same year, in the month of November, a unanimous resolution recommending that the Madras Government prepare a preventive legislation to stop the dedication of Devadasis was passed by the Madras Legislative Council. In 1930, S. Muthulakshmi Reddy, belonging to a family of hereditary dancers herself, and a social leader and doctor by profession, brought a ‘bill’ in the Madras Legislative Council asking for the prohibition of the ceremony for the dedication of Devadasis in any Hindu temple. Arudra writes about the annual conference of the Madras Music Academy, where on its sixth day, on 28 December 1932, ‘the fate and future of dance’ was discussed. He mentions that after a long debate between ‘self-appointed social reformers’ and ‘pro-art protagonists’ like E. Krishna Iyer, the Academy drew up a resolution which was passed unanimously, The final text of the resolution that, in my opinion, assumed the role of an ‘engineer’, and reads, in part, as follows: 1. Bharatanatyam as a great and an ancient art being unexceptionable, this conference views with concern, its rapid decline and appeals to the public and art associations to give it the necessary encouragement; 2. The conference requests the Music Academy, to take steps to disseminate correct ideas regarding the art and to help the public to a proper appreciation thereof; 3. This conference is of the opinion that it is desirable that, to start with, women’s organisations do take immediate steps to give proper training in the art, by instituting a course of instruction for the same; and 4. This conference is of the opinion that, in order to make dancing respectable, it is necessary to encourage public performances thereof before respectable gatherings.10

9

Several scholars have critically analysed different aspects of the reforms that affected and initiated the birth of Bharatnatyam, the first of the eight presently enlisted classical dances of India. See Lakshmi. Subramanian, Ibid; Avanthi Meduri, Nation, Woman, Representation: The Sutured History of the Devadasi and Her Dance, New York University, [Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation], New York, 1996; Matthew Allen Harp, (1997); Davesh Soneji (2012), Priya Srinivasan (2011); Pallabi Chakravorty (2008); Anurima Banerji; Anusha Kedar; Uma Chakravarti; Amanda Weidman, Amrit Srinivasan, Yashoda Thakore. 10 Arudra, ‘The Transfiguration of a Traditional Dance’, Music Academy Newsletter, E. Krishna Iyer Centenary Issue, pp. 1–14.

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The raging debate of the time, around the social construct around the life, work and art of the Devadasi and the reconstructed history of Bharatanatyam, has been welldocumented by Soneji and many others. Soneji provides details, including newspaper articles, letters sent to the authority (2012: 227–234) from Muthulakshmi Reddy’s collections. The documents published in Annexure I of his book refer to arguments made and registered by the people opposing and supporting the ban on Devadasi women, making it a relevant historical moment where indirect modes of socialization through power, as mentioned by Foucault, was being registered as a live moment in history. While one side argued that the traditional rights of the devadasi women were being curtailed and brutally stopped without asking their consent, the other side seemed to have already constructed a narrative of the danger posed to the civil society by the immoral women (2012: 227–234). This debate is being revisited at a time when decolonization has become a buzzword in the current world of dance in and from India once again, as patrons and members of the dance community (especially those from the higher castes) find ways to assert an aesthetic and bodily purity in the form of dance that has emerged through the reforms forced on the society. They use that history to claim the rights to perform and teach the changed repertoire appropriated from traditional women performers, while distancing themselves from all references to pollution—including the lived stories of the hereditary women dancers on whose created platforms the movements of Bharatanatyam reinvented itself. Here the upper-caste women’s appropriation of the history of women from disadvantaged and disenfranchised castes posed a dilemma within feminist studies, asking us to strengthen our methodology by opening it to intersectional analysis, whereby we acknowledge power as patriarchal and oppressive, but also as persuasive, through perpetuating mytho-histories for it to work as a method of control. This power must be recognized as the working principle of the reformers first, and the nationalists later, strongly influencing the nature of narratives around dance, dancers and the history of dance. In the process, from the very beginning of its reaffirmed presence in post-independence India, dance writing carried a strong reference to religious sanctity and Brahmanical texts. This is not a thing of the past. It is again in operation now, on the basis of a power assertion to wipe out the history of aesthetic and cultural contribution by the Islamic culture, in the framing and creation of the dance tradition of Kathak.

4.3 Performance and the Public: Pushing the Reading of Intersectionality The notion of purity and impurity in Indian dance reforms, and the initial resistance to the way it was being presented for private patrons (apart from the gods, for whom it was initially meant), was largely connected with the patron–client relationship, i.e., with the audience or who was viewing it. A dancer performing in the inner sanctum sanctorum of a temple for a god was of course dancing for ‘the one who

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sees all’, and would not affect patronage on a day-to-day basis. That invisible and silent patron did not exercise the power to make or break a woman’s career. He did not immediately express his dislike for her expertise, or the lack of it, at least not vocally or verbally. The presentation was also not geared to be directed towards anyone sitting immediately in front, or in close vicinity. The dancer was engaging with the audience, albeit an invisible and omnipresent one. The change in the nature of the patronage, which culminated in private patronage, led to a closely situated audience, and the extended public nature of the dancer’s availability to such an audience—moving, many a times beyond the dance, to sexual encounters. The change that the actual presence of patrons brought was seen in addition to the connections established through holding the patron’s gaze, as his liking or disliking the dance or the dancer could actually translate into a complete change in the dancer’s fortune— either choosing one dancer over the other/s or rejecting and replacing a previous favourite for a fresher, younger, or more competent one. Barring the women dancers from dancing in courts and temples was a way to stop such encounters. The rescuing of dance, for the reformers, ideally meant moving it to a secular place—a proscenium, with a strong and obvious reference to the acceptable and auto-imposed aesthetic and caste/class references powerfully put on display, where, the audience was expected to become differently inclined while seeing the bodies and their owners in different lights by the very nature of the space (Figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6). Fig. 4.1 Jyotsna Debi during her Nachni Performance in Purulia, 2015 © Author

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Fig. 4.2 Srabasti Ghosh during a presentation of her own Choreography in Delhi, 2018 © Samim Asgor Ali

Fig. 4.3 Meghna Bhardwaj in a contemporary dance Presentation in Delhi, 2018 © Samim Asgor Ali

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Fig. 4.4 Amritha Sruthi during her presentation in classical style of Bharatanatyam, Delhi, 2018

The fate of the Devadasis and the Nautch girls, and their dance, became a matter of public discourse, wherein it was subjected to fierce debates, in which the practitioners of the tradition had no right or agency to participate. Hence, their fate, along with that of their profession, rested in the hands of the so-called members of the elite society, who by birth had the caste and class entitlement to be the decision-makers and upholders of culture and tradition. In this discourse, removing dance from its temple context was not, at any point of time, a conscious religious agenda. Partha Chatterjee writes: ‘In fact, the notion of ‘Hindu-ness’ in this conception cannot be, and does not need to be, defined by any religious criteria at all. There are no specific beliefs or practices that characterize this ‘Hindu’, and the many doctrinal and sectarian differences among Hindus are irrelevant in its concept.’11 From the colonial to the nationalist discourse, the transfer of power and responsibility for policy-making did not mean anything different for the Devadasis, as she

11

Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse, Zed Books, London, 1986, p. 110.

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Fig. 4.5 Kristina Dolinina during a Kathak dance presentation in Delhi, 2018 © Samim Asgor Ali

Fig. 4.6 Gauri Jadhav, Shakuntalabai Nagarkar and Pushpa Satarkar at Khuli Khidki (Delhi) in 2023, during their Lavani lecture-performance, © Author

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remained the ‘polluted one’ in both the discourses. In the first, she was the pollutant, and in the second, she became the one to be rescued and divested of her tools of entertainment. In both these phases, the decision-making remained firmly in the hands of those in power: either male, or belonging to the higher caste or class. The Nehruvian vision invested tremendous power in the hands of the nationalists in the later stage, which led to the laying out of a path for all women dancers. They set down strictures to govern not only how she should be performing, but also how she should be viewed. Partha Chatterjee in his ‘Introduction’ to the Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Nation-State writes: For a large section of the nationalist leadership, the project of modernity was not to respond to the demands of actually existing social institutions but rather to transform them; indeed, the project was to create a civil society that did not exist in traditional social practices. Here the ‘pure’ model of civil society as it had been depicted in the great texts of the western canon were, and still are, invoked to energize and shape the changing forms of social institutions. One would completely miss the intellectual grounding and persuasive power of what is often called the Nehruvian project if one did not appreciate the nationalist idea of modernity as a mission that is, as it were, forever waiting to be completed... Contrary to the claims of the nationalists, the cultural identity of a nation is neither immemorial nor naturally given. It has to be fabricated, most deliberately so under the auspices of the nation-state.12

The proscenium brought its own discourses, and also the complexities of a new audience, mostly made up of people from the urban areas of the country. This new audience consisted of people entrusted with the work of rescuing the society from all that was polluted, and also the art enthusiasts whose enthusiasm was invested in the new cultural model of India. Many of these people continue to hold the notion of a pilgrimage to tradition, and at the same time, a number of largely uninitiated contemporary viewers and dance students frequent the performances, whose knowledge of the dance and the performers do not stem from any previous historically shaped enculturation. This changing, new, urban audience now consists of many who are confused and angered by the frequent caste-specific references to the ‘inglorious’ past of dance and dancers, as they continue to be schooled by popular mythic/mystic explanations, which trace a sacred history of the dances in India leading to Shiva as the Lord of Dance. The requirements of the city audience, in terms of the length of the performance, aesthetic expectations, music, etc., also determines the selection and choreography that the dancers choose, and what the organizers look for when they plan a performance. While at times, it has been lamented that the absence of the ‘educated audience’ makes it difficult for the dancer to interact or feel in sync with the viewers, performers seek out new patronage at home and abroad to expand their horizons and opportunities. The audience for popular or folk performances has also become highly diverse. The traditional audience frequents ritual social performances in rural areas, largely because it is a part of the yearly cycle of festivities. Visibility is restricted and limited 12

Partha, Chatterjee, ed. Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 10–18.

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in the urban spaces, because of the aesthetic hierarchy established to control unruly, unaesthetic dancing bodies that have been deemed to be deleted from national cultural montage, because of the function (ritual, erotic, enticing, commercial) allotted to them by the definitions placed by the powers controlling the cultural constructs.

4.4 Two Cases from the Other End of the Social Spectrum: Nachni and Lavani This section intends to create a copresence of two differentially hierarchized forms, Nachni (Fig. 4.1) and Lavani (Fig. 4.6) from eastern and western India, on the same spectrum of reading within this chapter. While the section on the Nachni women, written and published initially in 2016 was updated through post-covid fieldwork in 2021 and 2022, the section on the Lavani dance is a more recent research framed by the works of Sharmila Rege, Samina Dalwai, Anagha Tambe (2022a, 2022b) and my own research. Nachni (literally meaning the female dancer) are women from the Chota Nagpur plateau in India. They are popularly known in parts of Bengal, Bihar, and Jharkhand as marginal professional performers who earn their living through a performing partnership with their male partner, known as Rasik, (usually accepted as a connoisseur of poetry, dance, and music), while remaining in a fragile yet domestic quasiconjugal alliance with him. The word Rasik comes from Rasa. In the context of the Nachni performance, this term implies an unequal and exploitative partnership. The region’s history mentions several famous poets and singers, who were well known as Rasiks of specific Nachni women. Most of these men trained Nachni women to dance and sing, and also accompanied them in performances, as connoisseurs of the arts with specialized skills in singing, playing musical instruments, as well as dancing. Currently, many of the Rasiks do not accompany the Nachnis in their performances. In fact, they act as the managers and agents for the Nachni, claiming the rights to control the payments received by them, and handling their performance and travel plans. Authors like Chatterji (2009), Sarkar Munsi (1998), Chatterjea (2009), and Chakravarti (2001) have looked at the Nachni as a much maligned and exploited woman performer, whose validation comes from being a paramour as well as a performing partner to her Rasik. The known Nachni women from Purulia and Singhbhum, who are the focus of this research, have a range of personal stories to narrate about how they became professional dancing women. They also speak about being severely socially ostracized in the process and being labelled as fallen women of questionable virtues. One of the common threads in their stories is about running away from the parental or conjugal home to live with male performers, who then took charge of training them as professional performers. The social implications of this have been talked about in popular journalistic stories, as well as a few scholarly writings. It is by now well known that the family of a Nachni is expected to

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perform their last rites, going through the ritual processes—taking her as dead. The societal pressure and stigma force many of the families to act in a similar manner even today, even though there have been marginal improvements in the overall structure of women’s positions in the region. Hence, in most cases, as the doors for any possible return to the family of origin closes permanently, the woman becomes more vulnerable to exploitations of social, sexual, and performative structures. For her, the only way is to move on, as a Nachni—a professional woman performer. She acquires a new status as performer-partner-quasi wife through a ceremony, in which she is formally accepted by the Rasik as his Nachni. The partnership has several social implications. The Nachni is known by her relationship with her Rasik—but it is neither a fully accepted performing partnership— providing her agency and social space, and nor is it a marriage through which she gets the security of a social network, such as family. She curiously remains a bread-earner and a paramour, while being prohibited from sharing socially accepted conjugal spaces, like the kitchen, ritual occasions within the family, or the actual shared domestic spaces that become the wife’s space within families. The marginal existence of Nachni, the denial of her rights to call her partnership a ‘conjugal’ one, the denial of inheritance rights to her children, and even the negation of her entitlement to cremation or burial, are just some landmarks through which we understand her precarious existence. This structured and socially accepted ‘tradition’ necessitates research on her status, as a representative of the exploited, marginalized, and socially maligned women practitioners, in the performance tradition of India. Since the early 1990s, my principle research questions have centred around the epistemological, performative, and social aspects of the Nachni performance— working within a larger rubric of feminist studies on dance. Epistemologically, it relies on the existing and accepted normative positions that society designates for the Nachni performers, while trying to understand the ways in which they understand their own position of/as precarity. From a socio-political perspective, the argument here looks at the same precarity of the Nachni, while trying to define the concept of ‘social absence’ through the invisibility that the society assigns to her. It will simultaneously acknowledge the role that their skills and projection through their performances play, in providing them with a sense of power, and of controlling the gaze of those very members of the society who otherwise refuse to change their opinion about the women whose liveness and rights they undermine as members of society. This is where it becomes imperative to analyse the two oppositional and yet inter-dependent spaces off and onstage, where the society cannot guarantee her legitimate and rightful space and presence within its fold, even while acknowledging the woman dancer’s existence on the proscenium. While dealing with these questions, this research has pushed me constantly to go back to the Nachni women over the last thirty years, to probe ways of uncovering the gendered implications of a woman’s body, specifically in performative practices that are freely visible in public spaces. It also analyses the differential readings that such performing bodies of women encounter, vis a vis disciplined and controlled female bodies, in private domestic spaces kept away from everyday visibility. This section is thus largely based on a previously published essay and tries to establish a sense of agency and

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power within this overarching and overwhelmingly exploitative narrative around the woman performer. It argues for reading a strong sense of subversion and agency in the pleasure and control that the woman dancer creates, and holds on to, through the tools from within her performance, as she holds the gaze of a male audience and compels them to look at the body that they refuse to acknowledge as part of their social cohabitant. “I Exist in the Feet of the Guru”: Seeking approval for being present Shuno shuno shabha jon, shabha majhe kori nibedano hey. Shukhen Babur nimontrone, hoey anondito mone, amra ekhane korechhi agomon. Ek dikey ma bohin, ek dikey bhai jon, bal o briddho aaro shishu gon o hey. Shuno shuno dia mon. Dui haath jor kori, aar doshes choron dhori, bhul truti koribe marjon hey. Bidya buddhi kichhui nai, ache gurur kripa tai, Rajobala guru podey praano hey. [Translation: Listen all the people in the audience, as I humbly start my song as an offering. We are extremely happy to be invited to perform here by Sukhen Babu. While mothers and sisters are seated on one side, the brothers occupy the other side. There are also the elderly and the children present. Please listen to my songs attentively. I put my hands together and also touch the feet of the guests, to request you to please pardon me for any mistake I make here. I am uneducated, and am not intelligent. I only have the blessings of my Guru. I submit my life to the feet of my Guru.] (My translation). The Jhumur songs that are specifically associated with the Nachni performance are known as Nachni Shaliya Jhumur, or Bai Nacher Jhumur in Purulia. Some of those songs create an introductory space for the Nachni to introduce herself, giving her the freedom to put her name as the singer (not claiming to be the author) in the beginning of the last line. The song becomes a signature piece, and also a way of thanking the patron for the invitation to perform. Through the song the Nachni claims a temporary space of signification—even though she provides a relatively more acceptable lens through the reference to the God/traditional religious teachers, thereby proclaiming a socially acceptable space as a devotee/learner. The particular song translated above actually gives her a way to legitimize and normalize the viewing of her performance by referring to the audience as mothers, sisters, and brothers, and neutralizing the deep discomfort about according any place of significance to the ‘fallen’ woman. At the same time, she is claiming her space in the society, as one of them. Generated within a strong patriarchal tradition, many of these popularly used songs in Nachni performance were not originally written by women, and hence presumes a certain form of subservient female subjectivity. The feet of the ‘Guru’ signifies a space that the Nachni claims for herself, even if for a little while during the performance, in ways similar to many performances related to the Bhakti tradition in Bengal. Here the ‘Guru’ signifies either a god, religious teachers or both, and a space at the feet of such an entity accords a temporary legitimacy for the Nachni’s presence in the public space. Sinha (1995) had written about the feudal aristocracy and claimed that the ritual status of the Rajput Kshatriyas that developed in Purulia turned a few families from

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the Bhumij tribe into local zamindars (landlords) during the colonial times. He also discussed the complex relationship of the Bhumij landlords with the development of court culture in the region. The performance of the Nachni, according to Chatterji “emerged within a feudal system and they thus share in the popular representation of the courtesan as ‘patita nari’ or ‘fallen woman’” (2009, 65). Since the nineteenth century, this form flourished under the patronage of local land lords and rural gentry, and the regional feudal lords. Following the tradition of patronizing art in feudal courts, these not so powerful patrons generated their own art practices, through the patronage of the Rasik. Since then, the woman performer has been framed as an entertainer and an objectified body, within the structure of the male gaze and appreciation. This constant evaluation of her bodily attributes, as well as her abilities to visually please the audience through her dance, forces her to remain vulnerable and dependent on the approvals of her patrons. Besides, she needs to be constantly available as a domestic help, a sexual partner, and also one of the labouring bodies for work in the fields during agricultural seasons. All the while, her principal responsibility is of course to maintain her skill as a profitable performing partner for the Rasik.

4.5 Making a Living Through Performance: Validating the Precarious Existence Within Family The Nachni women I have interviewed over the last thirty years belong to the lowest economic strata of the society, and are usually from the scheduled caste groups such as Kurmi, Mahato or tribes like the Bhumij, Munda, Oraon, who make up a sizable amount of the local population. Lack of education, early marriage, and generally oppressive patriarchal structures of the family are reasons for the young girls growing up in such families. They are often married off by their natal family at a very young age, far before the legal age for marriage in India. Women whom I spoke with reiterate similar experiences as commonly endured by most young women in the lowest economic strata in the rural parts of India. Abuse in the conjugal set up, neglect and lack of understanding on the part of the husband or the new family, and incompatibility are common reasons for the women to either be sent back to their paternal homes, or run away from their marital homes to save themselves. Some of them also mention running away from their natal homes to avoid forced marriage. Some of the Nachni women I interviewed also mentioned their alleged extramarital relationships with the Rasiks as reasons for their decision to break their legal marriages. As in most families, in such circumstances, these women almost never find any support from their family of origin. There is even less support for the woman who wants to train to sing and dance as a trainee/apprentice, under an experienced Nachni or a Rasik. Most of the times the reason for the family disowning the daughter is due to her wanting to become a performing partner in a relationship with a male performer.

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Once the young woman leaves her family as a Nachni, there is no turning back for her, in most cases. As stated above, the declaration of her ‘death’ by her family often comes from the need to protect family honour, whereas the Rasik continues to have a space within his family. It must be understood that when the Nachni shifts out of her family home and into the Rasik’s house as his lover/partner, she is usually already homeless, and without any support system to replace her family. The implications of such a partnership are economic, professional, and social, as well as deeply gendered. Given the form’s history, the Rasik acquires and trains a Nachni, as an entertainer who will be at his beck and call to perform, to entertain and to earn money for the Rasik and his family to survive on, and for the Rasik to get fame from. In recent years, the stories of a few women performers from the region have begun to look a little different. According to Jyotsna Debi, Sandhya Rani, and Postobala, a few of them are accepted, at least in private, as earning members and providers for their own families. However, the deep stigma remains as an invisible social signal that controls her role and rights in public. The Nachni’s vulnerability or her absence in the society also makes her more available and more exploited within the patriarchal set up of her surroundings. Whatever be the structure of accommodating her within the quasi-conjugal setup, she continues to be the bread earner for the whole family, particularly in the ‘lean’ seasons at the end of one agricultural calendar, when the next harvest is not yet ready and the food is scarce. The Rasik formalizes the relationship with a short ceremony of putting vermillion powder on the Nachni’s forehead. Henceforth she wears this sign of a married woman, but is not considered married and therefore no conjugal rights are there for her as protection. She lives under the constant threat of being replaced if she refuses to perform and earn a living for the family of the Rasik, or if she is unable to do so due to illness, age, or some other circumstance. The children of the Nachni are not legally entitled to use their father’s name, nor to inherit any property from him. The more well-known of the Nachni-Rasik performance duos are invited to perform in local fairs and festivities during the ‘season.’ They travel with their musical accompanists to these locations, reaching sometime during the day, performing for the whole night, and again taking off for another performance destination in the morning. Sometimes the Nachni’s young children may accompany their mothers. Traditionally, men who became Rasiks were famous in the locality as poets, singers, or musicians and were accorded special place in the local courts for his love and appreciation of art. His ‘keeping’, training and performing with the Nachni, is seen as his engagement and investment in artistic endeavours. The Nachni, even when she is reluctantly acknowledged as a presence in the society—as someone’s sister, neighbour or even mother—remains a symbol of undisciplined, uncontrollable self-indulgence, a figure outside all structures of control. She herself recognizes her own precarious existence, knowing fully her marginal status as a polluting/polluted body. She also remains a threat to the village and the community social structure, because of her so-called disregard for the traditional conjugal and family values. According to Postobala (who resides in Purulia, and is in her early 50 s), this profession is not respected among the local community, but is slowly getting recognized as a folk performance

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in West Bengal. She is a receiver of the Lalan Award from the Government of West Bengal in 2018. Postobala’s mother was a Nachni, and that stigma surfaced again and again to push her into this profession, after her marriage to an old man ended following significant violence and torture. According to her, there are about sixty Nachni women now, most of whom are middled aged or older. She wants the performance that entails dancing, enactment and singing simultaneously to be recognized as a learned multiart skill, and acknowledges as her ‘Guru’ one of the well-known nachnis of the past, named Sarala. She describes her Rasik, Bijoy Karmakar, as her mentor and husband—while clearly stating that they got ‘married following the special rituals allowed within the social formulations around the Nachni tradition. Postobala is not socially recognized as Bijoy’s wife, though she is an earning member of Bijoy’s family set-up which includes his wife and two sons. Postobala smirked while saying, ‘In the beginning his family needed my money, but they did not want me to have any rights’. As her position changed with her recognition as an artist, she and Bijoy started an independent household. Postobala no longer performs regularly. She rues the advent of songs from Bollywood and Tollywood, and also dancers who come from outside and are ready to go to any length to get audiences who would rather see unclothed bodies, rather than the dances of nachni women who keep their bodies covered as per the strict aesthetic of traditional nachni ethics. She asserts that the basic urge to survive and get two full meals a day unfortunately remain the principal wish for the population of the region in general, and the nachni performers in particular. Postobala acknowledges the role of Durbar Samity, due to whose interventions the Nachni community received some support from the government, and is also provided with some organized access to medical and social care. The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee website13 mentions: To celebrate the successful completion of 10 years of the recognition of Nachni community as folk artists, Manbhum Loksanskriti O Nachni Unnayan Samiti in collaboration with Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee organised a 3 days (1st April-3rd April 2017) long open ground fair ‘Lokosanskritimela 2017’ at Surulia, near Deer Park, Purulia. The fair got few essence of the almost extinct folk art of Purulia. The year 2017 is a landmark in the history of Nachni community. They got their recognition as folk artists from the government of West Bengal in 2006, and completed 10 years of their journey. The Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, as part of the mission, stands in support of the marginalised communities and helps them to fight for their rights and recognition.

Postobala’s past continues to make her vulnerable. She says that she chose this profession herself, as this seemed to be the only way she would be getting two meals in a day. The Nachni women perform in open or domestic performance venues. More often Nachni women are invited to large local fairs, where one arena is reserved for this particular performance genre, out of three or four such arenas created for different

13

https://durbar.org/. Accessed on 15 February 2023.

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performances like Chhau, Baul and others. The arena is a raised platform, with audience seated on all sides. It is easily accessible from the audience space, facilitating members of the audience to go up on the platform to pin money on the Nachni’s clothes as a show of appreciation for her art. This becomes an additional income, a tip, but at the same time is a statement about the easy availability and accessibility of the Nachni’s body. In recent times, such acts have attracted public criticism, and a few non-governmental organizations working for the welfare of the Nachnis, such as Durbar,14 have raised their voice to start a campaign to stop such acts. The performers are sharply divided in their opinions. Some feel that, while performance itself is not considered as sex work, the stigma around female bodies being available for public gaze, and for the visual and resultant sensual consumption, creates a sense of availability around them. Hence, while the woman in the domestic conjugal space is protected as a part of family property, the ‘public’ body of the Nachni does not have any protector, as she does not belong to any familial space. However despicable and demeaning an act, the pinning of money on the Nachni’s garments also meant that there was an income that belonged to the woman specifically, as her body becomes the site where the transaction literally takes place. Some Nachnis continue to say that this act is singled out as demeaning, as it involves and benefits only the woman in the partnership. The other much more violent acts, like forcing a Nachni to perform night after night, without asking for her consent before signing a contract for an outside performance or accepting an advance for such performances continue, as they benefit the male partner. The Rasik, as mentioned before, acts as her manager, mentor, and her master and treats the Nachni with all the arrogance born out of such a position of power, as well as all the sanctioned control that the patriarchal society allocates as rights to the husbands. This arrangement continues without being frowned upon by the society and are normalized within the accepted framework of the ‘artistic’ partnership between the Nachni-Rasik duo. Traditionally, a Nachni did not have any right to what she earned through night after night of hard labour. The Rasik was her master, and therefore the rightful owner of everything she earned. Of course, now there are exceptions. Some women are vocal enough to bluntly state: ‘Nobody will look after me when I am infirm, I have to take care of myself.’ But there are still so many others, who fear that they will soon be replaced by another Nachni, ‘just as one would replace a cow which has stopped giving milk.’ The society denies a Nachni’s presence in many ways. She is socially ostracized, stopped from attending many social functions of the community, and not allowed free access to either her own family home or the Rasik’s house. The only place and time that belongs to her, that she can claim as her own, are the proscenium or the demarcated space for her performance, and that too only for the duration of the performance. Hence, the Nachni exists between the excitement of coming alive by being present as a performer and controlling the gaze of her audience, and the anxiety of becoming absent the moment she is not visible. She fears that she would not have a presence and cease to exist if and when she stops performing. She has seen this happening to most of her predecessors. She learns 14

Ibid.

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soon, to make the most of the temporary liveness that the proscenium offers her, and then to retreat into the restricted space where shrouds of social marginality places her, in the same category as an absent being. In other words, she dies every time her performance ends. In this context, the social existence of the Nachni needs to be discussed in order to understand the complexity of her absence. Unlike the locally famous performers of Chau and Baul traditions, the Nachni tradition exists in the margins. Every member of the community knows that she exists, many make up the regular audience for her performances, but no one talks about her. A Nachni woman may stay within the boundaries of her Rasik’s house, in the same or a different room specifically built for her. She may also seek to move to a separate hut, if she is economically self-sufficient. In case the Rasik is married, the space for the Nachni is more strictly segregated and restricted. The significance of agency and ownership of the body become central at this point, in relation to the absence that is forced on the woman. The ‘commoditized body’ vis a vis the ‘regulated body’ (Lupton, 1994), needs to be understood in the context of ‘being’ and ‘having’ a body (Howson, 2013), whereby the control and rights to what that body is or does can become a part of the feminist debate. Here, the central focus must be on the duality of reception and the criticality of the commoditization of the woman’s body, where the body, so long as it is seen as a product and therefore a consumable, is not a threat, unlike the threatening/polluting capability of a social presence of the owner of that very same body. Alexandra Howson (2013: 10) talks about a duality in understanding the existence of the body as an entity, independent of the processes of social constitution, or as existing only in relation to the practices and processes that produce them. These discussions above, on the question of rights over the earnings of the Nachni, point toward a convenient legitimization of acceptance of the Nachni as a socially absent but conveniently available tool for making a living, so far as her capacity to support the family of the Rasik is concerned.

4.6 Living through/for Performance and Becoming Absent/ Dying as Soon as the Performance Finishes Chatterji writes, Most scholars would agree that the cultures of the local courts in regions like Purulia in which the institutions of the nachni and the rasika flourished was crucial for the development of the jhumur. Yet even though they consider jhumur as part of the folk music of Purulia they find it more difficult to include the institution of the nachni or even the nachni nach as part of its folk culture (2009, 86).

The night-long Nachni performance consists of Jhumur gaan (the songs) and Nachni nach (the dances); they are never solo acts. Usually, there are a number of Nachnis invited for each of these performance events, and they take turns in performing a segment of half an hour each, in a cyclic order. The stage is shared by Nachni

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women, the Rasiks, and the musicians of the two or three women scheduled to perform through the night. Each Nachni gets a slot of about an hour, and then sits down to rest while the others get their turns. For each of them, the performance begins with a devotional song with introductory movements, and progresses through the night with more rhythmic songs and dance movements. The Nachni Shaliya Jhumur songs are known for their varied themes of devotion, love, sensuousness, latent or blatant eroticism, and most often gendered metaphors and sexualized lyrics. The movements correspond to the type of songs foregrounding the eroticized and sexualized body of the woman dancer, and work on creating a sexualized presence that play on the male imagination on one hand, and becoming a popular and much sought after performance for the region. Prem/priti (profound love), bhakti (devotion), biraho (despair due to separation), nirasha (hopelessness), and kamona (sensual cravings) remain the popular themes. The performance starts with an introduction and then moves into devotional renditions. Slowly as the night progresses the rhythms become more vigorous and the dances become more sensual with the use of suggestive movements signifying enticing glances, jerks of the breasts and the pelvis and exaggerated hip movements. Much of the Nachni’s repertoire has changed in recent times. Audience demands for renditions of popular Bollywood movie songs are still resisted, but a few of the younger Nachni women give in to the public demands and include such songs to increase their own popularity, after performing the traditional introductory song. The Nachni dance is principally is based on two rhythmic structures: the mota tala, or the slow rhythmic part which generally starts each of the presentations, often acting as the introduction to them, and the tin tala, or the faster sixteen beat rhythm structure, with which she performs simple steps, circular movements, and jumps. The body movements can be located in four zones, in her dance. She uses the head and face largely for facial expressions and isolating neck movements that are an integral part of Indian dance movements. The upper body is used to create exaggerated front-back thrusts and movements of the bust, activating the torso as well as highlighting and generating attention to the breasts. The hands take a major role to extend, enhance and enlarge the movements of the upper body, as well as help in expressing the emotive words of the songs. The third area of emphasis is around the hips. Jerking, forward–backward movements of the pelvis as well as side swings of the hips are used with rhythmic foot steps to draw attention to the lower middle part of the body, creating a sensual as well as a sexual reference point of directing the audience’s gaze. The feet movements are mainly made up of repeated right and left footsteps, with one of them flat and the other with the toes touching the ground. The heel is lifted, ensuring the mobility of the dancer in linear or circular patterns on the stage, or simply for keeping rhythm with hand and body movements, especially in the more rhythmic and rigorous parts of the dance. Ramsay Burt talks about live theatrical performance, where the “meanings are produced through a collective and reflexive awareness, shared between performers and an audience, of nuances of interpretation within intersections of a number of over determined discourses” (2004, 34). The participatory process of meaning-making in case of Nachni performances involves the Nachni, her Rasik, the musicians who

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accompany and respond to nuances of the gestures by closely following and communicating with the woman performer who continues to address them as her principal and immediate audience, and last but not the least the surrounding crowd—which is dominated by male members of the community. The social unease and the deeprooted prejudice against the “professional” dancing woman of loose moral virtue does not become a hindrance in the process of watching and appreciating her performances, thereby granting and allowing a presence to the body in the state of dancing, if not beyond. Even though Nachni women have carried on the tradition of singing a particular form of Jhumur, they are considered exclusively as performers who learn and reproduce the form. Traditionally, it is assumed that women do not write Jhumur songs. Except for the Nachni, women also do not publicly sing Jhumur. The Jhumurs sung by the Nachni are written by male poets, and usually carry signatures of the poet in the last line. It is rare to find some of the older and more well-known Nachnis adding her own name as a signature to a song while presenting it. In the context of performance and its connection to creating a sense of power and status, Morcom writes that dance and music can be seen as potentially feminizing, in terms of emotion and aesthetics and also with respect to the dynamics, audience, status, and power (2014, 102). Nobody can deny the Nachni women their presence in the performance arena. That is a space where she holds attention and also becomes undeniably present through the performance which draws attention to her historically and socially inscribed body, and the embodied practice. Discussing dance and presence, MacKendrick mentions that “the dancer’s body is indistinguishable from the dance but only while the dance lasts” (2004, 145). The audience, during a Nachni performance, remains visibly engaged and captive through the night, setting aside their uneasiness about the woman, and only seeing the performer. In other words, the only time that a Nachni is taken to be a member of the community she entertains is while she is dancing. The moment the dance is over, and the Nachni is seen resting in a quiet place in the festival ground, she has to retreat into the shadows of the margins. The same audience that witnessed and appreciated her dance will not cross her shadows or be ‘caught dead talking to her.’ The largely male-dominated audience comes to enjoy the Nachni performance and sits appreciatively through the whole night, enjoying the sensual qualities of the songs, the innuendos made through the carefully worded lines sung by the Nachni and her Rasik and/or accompanists, and the dance—which is often structured in a sexually enticing manner. The very same audience is afraid to cross her shadows during the day, if their paths cross accidentally. Hence, presence and absence need to be put in conjunction as well as opposition, where the Nachni, her presence and her performance are concerned. The precarity for the Nachni lies in the very fact that she needs to constantly work on her capacity to maximize the effect of her presence, only by means of her appearance, appeal and performance— because, as soon as she ceases to be able to generate and control her power to ‘hold’ the audience, she is redundant in the eyes of the society, and even in the eyes of her only so-called social connection—the Rasik. Unlike the dancer of classical forms, who exist in its proud history even when they are not dancing, Nachnis are fighting a losing battle in terms of visibility.

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4.7 Presence, Aliveness, and the Issues of ‘Pleasure’ Countering ‘Precarity’ In addressing the question on how the terms of recognition of gender and sexual norms—condition who will count as a subject, and who will not, in advance, Butler writes So it is, I would suggest, on the basis of this question, who counts as a subject and who does not, that performativity becomes linked with precarity. The performativity of gender has everything to do with who counts as a life, who can be read or understood as a living being, and who lives, or tries to live, on the far side of established modes of intelligibility. (Butler, 2009, iv)

Taking from Butler’s assertions, the Nachni’s performances may be read as continuous struggles to count as living beings—through their songs, their dances, and all their performative communications that refer to patterns of lived lives—in a society that denies her recognition. Though the Nachni is not accepted as a respected member of the society in which she is simultaneously present and absent, references of every day, love, devotion, and conjugality make up her musical and embodied repertoire. Her songs often mention so-called normal human relationships and are also commentaries on conversations between married couples in the changing social scenario. It is ironic that she refers to, and draws on, a societal structure of which she is no longer a part, enhancing her space as the outsider, looking in through a window that only allows her a glimpse of the world within, but never letting her become a part of it. Through Jhumur songs on the themes of illicit or unrequited love, memories of childhood, siblings and parents, devotional love songs between Radha and Krishna— the devotional and the sensual, the traditional and the contemporary, and regular and irregular relationships, are put in opposition as well as in reference to each other. These songs also mirror how the Nachni traverses her social as well as professional worlds, within and through the marginal scape of her performance. The marginality of the Nachni woman is enforced through the society’s refusal to grant her a social space, as a daughter or a wife. Her economic vulnerability stems from the nature of her profession, whereby she is dependent on her bodily attributes and her ability to continue to dance and sing. The fear is further enhanced because of the exploitative nature of her partnership with her Rasik, in which she is consistently used to bring in cash payment against her public performances. Her psychological vulnerability is rooted in the constant assertion of an aggressive social structure which continues to punish her and her children, as a result of her having chosen to be a professional entertainer. But the Nachni encounters all these marginalities which categorize her as undisciplinable, un-tameable, and therefore unacceptable member of the community. She negotiates and occupies space with and through her performance. Her tools are her body and her dance, the very same ones that make her socially dangerous and therefore unacceptable, in the first place. Therefore, it becomes important to create a register or marker of the commitment, excitement, catharsis, empathy, and pure subjective engagement and kinaesthetic acknowledgement of pleasure that a dancer

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creates for herself and others through her performance. From a feminist perspective on discourses around precarity (Butler, 2009), it is important for critical dance studies in India to ensure that its analysis does not create yet another story of exploitative disenfranchisement, while talking about the precarity of the Nachni’s social existence. It is true that the form of subjectivity that is born out of precarity of the living conditions and consistent social exploitations is out of one’s own control. But it is important to acknowledge that precarity is also a condition in which subversions and resistance against existing structures of hegemonic dominations are often produced. Hence, it is imperative that this narrative provides a space to discursively foreground the embodied empowerment that becomes available to the Nachni women through their dance and sensory engagement. Such a sense of control exerted over the gazes of the audience lends a performative presence to the Nachni, even if only during the duration of the performance. Dance in itself—regardless of the audience, impacts, or socio-economic implications—is a source of tremendous kinaesthetic involvement and a resultant “narcissistic pleasure” (Rainer, 1999). Though I might never hear a nachni performer acknowledge this as true, Sandhyarani and Postobala readily acknowledged the feeling of power and exhilaration that made them continue to get ready for the next performance, even while feeling completely exhausted and exploited after the continuous performance engagements that their Rasiks fix for them. In her Interview to Lyn Blumenthal, Rainer talks about her first performance: It was as good as orgasm. I knew that was where I lived, that was where I belonged, doing that work and presenting myself physically to an audience. And that, of course, was part of the charisma. That is the urgency, and that pleasure in exhibiting oneself, is part of the seduction of an audience. The performer has to experience that in order for the audience to get a sense of this presence or to be taken in by it (1999: 63).

The Nachni learns the art of being hyper-feminine; she is taught to sing while dancing and emoting. The overemphasizing of different parts of the body to highlight sensuous eroticism and the excessive use of specific invitations with eye movements, as well as an ongoing conversation through the songs with the Rasik and the musicians are enhanced and encouraged by the active responses from the performer. Hips and breasts are two important parts that are given special attention, in the training for the Nachni. The exaggerated thrusting of the breast signifies a way of creating a very clear presence of the sexualized female body for a gendered gaze, as well as reading. In the training processes of some classical dances like Bharatanatyam and Odissi (where side-wise movements of the torso carefully shift the reference away from the materiality of the feminine body in general and the breasts in particular, and directs them to the sculpted postures of the temple architecture), the use of the torso and the bust is very carefully monitored through the grammars of those dances, and reconstructed in the post-colonial restructuring of the dances. While one may be struck by the fact that Nachni has little or no agency about how long and where she would perform, or even how many performances she would like to do, one must acknowledge the fact that she is the centre of attention, holding the audience with her power, presence, and dance—of course with the help of the accompanists, but not because

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of them. Her pleasure and involvement—almost never acknowledged by herself, her Rasik, or her accompanists, or even her audience—is what makes her performance come alive. She experiences a tremendous amount of power and pleasure which makes the precariousness of her existence recede to the background during the performance. The body of the Nachni becomes a tool here, honed and used to fight the social erasure on the very ground where it is created, and where it is forced on the woman performer. The movements are specific to the genre, are learned through training, and processed through subjective kinaesthetics. The personal experience of meaning-making, through communicative movements of dance, are performed within socially structured viewing possibilities. The dance is also generated by the need to maximize visual and sensual appeal. On one hand, it can be lamented that the woman as a practitioner is hardly in control of what she dances on the proscenium. But on the other hand, there is a tremendous amount of power and agency in the final execution of her movements. The vulnerability of the viewed body of the Nachni is countered by, or at times, exists in tandem with the dancer’s experience of pleasure and power. This draws us into a discussion on the conceptualization of those bodies and embodied acts, which do not or cannot generate a ‘sympathetic response’ that Foster (2011, 142) explains is generated as a result of the imagination of the viewers about ‘why and how the person was experiencing the feeling he or she was feeling.’ Such a communication is often impossible, in case of the Nachni performance, simply because the socially structured pre-constructed evaluation restricts and regulates the viewers’ opinions about the dance and the dancer. Hence, there are a number of questions that need to be asked. How does one register what those dancers receive or perceive as reception from the audience? Why does this profession continue to attract young women (even though it seems to attract a lesser number of new-comers) to leave their families (before or after marriage)? Why does she dare to dance when it means ‘social death’ for her? The ideal and utopic answer that one would like to believe in, is the tremendous power of dance in generating pleasure. But a realistic answer would point towards reasons like economic and social vulnerabilities. This section must be brought to a close describing the end of a Nachni’s life, and framing her within the layers of vulnerabilities discussed above. Some Rasiks are known to have had more than one Nachni, in the patriarchal structure that exists within such a marginal practice. The reason given is that he was attracted to, or was wanting to replace the ageing Nachni with a younger performer as his partner. Instances of Nachnis keeping more than one Rasik at the same time are not known. It is known, however, that in a few cases, a Nachni has left one Rasik and moved in with another. The death of a Rasik has seen the Nachni mourning in socially acceptable ways, by eating vegetarian food and wearing white sarees for a period, in the same way as a widow is expected to do. However, this does not ensure any social support from the family of the Rasik. In case of the Nachni’s death, even in the recent past, the body was dragged to the jungle and left there to rot or be eaten by wild animals as the society refused to acknowledge the Nachni’s dead body as a body of one of its own members. Recent interventions by some non-governmental agencies have started a

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debate and have seen some exceptions to these rules. But the Nachni’s fate depends on the decisions entirely made by the community that has enjoyed her performances over the years. Nachni Rajobala’s death and the subsequent refusal of the Rasik’s family to perform her last rites about six years back, saw her body being dragged to the forest in the age-old manner. The resistance to such erasure has grown, and there is an organized effort to establish and guard the community’s dignity against socially sanctioned atrocities. But the idea of absence and vulnerability continues to reappear through layered acts of rejection, whereby in life and in death her ‘presence’ is not easily acknowledged. In her life as a performer, she is not a celebrity like many singers and dancers from the mainstream upper-caste performance traditions, and in death she passes on the precarity to the next generation of Nachni women. The unruly woman’s body, mind and desires are put through a performative spectacularization of her precarity, with a wish to tame her. This continues as a warning signal that the society puts on display, in her life and death.

4.8 Registering the ‘Cultural Struggle’ of the Lavani Performers: Holding Space in Discourse Lavani - a form of dance and music performance by women is presented in the private as well as public spaces of entertainment. The Phadachi for is specifically performed in public gatherings whereas the Baithakachi if for smaller intimate audience. Another binary is that of Nirguli (philosophical songs) as opposed to the Shringari (sensual ). It is a form that I have come to see, appreciate, and learn in the course of my adventures with my dancing body after my active life as a performer on proscenium slowed down in 2006. Becoming interested in the way the trained urban upper-class dancers are cautioned and taught to deny themselves active engagement with pleasure—I wanted to learn forms that provide and enable intense freedom to feel pleasure and lightness of being. The attention that I had to give to learn bodily movements in form of the dance pedagogy that is typically associated with Lavani, pushed me and other learners in the class to acknowledge many of our physical attributes such as the breasts, the shoulders, the hips, the lower abdomen, and the back as points of active engagement. The learning method also highlighted the process whereby one does not learn only the steps or the hand gestures or the facial expressions in isolation, but simultaneously with the use of facial expressions, suggestive hand movements, the steps and body movements, a nuanced and detailed meaning-making and communication with the audience remain of utmost importance. For a dancer to become an expert, the control over the permutation and combinations of steps, sideways, or rotating movements of the hips, the suggestive and controlled rhythmic jerks of the lower abdominal muscles, the use of shoulders and breasts with different levels of emphasis are important to practice and learn by watching senior dancers and teachers. Such upper and lower body movements are enhanced by hand movements and gestures using fingers, which are limited in

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comparison to the mudras used in classical dances but are essential in conveying minor meanings. These hand gestures are then used in coordination with eye contact and nuanced use of eyebrows and eyelids (in rapid blinks), winks, and signals of invitation through minute yet repeated and changing forms of visual gestures. The facial expressions are also highlighted as important to register each word’s meaning, while generally keeping alive the connection between the performers and the audience. The successful use of a combination of all the above expertise depends on consistent practice that enables the performer to handle her overall presentation, using individuated sensuality and sexuality with lively ease. As I write this section, I acknowledge that my primary relationship to the form is through corporeal engagement, of a student ‘other’. My description above deliberately remains away from technically specific details, as I maintain my position as a decontextualized learner with a minimal understanding of Marathi. Lavani has been written about by authors such as Sharmila Rege (1995, 2002), and Anagha Tambe (2009, 2022a, 2022b). Rege noted that, The ‘moments of discovery and rediscovery’ of the popular forms are especially focused upon in order to underline the dialectics of cultural struggle and the ways in which cultural distinctions are produced and reproduced differentially for different castes, classes and gender. (2002: 1040).

According to Rege (2002), Tambe (2022a, 2022b) and others, the history of these professional women performers can be traced in practices of keeping and employing enslaved women from lower castes in the courts and other departments, as well as dancing houses (known as Natakshala), for entertainment and sexual slavery. Rege mentioned, ‘They were employed in homes, stables, granaries, cattle houses, dancing houses, stores, communication and construction works’ (Ibid). The women were often the form of payment in lieu of services of the officers to the Peshwas. According to Rege, the erotic Lavani songs use the terms Bateek (whore) and Saubhagyavati (wife) to distinguish the lower caste women with intense desire for sexual pleasure from men vis-à-vis the wives who were virtuous women seeking motherhood from men (Ibid).15 Anagha Tambe’s recent paper “Folk dance/vulgar dance: Erotic lavani and the hereditary performance labour” projects Lavani as an “erotic dance practice from Maharashtra, customarily performed as hereditary cultural labour by Dalit and lower caste women, placed outside the framework of marriage” (2022b). She continues, in her paper, on the sanitization of Lavani in recent times: The entry ticket carries a warning that ‘whistling, or loud and disturbing reactions by audience will lead to their expulsion from the show’. More significantly the Akluj Spardha sought to revive and define the aesthetic of ‘traditional’ lavani by identifying and disseminating it through booklets and cassettes (Lavanichi Lavanyavel), and inviting senior artists to choreograph and train the participant lavani troupes etc. Thus, the traditional lavani came to be standardized and institutionalized by isolating the ‘pure’ vernacular folk culture from all urban popular influences. (2022b)

15

See Rege (2002: 1038–1047) for details.

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Though a detailed history is not attempted, and can be read in the articles referred to here, it is important for this chapter to signify the space that women performers and their artistic skills/creativity continue to hold and reestablish through their continuous negotiations with patriarchy and state power. Recently enjoying a surge in popularity, Lavani is seen as a ‘secular erotic dance and music’ (2022b), where the performers belong to both Hindu and Muslim religious backgrounds. According to Tambe, the Brahmins, as the royal patrons, enslaved women performers from lowest rungs of the caste ladder. The ‘sensual dance of lower caste women flourished with the royal patronage of brahmin Peshwa rulers and the upper caste elites’ (2022). Faced with economic hardship as the royal patronage became undependable with the progressive increase in control exerted by the British, Lavani moved to urban centres, continuing adapt to the changed environment and new patronage. At this juncture, it remained “the site of constructing the bodies of Dalit and lower caste women as insatiable and promiscuous, while appropriating their sexual and productive labour” till it was banned after being designated as ‘vulgar’ in form and content. The current form of Lavani, according to Rege and Tambe, is the result of the reinvention of ‘traditional’ Marathi Lavani poetry and songs by the upper-caste Marathi community (Tambe, 2022a, 2022b). This growth has seen different adaptations, as a sanitized form on stage, as a folk form, and as a form that continues to be designated as erotic, vulgar, and replete with sexual and sensual references. Lavani, in spite of all its playfulness, continues to be ultra-vulnerable, as the constant watchfulness of the state and upper-caste elites continue to feel insecure about the unruly and undisciplinable nature of the form. In recent times “a new category of professional lavani troupes were created from the ranks of non-hereditary/ non-traditional artists who were encouraged, trained and supported to perform and preserve a non-vulgar new lavani” (Tambe, 2022b). In a workshop/lecture-demonstration on Lavani performance in Delhi, the effort to popularize and reframe, and the consolidation of the performative agency of the women themselves was the basic theme, claiming pleasure and power over the audience by the women who wanted to have a firm grip over their body and art and all the related choices in the in-between space that is claimed by the social/moral/feminist discourses. What was emphasized was the pleasure-as/and-power of the dancer— something that is absent in the heavily burdened bodies of the classical dancers who bear the responsibility of representing the nation-state and its culture, or the self-imposed burden of producing validity for contemporary dancers in the same geography, who have somehow taken on the burden to be responsible for making visible the valid reasons for their apparently wayward behaviour in moving away from the classical world of dance. Being the flag-bearer of the mainstream or alternative cultures is a weighty affair and, unfortunately, that is the space we have allotted as an inheritance to the current generation of dancers. This is not, however an argument to negate any mainstream or resistive cultural structure/value any performer may want to validate, by way of being a ‘responsible’ citizen or a significant change maker. It is instead drawing attention to the word ‘taming’, that is not always imposed by the nation-state, community norms, and history. It is a self-imposed mobilization of tameness/discipline by submitting to

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pre-existing structures or logic, that is an ongoing legitimization of ‘being’ and ‘doing’. In fact, Nachni or Lavani is not beyond this negotiation, but is largely driven by economic necessities these women performers may not be able to think of the larger issues that would give them the satisfaction of feeling the ‘cultural’ burden one way or another. Thus, the intense bodily engagement without really touching anyone in the audience, and the communication through scintillating gestures that get varied responses from shy averting of the eyes to bold answering whistle or gestures, may be just one layer that the dancer is responding to. The more intense realization is of the power of the corporeal presence that the body registers, with the rush of adrenalin and emotional change, the lights, the sound, and the freedom to express helping the performer reach a new high every day. The counter-argument of exploitation, drudgery, and lack of freedom are all there, already registered in many writings—only a few of which are mentioned here. What is critical however, that is worth studying in this discourse within dance, is the reclamation of a sense of power, joy, and the overt expression of pleasure within dance and in the larger spaces.16

4.9 The ‘Ideal’ Space for the Woman Dancer: Classical Dance as a Culturally Secure Space The dancer in India has always been viewed as ‘un-domestic,’ and therefore, unsuited to conjugal life. City dancers have been negotiating the duality of their inner and outer worlds (Figs. 4.4 and 4.5), and battling this stereotyping for a long time in their occupational lives. But for many of the dancers who are performers of the living traditions of communities in non-urban spaces, the position still remains more or less the same. Even the city audience views these women as instruments of entertainment, not as an integral part in the life of a particular community. Here, the principles of viewing are different than those that govern the ‘high art’ presentations of the classical dances. Many have grown up without ever questioning or tracing the origins of dance or the process by which the history of dance tries to sever its connection with the woman-dancer who has been repeatedly maligned in the public discourse of the country. Considering the biological and the social role accorded to women, as members of the society, they are defined as the ‘natural vessel’ for childbearing, 16

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, ‘Tale of the Professional Woman Dancer in Folk Traditions in India: Commodification of Dance and the Traditional Dancing Women’ in Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers in Search of an Identity, Bishnupriya Dutt and Urmimala Sarkar Munsi. New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2010, p. 236. It is also interesting to see how Seemanthini Niranjana discusses the notions of sexual differentiation born out of world views of different communities also determine both the material and metaphorical spaces. She defines the concepts of ‘metaphorical’ and the ‘material’ space to mention how it is discussed by several geographers working with space. While the former (metaphorical/cultural space) with its connotations of stable, inert, absolute space, provides a fertile ground for ‘metaphorical appropriations’, it may be more important to focus on ‘real’ material space, and including within this both geographical and social reality. See Seemanthini, Niranjana, Gender and Space: Femininity, Sexualization and the Female Body, New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2001.

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and the nurturer of the child and family. Even in the twenty-first century, dance as a career is often referred to as an unfruitful, not-so serious choice of profession, and often also as an aberration viewed with uneasiness. Even when society accepts the woman’s space in community rituals and traditional performances, there is a certain degree of disdain about the ultimate choice she makes to become a performer, and her choice to exist in the public space, playing out a non-domestic role. Society does not forgive her for negating or neglecting her ‘principal’ duty—as a physical vessel for the perpetuation of that society and culture. This leads to a very basic question—in what way is the woman expected to perpetuate culture? The answer remains controversial and contested. It would appear that the act of perpetuating culture for women does not mean actually performing cultural acts, but giving birth to, and acting as a mediator or agent for passing on the culture from one generation to the other, without aspiring to be a direct part of the process. Seemanthini Niranjana argues that, The biological underpinnings are recognized but rarely spoken about, while the moral order seeks to interpret and represent the biological in distinctive terms. Any understanding of the construction of femininity will, accordingly, have to take into account the inter-relations between the biological and socio-spatial. This would also be facilitative of a movement beyond the formative distinction underscoring gender studies — that between ‘biological’ sex and ‘social’ gender. Indeed, we come to recognize that gender is implicated within sociocultural practices regulating sexed bodies. The point of discussion so far has been more to show how female bodies, at every step, are spaced, ensconced in layers of meaning and belonging than to draw attention to socialisation practices or to the different stages of female life cycle. Such a process of female embodiment is facilitated through their insertion into what may be termed a matrix of sexualisation. The Matrix specifies certain codes of moral conduct within the community and is often responsible for the active espousal of conceptions of the feminine.17

For the classical dancers as well, the label of being ‘un-domestic’ is a reality, though not accompanied by a value judgement about her moral character anymore. A huge change has taken place over the last thirty years, and dance has become a sought-after hobby. Many parents want their daughters to learn some form of classical dance, perform as a part of the group to begin with, and then become a solo performer, at least till she gets married or gets too busy in her career, whichever comes first. Here also, the problem arises only in case she wants to become a full-scale professional dancer. The society’s resistance constantly rallies back and forth between historical references and the present-day viability of dance as a career, or even a hobby of import. The woman dancer, then, has to negotiate a path of moderation, in which she does not seem to be totally dependent on dance as her only occupation and tool for earning a living. She frames herself as a woman of high cultural capital, who has embraced a ‘public’ identity, but has not become a commercial artist, selling her art though various compromises (Fig. 4.3). She strives to be seen as someone who is private enough to be considered a ‘home-maker’ and a ‘woman of good character,’ certified by the reverence that her caste/class/educational status would bring, if she is strengthened by such hierarchizing attributes. 17

Seemanthini Niranjana, Ibid., p. 69.

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4.10 The Nation Performed In the words of Partha Chatterjee, the ‘classicisation of tradition’18 was an important agenda of the nationalists, as they believed that a nation must have a past. In his book, The Nation and its Fragments, Chatterjee writes, Sure enough, nationalism adopted several elements from tradition as marks of its native cultural identity, but this was now a ‘classicized’ tradition—reformed, reconstructed, fortified against barbarism and irrationality. The new patriarchy was also sharply distinguished from the immediate social and cultural condition in which the majority of the people lived, for the ‘new’ woman was quite the reverse of the ‘common’ woman, who was coarse, vulgar, loud, quarrelsome, devoid of superior moral sense, sexually promiscuous, subjected to brutal physical oppression by males. (Chatterjee, 1993: 127)

Indeed, the achievement was marked by claims of cultural superiority in several different aspects— superiority over the western woman for whom, it was believed, education meant only the acquisition of material skills to compete with men in the outside world, and hence a loss of feminine (spiritual) virtues; superiority over the preceding generation of women in their own homes who had been denied the opportunity of freedom by an oppressive and degenerate social tradition; and superiority over women of the lower classes who were culturally incapable of appreciating the virtues of freedom.19 Performing the nation, by performing its cultural values and projecting its correct imagery, became part of the agenda of the restructuring process of the newly classicized dances, and as the list of classical dances continued to increase over the last seventy-five years. As ‘high art’, dance needed to reflect all the values and norms that were Indian, national, modern, feminine, and virtuous, along with being the embodiment/endorsement of this culture. As is well known, the right to perform the nation, and be a part of the visible image of the nation was only given to a select few. Others from the so-called ‘popular’, or ‘folk’ categories, who may otherwise be described by the same set of words that described those selected privileged few as ‘women’, ‘dancers’, ‘continuers of tradition’, are never considered intrinsic to complete the image of the nation-state alongside dancers from the ‘higher’ classical traditions. Over the last three decades, dance from India itself also has spread globally, to be performed by a different set of new experts and studied by diaspora academics with Indian roots (many of whom are women with growing international presences in global discourses and publications on dance from India). These distant entities, often not aware of local complexities and discourses, have played a significant role in globally in representing dance and dance studies from India. They became the role models for the dispossessed and politically stifled local academics, whose struggles are to be visible and meaningful in globally recognized publications and global organizations 18

Partha Chatterjee’s idea of ‘classicization of tradition’ historicizes the argument at length to throw light on the nationalists’ concept that a nation must have a past. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993, pp. 73–4. 19 Ibid. 127–129.

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that exist and are recognized in the Euro-American spaces, and are limited in their understanding and access to the ground zero of Indian cultural scenario. Neocolonialism (discussed in Chap. 5) rules, while a handful of scholars from India struggle to establish a methodological premise of studying the Ground Zero with a principled approach, and to decolonize. Unfortunately, while globalized discourses try to update themselves as fast as possible, everyday occurrences that tighten the reaffirmation of an imagined past for framing the national culture in the new and restrictive political ecology continues in new ways—in the new bodies in dance, with a growing focus on religious fanaticism and caste-based discrimination, in the form of the National Education Policy, cultural patronage and the exercising of ever-increasing control on cultural practices. Shirin M. Rai writes: While nationalism provided new spaces of women to mobilize in — and even to use and endorse the universal construction of ‘the citizen’ in particular contexts—at the same time it framed those spaces, landscaped them through rhetoric and language in particular ways. Many women, however, themselves part of the national elites, participated in the construction of the nationalist imaginings and programmes, even though the process itself led to their simultaneous co-optation and /or exclusion from these constructions… …women are central to the construction of nationalist discourses as biological reproducers of members of ethnic collectivities, as reproducers of the boundaries of ethnic/national groups, as central participants in the ideological reproduction of the collectivity and as transmitters of its culture.20

In the meanwhile, the perceptions and expectations about the female body have changed in India. The Indian woman woke up to the ‘needs,’ and the possibilities, of the ‘manufactured and engineered’ body. Somewhere along the line, the Hindi film industry—always a mirror to global fashion and trends, also started manufacturing and staging different female bodies. Gone were the days of the often viewed ‘Indian’ beauties. Now the bodies from the heroines to the item girls, to the woman dancer on the screen and the proscenium, have to be of a global standard for the audience. One needs to reiterate Susan Leigh Foster’s words from her writing in the year 2003, where she had discussed about the woman dancer’s eternal quest for the ideal ‘dancing body’, which always seems just out of her reach. She says, ‘typically, a dancer spends anywhere from two to six hours per day for eight to ten years creating a dancing body. During the course of this travail, this body seems constantly to elude one’s efforts to direct it.’21 As a test case of defiance backed by the economic bubble that it manages to create around itself, the Bollywood film industry, defies the privilege and morality discourses by virtue of its wide acceptance inside and outside India. Playing the box-office success against all discourses on vulgarity, exploitation of women, and display, to maximize benefits from a body-centric consumption culture bordering 20

Shirin M. Rai, The Gender Politics of Development. Zubaan, New Delhi, 2008, pp. 10–11. Susan Leigh Foster, ‘Dancing Bodies’, in Meaning in Motion, ed. Jane C. Desmond, Duke University Press, Durham, 2003, p. 236.

21

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on obscenity and titillation, Bollywood has created a set of alternative, genderspecific aesthetic principles that are completely pliable and adjustable according to marketability. I have mentioned in my essay ‘Buy One Get One Free’ (2017: 175– 187) that the female dancers in Bollywood hone and hoard their fitness, beauty and bodily attributes, in order to survive in a buyer-controlled market. …. the female aspirant to Bollywood roles, [who] buys into a life of precarity while trying to increase her market value. The body held in trust as an asset to be traded in the entertainment marketplace might accumulate short-term value, but most of these dancers become increasingly dispossessed over time of their autonomy as female performers. (2017)

The principal concern thus develops around the word agency, that is not only related to a skill named dance, but the body that houses that skill. In my essay “Becoming the Body” I have written, Theoretically, the words that resonate in this context are agency and dispossession. The word ‘agency’ becomes problematic as the uncertainty of the market lays the total onus on the women to continuously try to be in a state of frozen physicality, whereby the body has to try and remain the ‘perfect’ shape desirable to get a buyer. (2022)

4.11 The Timeless Image of the Woman in Dance Seeking to analyse the woman’s body in dance—once again in this chapter (also see Chap. 2) through the lens of patriarchy and power, I take the body both as a conceptual category and a philosophical discourse, as well as an empirical reality shaped out of, and occupying, a social space. It foregrounds knowledge production as an extension of the connection between symbols, cognition and externalization of images built thereby. For dancers, the proscenium space is for the beholder. The viewer here is the external world in general, and an audience to a performance in particular. What the bodies can do, or more importantly, what the embodied code allows the body to do are not borne out of dance training alone. The codes are already there, developed and shaped out of familial training, seeing and living a normative form of life in the society. The repetition of any daily, weekly, monthly, or annual tasks becomes part of the habitual activities or performance, as in eating, breathing, brushing teeth, playing, etc. It is also a part of an encultured activity that is shared by a group of people in the same culture. Hence, the body habits or the accepted bodily codes make up the arena where cultural norms are played out or challenged. The gendered body becomes a subject of discourse as soon as it moves out of any social stereotype. The invisible body of the domestic woman—invisible due to the domestic, unsalaried chores and the act of child bearing/rearing, with implicit but never-talked-about embodied references to sexuality —is confronted by the gendered body of the woman who projects and communicates with the outer world through her body. She becomes visible, as she challenges all that is ‘usual’, in terms of work, social duties, norms and economy. On the basis of the arguments in the preceding section, I see the woman in classical dances as simultaneously existing in two time zones. One of those zones is an eternal

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time where the timeless image of the ‘ideal’22 woman—a beautiful woman, with equal inner and outer beauty—is that of the high caste woman,23 received as a result of a long period of training, and achieved through practice. The other image is that of the woman whose ‘ideal’ body image is not the timeless eternal one, but is a contemporary societal product, borne out of the standards set by global expectations. One needs to look at the urban woman who dances today, whose points of reference for her dancing body have not shifted throughout all this ‘worlding’ upheaval of her surroundings. Yet, for her, all the reference points remain the same as those experienced and framed by the timeless Rukmini Devi, Bala Saraswati, or even the much younger stalwarts they have learnt their dance from, and who she has been taught to view as icons. The body of the dancer functions both as the tool for recreating the dance movements and hand gestures that it has been taught, and as the site for the performance of all values and images. Interestingly, it only registers the time tested and mythicized traditional values while dancing, even if in daily non-dance activities of life, it has been the site for a complete shift in self-image, expectation, and understanding. The historical burden on the imagery of the body of the woman performer is undeniable. The concept of beauty, the notions of presentation, the audience perception and reception, the taught values of ideal expressions of hyper-feminine sexuality, and the how and why of the ‘ideal,’ constitutes the image which is a must for dancers aspiring to become classical performers. Here, I would like to argue that dance is one of the tools which helps women ‘perform’ their identity in the larger context of society and culture, by using their body as the site for such performativity. Judith Butler has commented on how, ‘gender is performatively produced’, which results in ‘constituting the identity it is purported to be.’24 The body externalizes its corporeal experience though the performances, reflective of the self, and the society and culture. Hence, the body is at once the tool as well as the site for such discourses, and it also invests a huge responsibility in the audience to subjectively ‘read’ the performance. It is also true that in the post-colonial world, the self-image of women can never be taken as one universal phenomenon. I would like to argue that the awareness and knowledge of the body and its projection is shaped by class, ethnic affiliation and religion. In post-colonial India, upper-class women have had access to a different 22

Though the notion of ‘ideal’ has changed over the years for all categories, for both males and females, in India, some of the value systems still remain attached to the pre-industrial, colonial conceptualizations, especially where women are concerned. Thus, although a woman is expected to be an equal partner in many social and economic responsibilities, whenever it comes to her visibility, notions often refer to the limited or no visibility of woman in the public sphere. 23 Upper-caste aesthetic aspirations stem from and are strengthened by the Natyashastra, which mentions that the women from the superior class would be gentle, smiling, compassionate, understanding, modest, steady in social as well as work situations. They would be dependable, courteous, and always ready to serve the elders, and clearly showing the natural qualities of beauty, sweetness, and noble descent. Rangacharya Adya, The Natyasastra: English translation and Critical Notes. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, Delhi, 1999. 24 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, London and New York, 1999, pp. 24–5.

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set of historical references and socialization, through formal and informal education, outside and within the family structure. The way in which their voice has been heard, or the space that they have been given, in the changing world of dance has been completely different from that of a woman performer from the lower strata of the social ladder. By voice, I mean their accessibility to policymakers, funds, visibility, and also the patronage from different governmental and non-governmental organizations. Starting with the generation of women dancers who took up dance as their everyday pursuit and interest, like Rukmini Devi Arundale, zohra Segal, Balasaraswati, to the large number of women dancers today (mostly upper-class, urban, elite) training to become classical performers today, the ‘body question’ has indeed been a problematic one. This is a body that they love, train, and use as the site for their public expressions and communication through dance. They train it, according to the rules of rightness, social correctness, and the expectations of their families and teachers. In the process, most of their awareness is shaped and structured according to the perspective of the ‘socially acceptable’ viewership, which many a times completely suppresses much of their instinctive expressions, by schooling these bodies through rigorous training. In other words, even before a mind starts any form of questioning, the bodily values of right and wrong are so deeply embedded in the minds and bodies of these dancers that the comfort zone of expressivity remains structured by these value systems throughout their lives. Meenakshi Thapan, discussing Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitas’ in the context of the women’s question, writes: Women’s personal and social worlds are defined in terms of the home, family, childhood, workplace and life experiences at various times in their lives. In the process of articulating their life-worlds, women traverse untrodden paths of revelation, strength, and surprise as well as the more frequented ones of abuse, dishonour, shame and rejection. In these they revert to memory, narrative, the voice as tools for reconstructing their emotions, thoughts, and experiences in making sense of their own constitution as embodied, gendered beings.25

While this holds true in the context of women’s personal and social worlds in many ways today, I argue that many of the images that the body becomes the site for, in the classical dances, are not formed on the basis of the bodily experience of a subjective nature. Instead, they are born from the historical experience of learning a value system, belonging to a bygone era, and many a times not a part of the life experience of the lived life of the dancer herself. In other words, the reality of her everyday life is put aside, as she reclaims a tradition through her body and performance, entering into the imaginary realm of a world that begins and ends with the performance itself, and does not have anything to do with the everyday reality of her body. Time and again, dancers claim to want to perform ‘the imagined,’ as they slip into the comfort of not having to perform ‘the real’.26 Meenakshi Thapan argues, 25

Meenakshi Thapan, ‘Habitus, Performance and Women’s Experience in Everyday Life’ in Reading Pierre Bourdieu in a Dual Context: Essays from India and France, eds. Roland Lardinois and Meenakshi Thapan, Routledge, New Delhi, 2006, p. 203. 26 I refer to a previously published discussion with several dancers from classical traditions of Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Kuchipudi and Mohiniattam where I could ask a question to the senior

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The element of self-construction is therefore always present in both perception and practice… I attempt an understanding of women’s performance both in front of the mirror not only to present their embodied selves with a particular image but also as they see themselves performing for the gaze of the other. While it is true that through such performances women are not transgressing authority and their construction of gender identity remains embedded in particular images that exist in the social, cultural and public imaginaries. They nonetheless give off expressions of themselves that they want to, in the process of construction of their self and public image. In this sense, the woman is engaged, in practical sense, in creating and performing images that show her to be how she wants to be seen.27

Keeping this argument in mind, I put two important threads of thought that come up in this section—that of the ‘projection of my body as known to me,’ and the ‘projection of my body as expected by others’—in all discussions with women dancers in the context of the dancing body, who they are and what they perform today (Fig. 4.2). The common confusion remains evident between the choice of being a part of the contemporary world, and yet performing and embodying the values of another time. Rukmini Devi’s words, “A great dancer’s art must depend first on the life he or she expresses, secondly upon the beauty of technique and lastly only, upon its arrangement, costume, and presentation.… Though form, technique and skill are essential, great Art must have the impetus of genius, and inspiration. Then there is permanency”28 is what many learners have grown up hearing from their dance teachers. At the same time, she bestows responsibilities on women as mothers, educators, and bearers of culture, helping and influencing the nation, being an exemplary human being and many such other essentialities. These responsibilities themselves, when carefully analysed, make it clear that there are simultaneous references to both the private and the public in their lives. The dancer, therefore, lives a life in the year 2023, with present-day aspirations, like many other women of the twenty-first century, but she is given (in the package of the added mytho-history of the form she is learning) values that makes her also simultaneously exist in a mythical, patriarchal world of the gods whose lives she continues to dance. dancers and dance teachers, ‘While being strong, independent and self -sufficient women yourselves, who have been managing their family, public life, media, publicity, practice, teaching, finances, and a hundred other things, how are you able to slip into roles of the submissive traditional women—in dresses, characters and bodily aesthetics used in dance?’. On another occasion, at a seminar in Kolkata during a presentation of Draupadi’s ‘Vastraharan’ (taking away of clothes of Draupadi by Dusashan, after Yudhisthir lost her in a game of dice) a leading Kathak exponent and academic discussed about the devotion with which Draupadi placed her entire faith in Krishna and waited with complete submission for him to come to her rescue, while the vile act of trying to take off her clothes was going on. The dancer discussed the process of a workshop, through which she asked contemporary students of dance to understand this phenomenon of devotion and faith. In the interactive session of the seminar there were several comments and questions, and all of them centred around the fact that in the present world, the consciousness and the resistance of violations of personal space as well as the body and mind of a woman makes it impossible to put one’s faith in, and wait for someone else’s ability or intention to ‘come to the rescue’. Hence, the young dance student today may just need to blindly imitate the gestures, instead of being able to identify with the same feelings of faith and devotion. 27 Meenakshi Thapan, op. cit., p. 216. 28 Leela Samson, Rukmini Devi: A Life, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2010. p. 129.

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4.12 Queering the Space Beyond Binary “Dancing is a precarious activity, a dangerous and fleeting occupation at best. On one hand it has been a space where queerness has existed without being attacked, but that is only because there is a certain form of acceptance about cross-dressing and performing the other gender embedded within the normative patterns of dance learning and performing.” Personal interview, Delhi, 12 February 2023. [Name withheld as the dancer did not want be identified]. The gendering in Indian dance moved into a rather strictly bifurcated representational space for a non-negotiable identification of the feminine and masculine characteristics that have become part of the pedagogical structures, within the grammars of the classical dance. The training contains feminine and hyper-feminine representations sharply pitched through texts and contexts, against the masculine and hyper-masculine movements and emotive regimes. The field is also deeply implicated within the social rubric of conservatism in India. While the there are many examples of cross dressing and male and female impersonation in the folk dance and theatre, and the art-world in general, and dancers in particular, accept different sexualities and gender fluidity among practitioners more easily than many others—the challenges continue in the form of constant direct and indirect attacks on the queer aesthetics, lives, personal decisions and visibility. It is such a world that is seen and not talked about that has been addressed by public/legal and performative stances of some dancers in the recent past. One important turning point has been the case now well-known and celebrated as a significant victory: NAVTEJ SINGH JOHAR VS. UNION OF INDIA29 in which five individuals (Navtej Singh Johar, Ritu Dalmia, Ayesha Kapur, Aman Nath and Sunil Mehra) had filed a new writ petition challenging the constitutional standing of Sect. 377.30 In its judgement to this 2016 Writ Petition the Court upheld the right to equal citizenship of all members of the LGBTQI community in India. The website31 highlights the SIGNIFICANCE: The five-judge bench of the Supreme Court overruled the Koushal decision. It unanimously read down Sect. 377 and decriminalized same-sex relations between consenting adults. It applies to all citizens, and not just to the LGBT community. This judgment holds immense persuasive value for other nations which continue to criminalize homosexuality. The complications are far from over. But Johar’s quiet but determined attitude of sustaining the struggle has led to lending of strength, voice and determination to many in the community as well as dancers who define themselves beyond gendering in many different ways.

The use of the word ‘queer’ by Jodie Taylor may be employed to understand the scope of the word in the context of Indian dance, where it is “a term of resistance imbued 29

NAVTEJ SINGH JOHAR VS. UNION OF INDIA, https://translaw.clpr.org.in/case-law/navtejsingh-johar-vs-union-of-india-section-377/ 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid.

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with anti-assimilationist and deconstructionist rhetoric that aggressively opposes hegemonic identificatory and behavioural norms, including liberal lesbian and gay identity politics” (Taylor, 2012: 14). To analyse the word further, Taylor further says: [Q]ueer is destabilising, liminal, unfixed and contingent, and quite possibly above all else, it is highly contested. Within the academy, it is often argued that queer refers to nothing specific, but is defined precisely by what it is not, acquiring meaning only from “its oppositional relation to the norm” (Halperin, 1995, p. 62). Since the purpose of queer is to oppose norms through disturbing definitions and legitimisations, queer perpetually refuses to be defined or legitimised, and attempting to do so “would be a decidedly un-queer thing to do” (Sullivan, 2003, p. 43). For dance, the idea of the queer cannot have a single definition, and neither can it have a single theory. According Taylor, “Queerness is sustained through its perpetual challenge to normalising mandates. (Taylor, 2012: 14). In the dance ecology of contemporary India, queerness ranges from gender transgressions in defiance of any particular identity, often used to dismantle fixed rigidities within dance pedagogies, or practices and projections rising against caste/gender/class/power hierarchies. The references are time and space specific in the understanding and framing of queer and the understanding draws from both historical and the contemporary constructs. Many /dancers have told me the queerness requires as much activism and belonging to the moment, as dance needs practice and skill, hence what queer does in more important than what queer is.

4.13 Performances as ‘Doing’: A Clear and Present Statement of ‘Being’ Amongst many others, Navtej SIngh Johar and Mandeep Raikhy’s works have challenged and resisted performing gender stereotypes consistently. While Johar had been trained in Kalakshetra and had practiced traditional Bharatanatyam for a long time before beginning his pathbreaking experimental works, Raikhy immersed himself in his active choreographic journey in response to the changing atmosphere of fear, surveillance, and regressive politics with the coming of the right-wing government in India. In Raikhy’s opinion, it was clear that dance was locked up with the institutions and the state. There were atrocities against minorities and many artists were coming out on the roads and returning their state-given awards, and for Raikhy it seemed like a time he wanted to dance his resistance. Both Johar and Raikhy have performed and created several choreographies challenging the docile acceptance of the normative structures imposed on dance and dancing bodies. Johar’s dance works since the early 2000s are placed in the realms beyond visible applications of gender-identification. One such example is Fana’a: Ranjha Revisited (performed in a trio, 2005 and a duet, since 2007). It is one of the ongoing experiments in such a gender fluid choreography, created and presented in various iterations over the years in duets and trios. The work is based on two stories - Heer

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- Ranjha from the north and Kutrala Kuravanji from the South of India with live music by Madan Gopal Singh and Elengovan Govindrajan. The two male dancers change gender roles seamlessly, to defy boundaries between male/female, sacred/ profane, love/devotion and structured representation/immersive engagement. With both the stories bringing together sufi and tamil poetic renditions, the dancers used Bharatanatyam, Yoga, Chhau, modern dance and contemporary experimentations with physical theatre. Like many of Johar’s choreographies, this performance opened up imaginative possibilities for the audience to imagine crossing of boundaries of gender, dance form, and specific realms of music / dance/ rhythm. freely intermixes contexts, characters, and texts; it accommodates passionate expressivity, unrestrained craving and calm acceptance through out its abstraction of two different stories love and transcedance. It forces the audience to find a narrative not bound or regulated by gendered readings. Mandeep Raikhy’s dance work Queen-size (2016), is his response to section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, that continued to criminalise homosexuality in India for a long time. It was inspired by an article “Why My Bedroom Habits Are Your Business” by the late gay activist Nishit Saran (published in The Indian Express in 2000), and a small painting of two men lying together on a bed by late Pakistani artist Ashim Butt. Regarding Queen-size The Hindu writes, To some, watching Queen Size will perhaps be uncomfortable; it challenges hetero-social norms and, at the same time, engages in a subject that Indian society finds uncomfortable regardless of gender: physical intimacy. Watching two men, two human beings enact an activity so natural, but otherwise taboo, might just be the show we require to question our own perception of sex, sexuality and gender. And for those unwilling to delve so deep, the contemporary dance show will nonetheless be something they’ve never experienced before. (https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/dance/An-intimate-entanglement/ article16785622.ece. Accessed on 14-02-2023.)

According to Raikhy, Queen-size was inspired by. The piece comes across as a dance-theatre that makes audience engagement imperative in the intimate space where the performance by two males on a small cot is placed at the centre with one single line of audience sitting all around. The performance – weaving the two male bodies in a charged situation of passionate intimacy comes in segments, leaving the audience with a choice to walk out or in during each of the short breaks after ten minutes of experiencing the movements from up close – all the while intensely conscious and perhaps for the first time understanding one’s position as a viewer of something that is outside of normative visual sphere. Many in the audience have found themselves looking away, looking around to see others watching the ongoing intimacy, or even trying to read the minds of others present in the space. The performance forces the viewers to become a witness to their own uncomfortable relationship with intimacies that are taboo in the social sphere, while also pushing one to also think about the reasons behind the acute discomfort.

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4.14 Roots of Discontent Amidst Assertion of Aesthetics There are several problematic wounds in the world of dance. As already mentioned, severe caste, class, religion, and language-based hierarchies have created an everfestering discontent around the selective stigmatization of professional women dancers, whose labour of dance has been delegitimized and criminalized from the time the Indian national cultural policy was finding a way to shape of its postindependence future, in the late stage of its colonized existence. The delegitimization of hereditary performers from across India, specifically within the regional dance histories of communities earning their living generationally by using dance as a skilled performance, has created its own unsurmountable boundaries that continue to both shape and shackle artistic practices and the work of people who would like to shape their present and future without a constant reference to the past. The academic discourse (Soneji (2012), Priya Srinivasan, Amrit Srinivasan, Avanthi Meduri, Banerji (2019), and many others) have mostly been heavily based on the historiographies of the southern part of India and Odisha, where the Devadasi tradition has disenfranchised generations of practitioners. The other practitioners are not talked about in the same ‘class,’ as their forms of dance have not reached the status of classical dances. Hence, the disenfranchisement in their cases has not even been noted by a scholarship that only concentrates on the histories of the ‘classical’ dances of India. There are several ways this crisis of the past has percolated to the present day, and is affecting the dance community, especially the discourse on women who dance. It is impossible to relegate all responsibility of such marginalization completely to the past. The patronage of the past may be blamed for all social wrongs perpetuated by the decision to rob the artistic communities of the temples of South India of their rights to work, be recognized as artists, and also of any right to be a part of the temple’s functioning. This past continues through the perpetuation a deep castebased marginalization and a social stigma that continues in the present times, being practiced by the currently active and weaponized systems of control that the South Indian dance ecosystem has internalized. Hence, the visible and invisible systems of power and control have emerged as the censor-board of Indian dance. Why for instance is there so much control on what is the standards for classical dances such as Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi? Why is it necessary for dancers to pass these censor boards’ control certificate to dance? Who supplies and reinforces power to these contemporary replacements of the male temple priests of the past, who could make or break the lives of the dancers? Why and how do such patriarchal and Brahmanical structures of control exist, with so many feminists, and enlightened scholarships speaking against them? Wouldn’t it be normal to challenge and dismantle these ways of applying censorship selectively, based on caste—class—bodily qualities, and some archaic set of dance aesthetics, in today’s world? If that is not happening, we must ask, who is providing oxygen to such (needing to be defunct) systems of control? In whose interest does this process get continued?

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4.15 Analysing the Roots of Discontent In her essay “Women’s Art, Women’s Labour: Ethnographic Vignettes from Mithila” (2021, 329–349), Sandali Thakur writes The colonial powers accused Indians of ‘primitivism’ and ‘barbarism’ owing to oppressive social practices, especially in relation to women. In an attempt towards anti-colonial selffashioning, Indian nationalists responded to these accusations by resurrecting and glorifying select ‘indigenous’ traditions needed to construct a pan-Indian cultural identity, central to the nation-building project. (Thakur, 2021: 330).

She also talks about the post-independence increase in the visibility of marginalized groups and their assertion of their own identities, to stake “their claims to the nation by mobilising around linguistic, caste, class, gender, and other identities, challenging the idea of a homogenous Indianness”, leading to assertions that “cultural forms in India cannot be considered homogenous expressions of undifferentiated ‘communities’, and ought to be interrogated along caste, class, gender and other axes of stratification to bring out the contested nature of culture and tradition” (Thakur, 2021: 330). On countless occasions in the past, the socially and culturally implicated acts of humiliation aimed at the women and non-brahmins have been successful in reducing their access to patronage in creative and artistic activities, restricting their ability to negotiate for fair value for their labour, and their rights as artists. One such very distinct case is that of the devadasi (Meduri, 1996; Soneji, 2012), where the continuous references to the polluting power of the female body has been used to rob her of the rights to access her place of artistic practice as well as her artistic labour. Soneji writes, The issue of devad¯as¯ı reform was embedded in larger public debates about women and sexuality in colonial India. In the nineteenth century, women and issues related to sexuality— including sati, widow remarriage, age of consent, among others—were referenced largely in a symptomatic sense, as signs of India’s social and moral lack. (Soneji, 2012: 112)

In her seminal article “Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy in India: Gender Caste, Class and State” (1993: 579–585) Uma Chakravarti writes, The gender subordination of women assumed a particularly severe form in India through the powerful instruments of religious traditions which have shaped social practices. A marked feature of Hindu society is its legal sanction for an extreme expression of social stratification in which women and the lower castes have been subjected to humiliating conditions of existence.

In Chakravarti’s opinion, gender and caste hierarchy are interlinked and act as the ‘organising principles of the Brahmanical social order’. She notes that neither the scholars of caste, nor those of gender have linked these two principles. Her article creates a structure for linking caste, class and gender, and in understanding the marginalization and social stratification of women. Any project of establishing a larger order of things and beings banks on surviving beyond its assertive introductions in the initial period, through the process of

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becoming accepted as a norm and eventually a habit. The habit is easy to perpetuate by processes of regularization—one of which is socialization. Soon, there comes a point where the imposed order is regularized and any non-compliance is marked and criticized as an aberration. Upper-caste sensibilities normalized within the dance ecology in urban centres in India are one of the best examples of this process.

4.16 The Contentious Issue of Labour, Privilege, and Dispossession By privileging a convenient mytho-history as a mode of control, the post-colonial dance discourse in India largely continues to be the privilege of higher castes and classes. The neoclassical dances continue to create the ideal reference to a patriarchally transmitted aesthetic that uses the notion of the feminine body as the carrier and transmitter, but not an interlocutor of cultural expressions. In the enthusiasm of building the new India, such was the celebration of unique and united vision of “Indian” culture that dance histories were clumped together from different communities and geographies. The Hindu religious dramaturgy dictated this road map. The divide between the upper-class elites and the lower caste “mass” was widened by the manner in which such an aesthetic needed to be produced—with the help of expensive training, dresses and ornaments, the expenses of a stage production, and the availability and accessibility of power and patronage. In the parallel space of rural India, dance is still marginal in its presence and representation. Embedded within the rites, rituals and economic calendars, the negotiations of traditions, dancing or to dance, as a verb, is an important activity— a cathartic tool for the reaffirmation of solidarities and social bonds, and also a ritual tool for communications with and beyond inter-human spheres. In this anthropological reading, I see ‘dancing,’ as a verb that can be interchangeably used with ‘labouring’ as a sustained physical activity, achieved through the conscious application of systematic effort. This need not be seen as ‘cultural labour’ (Prakash, 2019)32 necessarily, but exists as something identified by dancers who recognize embodied and practice-based understanding of sustained effort as labour. Along with the socio-economic violations implicated in the survival-based choices/forced acceptance that dancing has thrown towards the women from economically/socially marginalized communities, dance means different things in different societies. Regardless of its form, or regional and community identity, the common element that a dancing body has is the labour that it puts in. Paid or unpaid, all dancers of participatory dance practices or presentational ones33 use a sustained form of activating energy, balance, control, and breathing, as well as an interactive connection with other participants/musical accompaniments/space and time. Though vitally important, the word “labour” is generally avoided by dancers, as it 32 33

See Brahma Prakash’s book, Cultural Labour For details on participatory and presentational dance, see Chap. 3.

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refers to an activity that is often forced. Since in many community practices, the idea of dance is a participatory activity still associated with either ritual necessity or a voluntary activity for leisure or pleasure in a safe space within the community, the ideas of evaluation is not associated with it until it becomes something that is sold as a cultural commodity to people who buy it as a product. Such examples are ample now, in ethnic tourism, cultural showcasing, etc., whereby participatory forms are turned into cultural products. While restricted within its community space, the more comfortable term is often “effort,” if any is used at all. The term of reference varies among dancers, often being referred to as “trance/trance-like engagement” in ritual spaces, “playing” or “participation” in community celebrations, dedication/ practice in case of formalized dance forms that have to be learned from professional teachers. The idea of assessing the “labour” comes with a professional evaluation. In this context, another layer may be added using Prakash’s conceptualization of “cultural labour” as a “creative economy placed in a hegemonic local context.” It serves to specifically explain the labour that is performed for the public and has a presentational value, and is useful in understanding intersectional spaces inhabited by dancing bodies. He argues, Like immaterial labour, which maintains its global networks, cultural labour maintains its local networks. In this background, Cultural Labour is an attempt to bring culture and labour both in its entwined as well as in intertwined performative mediation... The society produces a condition of performativity in which the body and work can only be realized through cultural performances. While the body becomes an actor, work becomes labour—resonating the eternal production of creative and cosmological values. (Prakash, 2019: 3)

Prakash’s writing draws attention, yet again, towards the need for a deeper understanding and theorization of dance as labour, bringing in contextual readings on the labour of producing a performance vis a vis creating a sustainable way of earning, and thinking on the production of value, in similar lines as Srinivasan (2011), and Chakravorty (2017). His methodology foregrounds cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and sociology, to create an argument that is socio-economically self-sufficient without any reference to the dancers and their specific efforts/skill/emotive involvement in the dance ecology. In a way, this simplifies mode of linking labour to agency reaffirms the way in which the state-encouraged hyper-aestheticization of dances renders insignificant the physical and emotional effort and labour of all dancers across genders. The reference to the actual forms of moving/dancing that need to allude to a specific technique of producing communicative movements has little space anyway within humanities and social sciences. Used as a socio-economic term, the word labour fails to account for the effort that any dancing body puts in to achieve the state of dancing as a possible path/investment. It is only after such a journey that dancing becomes available to the dancer as a tool for self-pleasure, or earning a living in organized or unorganized sectors all over the world. Another problem with looking at the effort and application of the skills related with different dance forms as cultural labour is that there is an immediate hierarchization of the amount of investment in culture and labour (learning and/or practice). This is a reality already in case of the acceptance of the classical dances as pedagogies acquired through

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long-term learning and therefore considered as higher in the form of the pedagogical investments ( referred to as cultural labour in a simplistic manner). The aesthetically insulated, state-controlled ecology of neoclassical dances in India still reverberates with selective references to respect, dedication, beauty, culture, tradition—largely in denial of the harsh realities of survival and labour. This same ecology is uncomfortable about references to its connection with vulnerabilities and exploitations. Meanwhile terms such as patronage, market, commodification, value, price/cost, labour and many other economically and socially implicated words are reserved for the practices that have been either categorized as ‘entertainment’ or ‘popular,’ or even have been attached as an extension to sex work—marking them in specific spaces as distinct from and unsuitable for women who are privileged to practice dance as ‘pure’ art. I ground my argument in the word ‘privilege’ and lack thereof, beginning with patriarchy, caste system and governmental/regional economic entrepreneurism let loose on/through the dancing bodies of women. In this contested space limited by controlled visibility, fights for patronage and acceptance, the foregrounding of multiple dispossessions around women dancers, their labour and contribution through their regional, caste, gender and class, family and individual histories becomes essentially linked to the idea of work and labour. For more than a century, the histories of women dancers have remained privilege-specific. The relationship of dance (which is per se not considered as labour) often gets associated with acts and acknowledgments of labouring activities, such as harvesting, fertility rituals, hunting activities, going to work in the mines or other menial works for survival, as well as rituals that signify expressions of reinforcing relationships with the universe through the activity. It is usually not considered a skill, but a part of the everyday membership of a community, signifying liveness and participation as a sign thereof. The complication, however, arises when the assessment of such everyday spaces of belonging and liveness is conflated with a deliberate and focused use of dance as a part-time or full-time occupation. While there is always a possibility of seeing it as a choice, the precarity of the women born under the generational misogyny within the patriarchal structures of society makes it essential to understand the transactional value of the woman’s labour that is fixed with her family and the community. The worth or value of the woman as a transactional commodity fixes her with a value/price. Thus, it needs to be understood through the lens of labour—physical/cultural or otherwise, in and for itself. An ideal example is that of Kalbeliya, a local form of a popular dance from Rajasthan that has been identified as an Intangible Cultural Heritage Masterpiece. The current complex, gymnastic form of Kalbeliya involves training, as well as specialized and marketable skills, to turn it into an occupation for that generates an income. In comparison, neoclassical dancers generally detest the word ‘labour’—not because they do not think their work as a dancer requires hard labour, but because they are taught to think of investments for acquiring dance skills as an act of dedication, and would prefer to keep any reference to dance being a hardcore profession away from what they have been socially pushed to identify as passion. In addition, their training includes—like in many forms of dances all over the world—learning to hide all signs of labouring from their bodily presences while they learn, train,

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rehearse, or perform. Thus, hiding signs of sweating, panting, tiredness, not being in full control of all movements becomes a habit (Srinivasan, 2012). Moving from these socializational structures around dance, that bothers both genders equally, one must consider the fact that there are very few male students and practitioners in the dance academies teaching neoclassical dances in India. Dancing is not considered a serious profession for males. It is also still associated with deep-rooted stigma and stereotyping regarding sexualities. Dance classes generally have all-female students, many of whom drop out in the senior classes of school education itself. Less than 2% of the trained female dancers actually have successful careers as dancers, as the precarity of the profession stop most from opting to become solely dependent on dancing for their survival. This is where it becomes important to think through the idea of labour—in public and private domains, specifically for women. In economic terms, the scope of productive labour in dance is limited, uncertain, and short-lived in most of the neoclassical dance forms, unless the dancers seek employment as school teachers. The precarity lies in the fact that the nature of aspirations associated with the idea of neoclassical dances as pure high art do not match the way in which ultimately the continuation of the practice is dependent on how productive the labour of the dancer is. The association of dance with sexual labour, among professional dancers, stops upper-caste Hindu families from considering an occupation in dance as a worthy or acceptable profession. The passion for dancing among trained dancers is often sacrificed at the altar of sociability and acceptance, by women giving up careers in dancing and getting into the modes of domestic conjugality, or choosing academic careers over dancing. It is also as a distinction against popular dance practices that are associated directly with sex work and forms of sexual exploitation and labour, by which certain forms of cleansed dance practices have been deliberately chosen and projected as high art, and therefore distinct from degraded sexual labour. Sandali Thakur writes, Market capitalism of the contemporary period has further rigidified its sanctity and inviolability, as art, especially ‘high’/‘fine’ art, circulates in the exclusive, rarified spaces of the art world. It is practiced, exhibited, sold and bought in the hallowed portals of galleries, museums, academies, studios, auction houses and other institutions, where dominant aesthetic criteria confer the status of art upon objects. (Thakur, 2021: 329)

Thakur also reiterates what is now an accepted understanding of intentional interventions in the construction of the neoclassical dances, when she says, ‘Most of what we call art has been a product of historically evolved sensibilities, shrouding within itself a range of social processes’ (Thakur, 2021: 329).

4.17 Patriarchy and Perpetuated Humiliation This is the moment to also bring into the critical discourse the complexities of using simplistic derivations of history, without engaging with the contemporary relevance of those histories—especially for the new bodies who are ill-informed inheritors

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of the legacies created by those histories and simultaneously the survivors of those historical malpractices. In India’s post-colonial history, there has been a thoroughly uncomfortable social space reluctantly provided to performing artists, especially dancers. Many of the nationalist leaders of those times had a difficult relationship with performing arts, and found it easier to sweep them into a deep cave and lock out of sight all practices that required live and moving bodies to be in spaces for public viewing. This uneasiness was the highest in case of the dancers, who were all doomed to be implicated within one single category—as providers of the sexual pleasure apart from dancing. That the male client, i.e., the Brahmin priest, the upper-caste male landlords, or other such patrons, were not implicated in the schema as exploitative manipulators of the sexual labour of the women dancers, forced to survive in a male-dominated patronage system, was, and even now is not considered in this ‘logical’ historical scape. One is surprised at how much baggage from that maligned history is carried even today by the young dancers– created by the perpetuation of systems of patriarchal power assertion. The common assumptions are hard to negate, and young women dancers drop out of practice and performance as they go beyond their school education. I refer to the patriarchal power embedded in the problematic histories of the women dancers from many regions of India (See Srinivasan, 2011; Soneji, 2012; Sarkar Munsi, 2016). It is easy to locate the perpetuation of caste, class, gender-based power structures in urban Indian spaces of cultural assertions, usually disguised under the shrouds of aesthetics and other undefinable assessments, and never completely promising full disclosure. In the shrouds of those discriminations lie stigmas, biases, and falsehoods perpetrated by a deep-rooted historical malpractice—that of power based on hierarchies of an intersectional nature. The most visible and one of the most painful of those histories is from several sites in the southern part of India, which still criminalizes the community of women performers whose legacies are now proudly claimed by the nation-state in the names of two neoclassical dances—Kuchipudi and Bharatanatyam (Pucha, 2013; Srinivasan, 1985). In the current dance ecology of India, there is a tangible residual trauma of the effect of the generational subjugation perpetuated through the grammars and structures in neoclassical dance. It also often results in severe oppositional identity assertions against the historical wrongs committed against women from the marginalized non-brahmin castes, which are clearly reactions to past violence and injustice. The residual effects of Brahminic and other higher caste hierarchic hegemonies, and the reactions to the obvious remnants of those continued hierarchical practices neither heal themselves, nor let anyone heal. The wound festers and manifests in creating newer violences on the new dancing bodies of the current times. Such continued acts of power tussle may have continued, as contemporary dance/dance-theatre by artists in India and as resistance to patriarchy and oppressions based on gender, caste, and class, where many women dance-artists activate the negation of tradition-based conservatism, evident in the neoclassical dance forms. I refer to V. Geetha’s clear analysis of patriarchy to address the particular and continuing trouble women have as dancers in contemporary times. These continued references render them helplessly bound by justifications of being guarded against

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wrongs similar to the historical ones that could again exploit the ‘vulnerable’ hapless female subject. Geetha writes, [W]omen’s rights to equality are constantly undercut by perceptions of their femininity and sexuality. So, women remain essentially ’sexed’ beings, denizens of the home and (caste) community, and not of the republic. Household, kin and caste networks, rather than the spaces the polity determine their life choices. In other words, in the Indian context, the kinship contract that men forge with each other intersects with the sexual contract that binds women to men in particular ways to exclude women from the democratic contract. (Geetha, 2007:118)

Geetha further argues that it is very clear that ‘the original patriarchal division of the worlds into the domestic and the public’ resurfaces again and again, and ‘that in almost all contexts, women were not viewed as effective citizens…’ (Geetha, 2007: 118). The above section leads us to explore the sense and fear of humiliation, that has been one of the major tools of control in the case of women dancers in the history of Indian dance, across class and caste barriers. The inherited anxiety of the residual historical references continues to traumatize them even today, of being identified as the ‘fallen’ or the ‘irregular’, and finally the ‘un-domesticable’. According to Palshikar (2009: 79), humiliation is usually an ‘assault on human dignity’, and to humiliate is usually an act of deliberate intent by which another human being is made to feel ‘inferior or deficient’ by the perpetrator(s). It is true that the world of neoclassical dance is usually populated by upper-class and upper-caste women, who by virtue of their cultural capital are somewhat shielded from the public acts of humiliation, at least in urban India. But in a very different socio-cultural milieu within the microcultures in rural and semi-urban spaces, the fear of humiliation is a tool for self-policing. The best everyday example of this is found in women’s socialization, that teaches them to accept servility or assume a posture of public defiance as two very different modes of defence against possible humiliation. Though written in a very different and specific context, Gopal Guru’s words on ‘detecting/ resisting/humiliation’ (Guru, 2009: 5) resonate deeply in an understanding of the social servility that dancers are either bound by or bind themselves in, within the perpetuating binaries visible in the dance ecology of India. The enactment of servility and patriarchy is visible in the reciprocal exchanges of professional women performers, often from the lowest rungs of the social ladders— dancers who are often powerful performers on stage, establishing a certain relationship with the audience for a long-durée performance. The post-performance space continues to remain under strong regulatory control, which is an ever-present spill-over from the social space the woman continues returning to. The brahmanical disciplining of women’s bodies has been introduced through the idea of representing the nation. By standardizing the expectation of a woman disciple in any of the neoclassical dances, and constructing a culturally solidified cage of aesthetics to contain and control her pollutant qualities—the Brahminic neoneoclassical dance forms thus force the dancers to invest their own labour for a long period of dedicated learning through complete submission. The control is unseen but unnegotiable, through rote-learning and memorizing through repetition. The aim is to

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curb the freedom of the body, expression and sexuality in the works of contemporary dancers. Often times the dancer finds herself split into two beings, existing in the past and the future at the same time. We are aware of multiple histories of subjugation and dispossessions faced by women dancers, that persistently de-value their labour and their contribution to India’s cultural history. The presentation then stresses on the importance of claiming the contemporary moment through dance and discourse—acknowledging the past but moving on to create new possibilities and values, beyond what has been perpetuated by the Guru-Shishya Parampara, to finally shape their dance, desire, and their claims of a place in history.

4.18 Attempts at Taming, Tameness, Control, and Resistance to Modes of Disciplining Ranjana Dave’s introduction to her edited volume Improvised Futures titled “Hierarchies of Doing” (Tulika, 2022) reiterates the fact that there is a tendency to accept and expect heredity as the principal way to push and enclose individuals into a fixed occupation, whereby ‘being’ from a particular caste would refer to ‘doing’ a certain occupation. Therefore ‘doings’ that could very well exist without any reference to ‘beings,’ in the contemporary times, continue to be hierarchized in connection to the references to birth or lineage. In dance as well, such histories continue to challenge the new spaces, choices, and agencies in many regional forms. But in contrast, there are other examples where forms like Nachni and Lavani remain referential to the gender-specific socialization born out of the stigmas attached to the occupations, and seem to force an identification of the performers as ‘available for selling their bodies along with their dance.’ This deep social stigma, pushed on the women from both Hindu and Muslim contexts, hangs like a non-negotiable weight on these women, as the Brahminic reforms of post-independence India refuses to acknowledge alternate erotic aesthetics, as well as the acts of claiming pleasure to women who refuse to be bound by the control of the patriarchal Brahminic norms. The term ‘taming’ becomes important as a process of stopping, controlling, and erasing such resisting bodies. The dancers are loud and celebratory while proclaiming their roles in the cultural statements often made by the Indian state, through annual government events such as Konark, Khajuraho, Puri, and several other festivals. Social media is filled with celebratory and self-congratulatory statements, mostly by women dancers, as they are invited to more recent models of celebrations being invented with tag-names such as “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav.” After the Covid-19 induced gap of two years, especially, the invitations for dance presentation in such spaces may signify a liveness that the dancers had almost given up on. The emphasis is thus even more on presentational opportunities as the stamp of success. Urban dancers, mostly from neoclassical dance backgrounds, claim complete devotion and dedication to their artistic practices. Many of them are often rewarded for their ‘dedication to the nation.’ In turn, they

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teach future aspirants to dream the same inherited dreams of being the ideally disciplined disciple with an ever-ready and visible trait of disciplinability. These master teachers—most often referred to as Gurus— also demand unremunerated service from their apprentices, students and troupe members, while they themselves are highly professional in their demands of remunerative justice for their labour. Often times the labour or effort that a Guru displays under her brand name is contributed by the students, and not directly by the master-teacher herself. She claims a superiority of intellectual and dramaturgical labour, over the actual physical and emotional labour put in by the junior performers. In neoclassical dances, the decontextualized learning of grammar as a skillset is not encouraged by the Gurus, because that would render them (most often projecting themselves as the traditional hereditary practitioners) powerless, and also without long-term economic support. The overemphasis on stereotypes of history, castebased control, gendering, performance ecology are all tools of control for retaining the safe cocoon of economic autonomy, in the hands of those who have managed to record their presences within the system of the administrative structures that control and shape the cultural capital in the country. In this assertion of control, power appears to be patriarchal regardless of the gender of the Guru. The problem of referring to history for validating and perpetuating stereotypes of ideal dedication, discipline, form, norms, and values in dance practice and teaching, is the automatic and assured validation of past practices. And of course, that has good and bad sides. It automatically offers the shelter and security of the Guru’s name and fame to the shishya, but also takes away or at least restricts one’s agency as a dancer. Stereotypes do not allow changes or debates, and are not accommodative of acceptance of differences. The Guru-Shishya Parampara thrives, and in fact, has resisted death even after being removed and replaced by formal systems of education, at least from obvious power-wielding positions in urban spaces. It still tries to keep its controlling grip on the performing arts through the production, perpetuation and affirmations of various stereotypes. Stripped of almost all its utility in the current times of claiming a selfless perpetuation of knowledge (in which the master-teacher or Guru is responsible for the safe handing over of knowledge, and the nurturing and continuous shaping of the inner and outer worlds of the learners or shishya), now this form of teaching can only claim mythical affirmations through historical references. It establishes the Guru, with the help of using words that refer to power, as the assessor–appreciator–rewarder, and the oppressive agent of control, reaffirming his control through stereotypical references of ‘appropriate dedication’, discipline, endless practice, ideal aesthetics and the immeasurable rewards awaiting the shishya if s/he complies with the ‘requirements’ associated with the ideal form of submission to the Guru. A picture that emerges in my mind about dance training is the selecting of the ideal presentational/presentable bodies. The more acceptable criterion was that of height— by which the taller girls were asked to stand behind the shorter ones. The other principles of choosing the ideal bodies remained unspecified, but became increasingly obvious to us, as the subjects who went through this terrifying selection process, as we grew older. Some girls would be in the frontline while others, even if they

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were greatly skilled dancers would be asked to go to the lines behind. The excuse was always some obtuse justification of lack of dedication or deficiency in precision, or lack of passion, or something equally vague. But one could see that the labour (described as dedication) and precision always came along with (or maybe it is better to read ‘after’) the looks. In other words—in dance matters, appearances mattered the most. The above example is from a city-based dance school (take any you want and they will all possibly be like rubber stamps of each other). The more serious problem was that of an imposed judgment on looks, body shapes, skin colours, that were never explicitly declared, as well as the class (that many-a-times was closely linked with the caste affiliation) of dancers, by which a silent but vicious curatorial power was utilized to render invisible, some pedagogies, looks, and castes.

4.19 Summing up: The Everyday Life of a Dancer 1887 Partho Chatterjee’s assertion of the distinction between a woman’s inner (ghar) and the outer (bahir) world (Chatterjee, 1993: 120–121) may be projected on the everyday life of a woman dancer, in order to establish the conceptualization and also the evaluation of the “material and the spiritual world,” that gets clarified in his writing on “The nation and its Women”, The subjugated must learn the modern sciences and arts of the material world from the West in order to match their strengths and ultimately overthrow the colonizer. But in the entire phase of the national struggle, the crucial need was to protect, preserve and strengthen the inner core of the national culture, its spiritual essence. No encroachments by the colonizer must be allowed in that inner sanctum. In the world, imitation of and adaptation to Western norms was a necessity; at home, they were tantamount to the annihilation of one’s very identity. (Ibid: 121)

In his essay, Chatterjee suggested that the readers “match this new home/world dichotomy with the identification of social roles by gender,” so that the nationalist plan for gender-controlled socialization can be clearly understood within the framework of selective references of modernism. The cultural policies formulated for independent India were geared towards the idea of protection of the ‘home’ as the abode of tradition, values, and aesthetic principles, which had to be protected through processes of cleansing, reforms, and canonization. Chatterjee saw in this process the emergence of the ‘new’ modern, and yet traditionally socialized woman, who was subjected to ‘new’ patriarchy, which chose the limits and boundaries of Westernization for her. In the process, the women themselves became propagators of new values of patriarchy, often becoming the proud transmitters of Indian culture and tradition, and helping in the process of hierarchization of cultural practices, as well as selectively asserting a “native cultural identity, but this was now a ‘classicized’ tradition—reformed, reconstructed, fortified, against barbarism and irrationality.” (Ibid: 127).

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In a recent essay, “Women and Nation Revisited” (2018) Chatterjee addresses the “Nationalist Patriarchy” in the Indian context, taking on the assertion of the existence and value of a tradition. He argues that, [But] it was a reformed tradition, selectively reinterpreted to conform to the conditions of the modern world… The unstated, but plainly visible, assumption was that this nationalist leadership would consist of progressive and reform-minded men. I then attempted to show that the key techniques of reform comprised a set of disciplinary rules governing the spaces where women may move, the activities in which they could engage, the image they could project of themselves, and the pedagogical process to which they were to be subjected.

According to Chatterjee, the disciplinary techniques were devised as a “framework of normalisation” of the differential rights and agencies standardized for women and men to access as social beings. He connects his arguments to his reading of Foucault’s Discipline and Punishment and The History of Sexuality, Volume One whereby he sees the selective use of disciplinary power through moral, legal and educational tools in the policies formulated and followed by post-independence India, helping the “national leadership, in order to establish and protect that freedom. Contrary to liberal mythology, the power of surveillance was not opposed to freedom; rather, one was incumbent upon the other.” (Chatterjee, 2018: 382). According to him, disciplinary institutions thus became instruments for “making the use of power a productive rather than a repressive force, produced the free individual of the modern society. This particular argument becomes useful in my intersectional analysis whereby one can see similar designs put into operation in the “nationalist resolution” of the women’s question along with all the intersectional identities arising out of caste, class and sexuality related marginalisations” (Chatterjee, 2018: 382). This is the moment to also bring into focus the critical discourse regarding the dismantling of the patriarchal order established and kept alive by the upper castes in the history of dance in India. In India’s post-colonial history, there has been a thoroughly uncomfortable allocation of space to the non-upper caste. Y.S. Alone’s continued critique is important to reiterate in this context, Tradition’s homogenizing force is a project of nationalist aspirations. His force limits the kind of artwork that is commissioned and exhibited, reducing artistic articulations of what is contained within nationalist imaginations. Works of art become timid and devoid of anyone not celebrated in the national imaginary, particularly the “lower castes.” he supposed postcolonial realm hardly produces a capacity to address difference. It does not offer a constructive critique of the hegemonic thinking that most Indians practice and bypasses issues of representation, making the process of knowledge formation a part of protected ignorance. (Alone, 2017: 166)

In Alone’s writings he sees “protected ignorance” as a lived phenomenon (Alone, 2017: 141) that is normalized through its continuous presence and visibility, a dayto-day phenomenon that is seen in every sphere, “including in the creative realms of visuality”. As a fitting conclusion to this chapter, I leave a set of unsettling observations that need to continue to churn the debates on Indian dance ecology’s continued interest in providing protection to the hierarchies and marginalizations, that Alone calls ignorance. The first observation is about the lack of engagement with anything except immediate self-interest, in many dancers with larger understandings of lived

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realities. The second matter is the resistance to change in themes, texts, movement aesthetics, presentations and representations, even while understanding the massive shifts happening in the cultural and economic spheres. The third question/observation is about the forceful and artificially stimulated space that stops direct opposition through patronage and fortification around the canonical forms of dance. And last but not least is the fact that upper-caste women, in spite of their gendered experiences of dispossession, themselves become the principal actors in guarding the dance space in all its conservative, autocratic projections of social (caste-based) hierarchies. Much of the efforts in the post-colonial times has been about creating and establishing the rules of identifiable ‘national’ socialization processes, and classical dances have come handy as a tool as well as space that is showcased for large-scale statesponsored endeavours. As already discussed, classical dancers (mostly women) are most often the chosen to be the presenters of the ‘national culture’. It becomes critical therefore to understand that because of their celebratory but short career span, the dancers have never thought beyond their immediate visibility. In the process, they have catered to the sweeping assumptions regarding dance and dancing bodies as stereotypical presences continuing as mere representations of antiquity, often rendering them insignificant as individual presences. One of the ways to understand the above argument is to analyse the presences of the dancing bodies on temple walls. In the discussions on sculpted dancing bodies of antiquity, one never goes beyond appreciating dancing bodies on temple walls to ask who these dancers may have been, whose real-life labour and crystalized and chiselled postures may have provided the inspirations for the sculptors’ labour in the resulting sculptures. On the other hand, do we ever think whether the sculptors needed actual labouring bodies of the dancers to curve the female figures on the temple walls? Or did these exquisite postures even need a woman to dance as an inspiration to the sculptor? Maybe these static representations were just perpetuated by the stereotypical representations that made an easy, permanent and convenient replacement, and simultaneously got rid of the live body and the complications that it posed for the patron? It may be useful to think how dispensable and precarious the presence of the dancer’s body then becomes, once it has been stereotyped into an aesthetic formula.

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Chapter 5

The Modern and the Contemporary in the Context of Dance in India

5.1 Offering an Auto-ethnography as an Introduction: Shaping of My Contemporary I see my ‘contemporary’ as having been shaped by three rather radically different spaces. One of them is my becoming a social anthropologist with an extraordinary opportunity to experience everyday life (pushing for paradigm shifts beyond religious, caste and class privileges); the second is the experience of learning and unlearning with the students and scholars of the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University since 2004; The last but not the least is USICC and the rigorous and uncompromising push for creativity as well as skill-based performance trainings, tours, roles and my personal observations and reflections on the audience and patronage. I believe I have been extraordinarily privileged to have been given a chance to engage with (if not fully understand yet) the ‘ground zero’ I dance and research on. I remain a disheartened witness of the performative politics of exclusion of the current times around the character I played in the past, where writing many versions of my past experience remains the only way to deal with the remnants of my past in my present. I share here, my own experience of performing/being Rama over more than twenty-five years, from 1981 to 2006, in a performance created and staged by USICC, and the changing social environment through that time. I specifically focus on the period of 25 years from pre-politicisation of Rama to the slow resurgence of the Rama as the tool of highly political notion of “Hindu identity”. I begin with the following question: Through what can one establish in retrospect — a relationship with past embodied activities and choices that now shape the present relationship with dance? Chapter contains an updated version of the essay “Boundaries and Beyond” (Sarkar Munsi, 2008: 78 – 98)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_5

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Seeta Swayamvara was planned as a choreography first in 1970. I was 11 years old then and already a student of USICC. The senior students (approximately 15 years and above) were choses as different characters, with us getting small roles as a part of the crowd—of demons, sages, King Dashrath’s aides, and Seeta’s companions. The first staging was sometime in 1971, in the then biggest auditorium in Kolkata named Rabindra Sadan. Seeta Swayamvara became the most popular of Mashima’s choreographies ever. During the first year, here were 11 days of full-house performance on consecutive days. I began by doing small portions of group dances, but eventually got the chance of being Tadaka (the sister of Ravana, who was killed by Rama) in a few performances, and then got selected to dance the role of Lakshmana sometime in mid-1970s. Mamata Shankar, Uday Shankar’s daughter remained Rama from the premier till 1981, when I inherited the role. I continued to perform Rama till 2006. There were two more shows after I moved to Delhi and USICC closed down in 2015. Being chosen to perform the role of Ram, I needed to understand the role of the young prince Rama that demanded attention on the presence and representation of the main character on whose shoulder rests the overall success of the show. In the process of growing into the role, I slowly began to understand that I needed to learn to create my own representation of this imaginary character, rather than aspire to be the best possible clone of Mamata Shankar, on whom the role of the young prince had initially been designed. Slowly my movements began to make communicative meanings for me, rather than being just being a reproduction of what I had seen Mamata perform. My understanding of communication through gestures were enhanced by the microedits suggested constantly by my Kathakali teacher—who pushed for a more detailed and deeper understanding of emotive gestures from me, to become minimalistic and yet able to portray the basic character of the young prince, who was already groomed to become the future King of Ayodhya. He asked me to keep in mind that Rama was young but not immature, swift but not impatient, assertive and bold but not arrogant and aggressive. For me the character was beginning to get clarity, as I started having my own explorations of being Rama, curved out of my own experiences of everyday life. Rama’s first entrance with his brother into King Dashrath’s was of great significance. The brightening of stage lights and the crescendo of music announced Rama’s entrance (that also was the highlight of my efforts for establishing my presence) to the audience. During every performance—whether on covered proscenium or in a large open-air stage in a fair ground—all that my consciousness would allow me to sense were the tightening of all muscles, the rigid straightening of the spine and the blurring of vision beyond the concentrated immediacy of the zone that would be my space for the next minute and a half of the introductory dance. That was the moment when Rama and Lakshmana entered with matching movements, and stood holding a posture for a second for the audience to absorb their presence and then bowed to their father and other elders present in the court. It was Rama who connected to the audience, while it was me through that presence, who had to establish the grandness of the character I was playing, in all its glory. The last scene was that of the wedding celebrations of Rama and Seeta. At the end of the wedding, Rama, Seeta and Lakshmana walked out of the stage leading

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a procession by a long line of dancers. The audience was always surprised by a spotlight coming on, focusing at the main entrance of the seating space. In came the procession, led by Rama, in a single line that danced through the audience. This was always a moment where the actor/dancer in me was existing simultaneously in/as two characters. At that time, I was Rama, who had to bless the audience in the traditional format of Ram Leela performances that happen all over India. At the same time, it was my moment for receiving appreciations from the clapping and appreciative audience. Some days Rama got more ovations and people fell on the feet, some days Urmimala, the dancer, was gratified with more cheers with the crowd showing its appreciations for the performer and not the god/prince she represented.

5.2 Negotiating Roles: Performing Rama or Being Rama? At hindsight it becomes important to note two kinds of negotiations that were going on in terms of the reception by the audience. The first was the automatic presence a person playing the role of Rama was accorded by viewers. For me—a child born and raised in a communist family — it was deeply disturbing to see that for an audience in northern parts of India it was a clear case of ‘darshan’ or the appearance by a deity. Like many folklores, Ram Katha is also very commonly performed as a part of the festivities around Ram Navmi and Dussehra. These performance traditions are part of the cycle of festivals and oral traditions in many parts of northern India, and has people commonly looking forward to the prolonged Ram Katha readings or performances where the roles of the deities may be enacted by human actors. Thus, the use of the word ‘enactment’ or the idea of representation in a performance, is often automatically confused and used interchangeably with the performer often ‘becoming’ the deity as is often an expectation in a ritual process. As Anuradha Kapur (Kapur, 1990) observes in her writings, the choice to acknowledge the interchangeability of the real flesh and blood humans as actors vis-a-vis the imaginary as the representations of characters from the epic exist right in front of the audience as is seen in Ram Leela of Ramnagar. But, by conscious choice, the devotees choose the representations as the real. In my case, I often wondered, how people could touch my feet or ask for blessings, while standing really close in a crowd with me, knowing fully well that I was a woman playing the role. This happened even after the performance was over and the performers were mingling with the audience, wearing their ordinary, everyday clothes. I was partly amused, partly astonished and largely uncomfortable at the obvious power of the oral and audio-visual transmission of faith, that has been anthropologically (and rather apolitically) construed as knowledge and culture. That this religiously strengthened faith had the power to generate unquestioned following, soon became clear in the next decade. Arvind Rajagopal pinpoints this change by writing,

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The Ramayan epic was serialized on national television in India from January 1987 to August 1989. During the broadcast, the Ram Janmabhumi (Birthplace of Ram) movement, which aimed to demolish a mosque, Babri Masjid (Babur’s mosque) in Ayodhya and build a Ram temple in its place, grew in importance… The Ramayan achieved record viewership in virtually every part of the country (something no serial before it had done), and made Sunday mornings “belong” to it; any public event scheduled for that time courted disaster. With such publicity given to its pre-eminent symbol, the god-king Ram,… [t]he issue was officially declared to be political, with the BJP making it their number one priority that “a grand temple to Lord Ram” would be built at the site of the mosque. (Rajagopal, 2004: 30)

Soon came a time when the mythological prince was over-shadowed by the powerful image of Rama through the universalized ‘darshan’ that was stage-managed by the serial. In the midst of all this, Seeta Swayamvara was being performed as a popular dance-theatre in contracted performances for annual functions of banks, clubs, different annual celebrations of the Central and State Governments, especially Ministries of Tourism, Culture and Education. We were also invited to travel abroad with this particular performance several times. But things were changing definitely and ominously.

5.3 The Warning Bells of Change A performer understands his/her relationship with the audience. It is an instinct that was honed in me, as I walked through the audience in many performance spaces during the last scene, leading the way for the whole procession, every time, in different settings. In some spaces, there were thousands of people sitting on the ground, spilling over to touch Rama’s feet, with hardly any space for us to walk through. In others there were state-of-the-art auditoria, with spacious aisles down which it was easy to walk. In some there was total darkness, in the absence of any light, and the procession followed someone carrying a light to show the way. Vulnerabilities of such proximities were always lurking in our minds, but never ever were there any circumstance where we have had any unpleasant incident during the procession. It is only the memory of one single incident in Murshidabad, in the state of West Bengal, soon after the breaking down of the Babri Masjid that remains as a traumatic one. In a large proscenium at the venue of a religious festival, a sudden take-over of the stage by a group of monks, right after the wedding procession of Seeta Swayamvara, shocked us into stunned silence. This seemingly impromptu toxic display of masculinity in the form of a dance with weapons—with the monks from a well-known mission with its base in Kolkata roaring the popular chant using Rama’s name, still evokes a traumatic reaction in me and many other participants. I remember wondering about the Rama I was taught to portray as a tranquil and fair young prince. The Murshidabad incident was just the warning of the changed image of this known god-prince into a warrior in whose name intolerance could be spread, and people could be killed. That particular memory seems to point towards an important learning. Though dancers are told over and over—again and again, that the show must go on, and one must remain neutral

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as an artiste, there is no neutral position in the socio-cultural spaces. Choosing to be apolitical therefore is a political choice.

5.4 Remembering, Re-analysing, Regretting Throughout the changing circumstances what fascinated me was the audience reception of the ‘presence’ of Rama. In many of the venues of performance my personal gender, caste, class, appearance lost all significance, as the image of the male god materialized and connected to the receptive imagination of the strong visual and sensory prompt experienced by the deeply socialized devotees/audience. My additional focus has been on my own subjective identification as well as reaction to the phenomenon of ‘Darshan’, where ‘doing’ the role of Rama forces the dancer into ‘becoming’ Rama in the eyes of the viewers, even if for a short time. In the post-Ram Janmabhoomi riots, the memory of my acceptance of the responsibility of carrying on performing the role of this political icon began to make me feel defensive, angry and guilty. These times were not only about the spectacularized celluloid imagination of a warrior god. They were also about several riots and intermittent violence in the name of the same god and a complete politicisation of his image. As an actor who continued to perform the role of Rama, I uneasily wondered many a times about my contribution to that image. This uneasiness grew until I had to stop performing Rama altogether. I need to acknowledge here the failure to achieve a closure or any sense completion. As I have mentioned in both my previous essays (Sarkar Munsi, 2015, 2021), I am fascinated by the way I keep on changing the way I remember, as re-collecting becomes a continuous process, coloured and influenced by the circumstances that the memory is relived or retrieved in. In this case it becomes an ongoing process of documenting the self, an entirely different exercise from what one usually does in the structured ethnographic fieldwork. The sinister turn in global as well as Indian political scenario and the emergence of the right-wing political parties as the most powerful political player, now continues to shape the memories of being Rama through the times of ever-increasing utilisation of ‘Lord’ Rama to control public intellect. It is in this changed atmosphere that I am writing the third version of the story, more as an autoethnography than an anecdotal autobiography. One particular memory that remains unprocessed in my mind is that of a morning after a performance at the Prayag Music Conference venue in Allahabad. All of us went out early in the morning with Amala Shankar, as she wanted us to go for a boat ride and a bath in the river. After a bath and some frolicking in the waters of Prayag on a very cold morning, we took a ride on the boat and finally arrived at the house of a retired Judge, whose wife, the principal of a local college, had invited the whole troupe for lunch. I remember wearing a pink organza saree and a bindi. Soon the lunch was over and we came out on the street—waiting till the formal good byes were over. Suddenly I heard my name being called by Mashima. As I turned towards her, all I saw was a woman’s saree clad body dropping on the ground, with her forehead

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on my feet. It was our hostess. She was lying face down, right on the main road, in full view of everyone and showing her devotion to Rama. It did not matter that I did not look anything like the Rama she saw me perform the night before. Neither did it matter where she was or that I was not even 25 years old then. At that point, the power of control this devotion could have on human psyche, became very clear to me. The second incident was even more scary, and has been repeated at least three times during performances. It was during the last procession after Rama’s wedding celebration that I described before. It was a joyous surprise for the audience as it seemed as if they were being included in the festivities. People clapped, some sang along with the chanting, some stood up and reciprocated to the gestures of blessings and greetings that I was supposed to continue throughout the procession. On some occasions people came forward to ask for blessings. Those were neartraumatic moments for me. As an actor/dancer I knew that I had to carry on being in my character, but all the while I was cringing at people falling on my feet, or putting small children on my feet to ask for blessings—even to the extent of asking for the cure for some illness of a small child. Till date, I wake up in cold sweat in the middle of the night, panicking at the possibility of that child not being taken to the doctor—simply because the grandmother who placed her at my feet, believed in my enactment of blessing the child. I started getting troubled with the concept of performing the much-politicized emblem of a political party with whose fundamentalist politics I did not or could not agree to, as a person, an anthropologist or a social activist. As time passes, I use my continued experiencing as a methodological tool. In terms of methodological understanding, Diana Taylor’s words are relevant in this context. She writes, [P]erformance also constitutes the methodological lens that enables scholars to analyse events as performance. Civic obedience, resistance, citizenship, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity, for example, are rehearsed and performed daily in the public sphere. To understand these as performance suggests that performance also functions as an epistemology. Embodied practice, along with and bound up with other cultural practices, offers a way of knowing. (Taylor, 2003: 3)

I see the promise of autoethnography as a method of writing about embodied experiences in what Diana Tailor further explains: “By taking performance seriously as a system of learning, storing, and transmitting knowledge, performance studies allows us to expand what we understand by “knowledge.”’ (Taylor, 2003: 16). For me the pool of memories provides a tool for an unfinished and yet powerful and continuing documentation of lived realities. Thus, acknowledging the continuous experiencing, I assume that this version of the writing on ‘Being Rama’ will again be just another version of ’unfinishable’ writing ’in motion’ - as I experience and re-experience the past in the frames structured by the present—if only to keep open the ethnographic encounter of my changing perceptions of lived realities, dance, representations, and embodied abstractions. In the process of stepping away, my own ‘contemporary’ in dance and in everyday life got constructed. It lives in a resistive body, that registers a constant need to decolonise habits and thoughts, and struggles to keep alive a forceful resistance about docility and unquestioned acceptance.

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5.5 Looking for the Modern and Contemporary in Dance This chapter of the book wants to make identifiable the forms that exist and share the contemporary times, together with reference to the same geography—either in-situ or from some distant locations. Without aspiring to describe all forms that identified themselves as dance from India, it is a survival tactic here to choose to create a space for “all that is dance” in and from the present times. The chapter rather ambitiously wants to understand the impulses and motifs, rather than exact movement repertoires of forms that share the time–space references intentionally, competitively or with syncretical organicity. This section of the chapter is a shortened and updated version of the published essay, “Boundaries and Beyond: Problems of Nomenclature in Indian Dance History” (Sarkar Munsi, 2008). The laying out of a critical dance history at this stage of the book, needs to look at the folk, classical, Bollywood, modern, and contemporary dance as a cluster of rhizomic presences that construct the dance ecology in India, where references to all the different contexts, aspirations, and expectations of dancers and patrons/audiences co-exist in the current artistic realms. In the preface of her book, When is Modernism (2000) Geeta Kapur writes, “the modern is not an identical narrative in reckonings across nations: it has to be held in place in India by a contextualized and increasingly more critical stance”. (Kapur, 2000: Xiii) Kapur professes to “tackle the contestatory nature of Indian modernity, pulling the concept away from its conservative version where it is seen as emerging from a respectable lineage that becomes by some ideological miracle the bearer of civilizational values.” (Ibid, 2000: Xiii). She further suggests that “the modern” be placed and contextualized “within the troubled domain of the national” specifically addressing the developments in the world of art in Indian context of “theory, historical understanding and democratic politics.” (Ibid, 2000: XIII). To come back to the references of dance history, one needs to contextualize specific developments within India, that have distinct connectedness to global modernity of the times, but have developed as a new and culture specific experiment in relation to the Indian context. In previous publications I have argued for the recognition of a particular trend of modernity in dance, in Tagore’s prolific works in beginning formal education involving dance and movement practices at his university in Santiniketan, and Uday Shankar’s transcultural dance experiments. I have referred to these in my book, Uday Shankar and His Transcultural Experimentations: Dance Modernity (Sarkar Munsi, 2022: 42). I have also referred to Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose’s book Modern South East Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy, (Bose & Jalal, 2018: 99), where Bose and Jalal point out that there is an effort to identify a welldefined ‘fault-line between tradition and modernity as well as Indian and European modernity, that makes it impossible to take full account of the contestations that animated the creative efforts to fashion a vibrant culture and politics of anti-colonial modernity’ (Ibid). Tagore and Shankar stand as ideal examples of the emerging modern art practitioners, at the fault-line between tradition and modernity referred

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to in both publications of Geeta Kapur, and Bose and Jalal, and yet there was little invested scholarship on modern dance in India till very recently. The ‘pure’ form of dance had come into existence virtually through an elaborate process of cultural engineering, wherein the grammar was systematically structured, the link with the Natyashastra was deliberately sought and established, and, in most cases, even the name of the form was newly invented. In this deliberate and conscious process of shaping the history and geography of dance, there was no room for people who did not want to be placed in either of the two categories—classical and folk dance. As a result, there was never a specifically designated category for modern dance in the Indian context. Registering a point of change, as a new beginning that brought about a focussed event on an encounter between the East and the West (1984) as a catalyst for modern impulses and desires in dance in India, Uttara Asha Coorlawala writes, Despite a long history of transformation, Indian dance in the 1980s was known more for adherence to tradition than for innovation. The East West Dance Encounter represented an early effort to acknowledge and celebrate choreographic experimentation. It highlighted projects that contended with the demands of a recently reformed tradition and those that engaged with modernist aesthetics, including expressionism and minimalism alongside postmodern initiatives like parody. (Coorlawala, 2016)

That moment was seen as a moment of change and a paradigm shift by many, who saw hope for the future in the creativity in the works of artists such as Chandralekha, Kumudini Lakhia, Astad Deboo, Uttara Asha Coorlawala, and many others who “legitimized innovation for dancers from and within India.” (Coorlawala, 2016). Coorlawala’s further observation pushes readers towards a critical understanding of the hierarchical approach of Dr. Georg Lechner of the Goethe Institute, Max Mueller Bhavan (Mumbai)—one of the principal organizers, “from the literature produced by Dr. Georg Lechner after the event, one adduces that the Western dancers were presented as examples to be emulated.” (Coorlawala, 2016). By the time this much-hyped ‘East–West Encounter’, organized by Lechner, took place in 1984, Indian cultural pandits and the bureaucracy were already acknowledging the need for a more modern and contemporary image of India. The time was considered right to allow dance to also have, in this age of globalization, a modern avatar to suit the image of a modern India. My argument is that it was from this point onwards that the process of using multiple classical and non-classical forms, of crossing borders to use Western and other non-Indian Eastern techniques, of building a secular, open and absorbent movement vocabulary became acceptable and laudable. While it is fortunate that Chandralekha, Daksha Seth, and many others have been acknowledged in their lifetime for having made a significant contribution to contemporary dance in modern India, it is time that we reassess the roles played by Tagore and Uday Shankar, whose contributions to dance, already studied and evaluated much before the landmark year of 1984, have been critiqued as ‘confused’ (in the case of Tagore) or ‘westernized’ and ‘oriental’ (in the case of Shankar). Tagore has been criticized for having ventured into a territory that he knew nothing about. He worked with different forms of dance, both from India and abroad, in an attempt to create a more communicative dance language. This, however, according to the

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critics, remained a collection of forms to work with and did not really coalesce into a single idiom or grammar. Shankar, on the other hand, was disapproved of for simply taking elements from different dance forms and using these to create his own dance idiom, and for appropriating various techniques to build his own creative vocabulary for making dance. My interest is in trying to generate a revised opinion of Tagore’s and Shankar’s work in the light of the evolved state of scholarship on India’s colonial past in general, and on Indian dance history in particular. Without going into the debate of whether these critiques were fair or not, I would like to look at the definition of the term ‘modern’ in the context of dance, and also approach the much-debated term ‘contemporary’ in the specific context of Indian dance. I have focused on the Western historical connotations of these terms in order to try and discern whether the historical development of the Indian dance scene actually warrants the use of Western terminology, given that they have come to be used for certain specific genres or a certain politics of performance in the West. For a long time, Indian philosophers and thinkers, who were predominantly from the Brahmanical elite class, had serious problems in acknowledging the creative processes at play in dance—processes that could contribute to the cultural enrichment of the country and yet coexist with tradition. While the very use of the English language, the format of Western (British) education and certain Victorian notions of sanitisation were normally welcomed by the elite, the same people had great difficulty in accepting what they called the aping of the West in dance. As discussed in previous chapters, the socio-political status of dance and the condition of dancers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a major source of concern for social reformers and different thinkers expressed their concerns in different ways. For instance, in a letter to Uday Shankar, Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “There was a time when in the heart of this country, the flow of dance followed a buoyant life. Through passage of time that is nearly choked up, leaving us bereft of the spontaneous language of joy…. It is for you to give it health and strength and richness.” (Quoted in Khokar, 1983: 75). In accordance with the nationalist campaigns of the times, dance had to acquire a different set of functions and emerge as an emblem of culture and tradition to remain as an acceptable part of society; more importantly, it had to be distanced from its polluted past. Analysing the nationalists’ pride in the ancient glory of the Vedic past, Partha Chatterjee, in his book, The Nation and Its Fragments, says: ‘Ancient India became for the nationalist the classical age, while the period between the ancient and the contemporary was the dark age of medievalism’. (Chatterjee, 1997: 98). The bureaucracy in post-independence India ignored—either by design or because of its sheer inability to recognize power and knowledge—the third stream of dance that was alive as early as the beginning of the twentieth century. For dancers also, it was safer to be either a folk artiste or a classical dancer, and thus remain within the existing well-defined structure of patronage, in the attempt to categorize dance forms into these two safe slots. Discussions of innovations by Tagore and Shankar in the early twentieth century, therefore, become necessary to include in this chapter in

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order to understand the beginnings of transregional and transnational conversations within the dance ecology of India.

5.6 Rabindranath Tagore and His Contribution to ‘Modern’ Dance in India By December 1901, Tagore had established his ideal school at Santiniketan, Bengal. Here, in spite of society’s serious reservations against such practices in education, he gave an important position to music, drama, and the visual arts. From the very beginning, even though there was no dance teacher as such, he encouraged and participated in dance-dramas, where all the students and Tagore himself would use body movements in a dramatic or theatrical format along with songs. In 1911, Tagore produced and directed Raja (The King), in which he himself played the role of the grandfather. Sita Devi, daughter of Ramananda Chatterjee who was the editor of the then most popular Bengali monthly Prabashi, wrote about this production in her memoir: ‘The boys sang beautifully. It was a treat to see the great Poet dance in the midst of them, as the grandfather. He danced extremely well’ (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 5).1 The very next year, in September 1912, before the annual Durga Puja festival (the four-day festival celebrating the mother goddess Durga, extremely popular in Bengal), Tagore wrote a letter to his daughter Meera regarding the celebration of a festival at the school before the start of the holidays, saying, ‘here there is a proposal for the celebrations of the Sharadotsav. Dinu [Dinendranath Tagore, Rabindranath’s nephew] is going all out to train his gang of boys for the occasion’ (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 5). In 1916, ‘Tagore himself excelled in stage performance by dancing to two songs’ (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 6). Tagore’s principal motivation in using bodily movements as part of his understanding of education seems to have been the experience and expression of freedom, the sense of joy in bringing the body and mind together, in the process of undertaking explorations through music, poetry, dance, and drama. He wrote: ‘I am an ambassador of variety. I dance, and make others dance, I laugh and love to make others laugh in joy, I also sing, paint and do everything as a messenger of the god who is always discovering new joy in creating’ (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 1). Regarding dance, he wrote: The main function of the art of dancing is expressed in the beauty and the grace generated by the movement of the body in specific ways—sometimes even without specific meanings. The joy in that is of feeling the rhythm. Our body carries and coordinates the actions of the limbs, and in turn moves with their help. When the two coordinate in producing grace and beauty, dance is created. True dance is created when the weight of the body is shifted and played with by the movements of the limbs to give rise to a variety of body movements, not 1

Ghosh has written a number of books in Bengali on performing arts practices and their development at Visva Bharati, Santiniketan, during the time of Rabindranath Tagore as well as after.

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to make a living, but to satisfy the creative self within. Dance is not still, every moment the body goes into different movements, yet the receiver of the images sees dance as a whole in the totality of the result. All the movements making up a dance, bound by rhythm and meaning, aim to communicate an eternal truth. That truth is what reaches out to the audience, not the individual movements. (Quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 3)

Commenting on the unacceptability of dance as an art form on the part of India’s elite in general, and the Bengali middle class in particular, Tagore said: In all parts of the world, dance as a communicative tool gets respect as part of the arts practices. We have started relating it to the fallen in our society because the elite have stopped dancing. But dance continues to exist in many forms among different communities. Yet the urban elite has a problem in thinking of those dances as their own—even if they are beautiful—as a result of class-consciousness. (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 4)

Tagore acknowledged and took responsibility for consciously incorporating several dance forms, in developing dance as a tool for the expression of his ideas. He said: I have had the chance to see many forms of dance during my travels in the countries like Java, Bali, Shyam (Thailand), China, Japan, and also in many parts of our own country, like Cochin, Malabar, and Manipur. I am also acquainted with the folk and other dances of Europe. I feel I have a right and also the experience to talk about dance, and have tried to enrich dance as a form of expression and art in this Ashram as a holistic experience of beauty and grace, which is unparalleled in any other institution elsewhere. (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 3)

In his work, he constantly acknowledged the masters of different forms of dance, such as Buddhimantra Singh from Manipur whom he brought from different parts of the country to teach in his institution. Santidev Ghosh described the training carried out at Santiniketan, saying, Boys between the ages of eight and sixteen were selected for the training. I was one of them; some of the young teachers also joined the class… Every day the practice was scheduled for the evening slot reserved for games... Tagore used to be present for the class every day. His presence encouraged us even more... That was the first time teaching dance became institutionalized in Santiniketan. In the monthly newsletter of the institution the news of the new class was mentioned as ‘Two expert artistes have come from the court of the King of Tripura. The boys are practising rhythmic physical exercises taught by them to the rhythm of the Manipuri drum—Mridangam.” (Quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 9–10)

In the face of immense opposition to the idea of teaching dance to the students of Santiniketan, Tagore continued to invite experts of folk dance from different parts of India to his institution in order to increase the vocabulary of dance movement, and for students to use dance as a tool of expression and creative communication. He wanted the practitioners, initially at his intervention, to do what he had instinctively tried, that is, teach the students how to create expressive facial, body, and hand gestures so as to be able to communicate the text through dance. In 1923, during a trip to Saurashtra and Gujarat, he saw the performance of a dance by some women in a village, where they were dancing to the rhythm of drums and songs with a number of cymbals in their hands. Ghosh writes that a family from this village was invited by Tagore to Santiniketan to teach the dance and the music to the girl students; this time, boys were excluded from the performance. A young girl from that family danced to the

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music created by her parents with two pairs of cymbals in both hands, and everyone in Santiniketan admired her performance. Tagore composed a song that was choreographed using the newly acquired dance technique (quoted in Ghosh, 1983: 11). Amita Sen’s book, Ananda Sarbakaje, discusses the process of transformation from informal dance teaching by Tagore himself to the detailed and structured teaching by teachers from different dance schools.2 “Gradually came the phase of teaching dance techniques—dance techniques from many countries were being taught. Under the guidance of Rabindranath, dance in Santiniketan became more equipped to incorporate better ways of expression.” (Sen, 1983: ix). Tagore’s experiments with dance continued through the following years, and were enhanced by his association with L.K. Elmhirst (of Dartington Hall). The process allowed him to conceptualize a teaching method for what he called Bhavanritya or expressive dance. Around the same time, Tagore sent Santidev Ghosh to Kerala, Manipur and to several other places in India, to observe and learn the different styles of dance, as well as to negotiate with the experts from those regions to come and teach at Santiniketan on a permanent basis. His eagerness to see and absorb different styles of bodily expression was evident once again in the fact that he encouraged Srimati Devi (Tagore), who had joined Santiniketan as a student in 1920, to compose a dance for a poem he had written. In 1927, she left for Germany to learn European techniques in modern dance. On her return, she became associated with Santiniketan and, for the next two years, performed in almost all the programmes organized there. Ghosh mentions Tagore discussing the need to develop a specific vocabulary of Indian dance movement that is able to deal with the issues of everyday life.3 One dance piece on a current theme, created by Tagore, initially envisaged as a play and later transformed into one of his most successful dance-dramas was Tasher Desh (The Kingdom of Cards).4 This dance-drama deals with a lifeless mechanized society, running on rigid 2

Amita Sen describes the life of the girl students (Ashram Kanya as they were called) in Santiniketan in the early twentieth century, right after Tagore started the institution. She mentions the transition in the dance teaching process as Tagore began to consolidate the teaching methods and formalize dance as one of the co-curricular activities for students. It becomes clear that the importance of dance as a tool for free expression was recognized by Tagore even before he found a way to incorporate dance classes into the activities of the institution. He also recognized the need to evolve a dance vocabulary that made use of multiple inputs from different styles and genres of performance in order to develop this tool to the maximum, and to fulfil one’s creative urges—not to appropriate without acknowledgment, but to expand the horizon of learning with due respect and acknowledgment. 3 The question of ‘Indian’ movements has remained a highly debated, albeit a central one in the world of contemporary Indian dance. In his book Rabindranath o Adhunik Bharatiya Nritya, Santidev Ghosh mentions Tagore’s acceptance and respect for all types of techniques. He also points out that even after constantly absorbing all the performative styles from across the globe, time and again Tagore looked to the movement genres of the East, as opposed to the West, to inform the movement repertoire that he considered ideal for creating the expressive dance that he visualized. 4 Chakraborty produced a collection (1995: 276–77) of all the reactions, in the form of publicity material, advertisements, published reviews, articles, newspaper reports, and unpublished letters to different people, regarding the work of producer/director Rabindranath Tagore, taking each of his productions one by one. For Tasher Desh, the audience reaction was perceptibly different in different cities, mainly because of the language barrier, making Tagore understand the need to communicate more through the universal language of dance and theatre than through texts, especially in the case

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rules, that gets influenced by the fresh breeze of change brought in by a prince from a distant land who rebels against the existing pattern of life. Referred to as ‘a sort of burlesque in which some serious ideas are dramatized in the form of a comedy’ by The Advance (12 September 1933), a review published in Liberty (16 September 1933) stated that ‘The clash between “Lifeless” and “Full of life” is the central theme of the drama which is one of the best productions of Rabindranath.’ It was also reviewed in The Times of India (29 September 1933) under the heading “Tagore’s Dreamland/ Fantasy/The Kingdom of Cards”. The styles that were taught in Santiniketan, starting from its inception, were a liberal mix of classical and folk styles from India, South and Southeast Asia, and also sporadically from Europe. Among the prominent Indian classical styles, Manipuri, Kathakali, and Bharatanatyam were taught by well-established and recognized teachers. Artistes and practitioners of folk dances from different states of India were regularly invited as guest teachers. Candy dance was taught by teachers from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and the dance forms of Java and Bali, as well as the costumes and ornaments used by those dancers greatly influenced Tagore. Over and above these, Tagore admired and followed the development of modern dance techniques in the West, acknowledging them as an outcome of the creative urge in dancers. He also understood the dynamics of the Eastern body, and thus looked at the multiple dance forms of Asian countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and Ceylon for their movement genres, dresses, and presentation techniques, for use in Indian dance. His written, visual art and performance related creations continue to encourage various newer experimentations in and outside India (Fig. 5.1).

5.7 Uday Shankar’s Explorations with the ‘Modern’ Vocabulary of Indian Dance Uday Shankar became a dancer by sheer accident and due to a chance meeting with Anna Pavlova. He choreographed two items for Pavlova and toured with her company for nine months before starting an independent dance company of his own. Later, he decided to come back to India with the intention of learning and developing movement techniques based on different dance forms from all over India. His dance and artistic/creative vision got a boost when he met the Swiss Sculptor Alice Boner in France in 1926. In a rare artistic co-expressivity, Boner’s photographs of Shankar’s nearly-untrained instinctive dance movements became the first records/documentations of the movement principles that became part of Shankar’s growing repertoire, over the rest of his active career as a creator of dance movements that absorbed life, movements, colours, and still photographic moments from his surroundings (Sarkar Munsi, 2021a, 2021b). His tour of India—a part of a self-educatory process, in which he was accompanied by Boner, began on 4 January of performances outside Bengali-speaking areas. Tasher Desh travelled to Bombay, and Tagore performed with his troupe in that city for the first time.

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Fig. 5.1 A site-specific dance theatre Ek Sadharan Ladki, based on Tagore’s painting ‘Six seated women’ work, space and music co-created and co-curated by Diya, Ruchika, Amita, Satabisha, Meghna and Urmimala. © Vinayak Shyam

1930 and lasted one year. As a gifted dancer he envisioned a composite image of dance—as an aesthetic representation, using expressive bodily movements to create meaning as well as the beauty of rasa for both the performers and the audience. His in-depth knowledge and exposure to stagecraft and lighting techniques in the West helped him create choreographies vastly different in their presentational style and in their sensitivity to the perceptions of the audience. Though he had performed often enough in Europe earlier, he developed a vast repertoire of movements as he experimented with many different dance forms. He then travelled to Paris in October 1930, and on 3 March 1931 his company gave its opening performance at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris. Many of the articles and books written on him recount the story of this inaugural show. This was the beginning of Uday Shankar’s career as a dancer—as arguably the first Indian choreographer and performer with a vision and who, at the height of his glory, was even called India’s Cultural Ambassador. Meanwhile there were severe criticisms against Shankar in India. While the Indian elite had no problem with the use of newly innovated elaborate costumes, brought in as part of the image of an exotic, beautiful, and diverse India, in the reinvented neo-classical dance forms, the very same people criticized Shankar for selling an ‘oriental’ image of India to the West, and for having borrowed from several styles to make up his movement vocabulary. Shankar had developed his own creative vocabulary of body movements. His method later developed with his own learning from Kathakali master teacher, Guru

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Shankaran Nambudiri in 1934, and his instinctive understanding of choreography and stagecraft. He established his own dance academy Almora (1938–1944), where he worked with other experts such as Guru Amobi Singh (Manipuri) and Guru Kandappa Pillai (Bharatanatyam). His musical explorations were built on expertise and collaboration from Ustad Allaudin Khan, Vishnudas Shirali, Timirbaran, and his brother Ravi Shankar (who trained to become a sitarist with Allaudin Khan himself). There were music classes and classes on Indian art traditions as well. His experimental method came to be known as a ‘creative method’ whereby, like many other Western dancers, he essentially responded to an inner urge to express and communicate through the body and experimented extensively with proscenium choreography, magic, shadow technique, and film making. His critically acclaimed film Kalpana (Fig. 5.2) remains as a documentation of his experiments. He understood that his own culture had given him the advantage of many existing movements genres which would make his form vastly different from those of the West. He based his creations on Indian dance movements, a choice now made by many performers while creating a style of their own to use as their communicative tool. In an evaluative article on Uday Shankar in her book New Directions in Indian Dance, Kapila Vatsyayan writes:

Fig. 5.2 Uday Shankar’s choreography ‘Labour and Machinery’ was a part of his feature film ‘Kalpana’, © Author through late Smt. Amala Shankar

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His experiments were thus of two kinds. The first may be termed as the desire for revival in which Indian mythology and legend were presented through beautiful spectacle. The second was the expression of the sensitive man’s reaction to ugly mechanization of life… For the myth and legend he utilized long, flowing languorous movements in a slow tempo, usually executed to ektala or teentala. For numbers like ‘Labour and Machinery’, he used jerky movements, which were notnecessarily performed to any given raga. Only percussion was used as accompaniment. (Vatsyayan, 2003: 20–21)5

Michael Chekhov, the celebrated actor, and director of the Chekhov Theatre Studio at Dartington Hall, during a class he conducted on Shankar’s technique after one of Shankar’s numerous performances at the Hall, in October 1936, expressed deep appreciation of Shankar’s technique that made visible his rich culture, his experiments with movements and his use of music. Shankar consolidated his technique with the knowledge he had acquired from his personal experience of choreography, performance, technique, stagecraft, and showmanship. He also drew from the experiences of Michael Chekhov of Dartington Hall and Zohra Saigal (who had acquired her expertise from Mary Wigman), as well as from traditional Indian dances. The Elmhirsts, who supported several modernist efforts, such as, Rabindranath Tagore’s Visva Bharati, Rukmini Devi’s Kalakshetra, the American Dance Festival (USA), and Dartington Hall (UK), also funded Uday Shankar’s dance academy in Almora with a contribution of £25,000. Zohra Saigal, trained in modern dance under Mary Wigman in Germany, was in charge of syllabus-building, and the school became the ideal academy for the performing arts, gifted with a vision of overall development in performative skills and knowledge and had a rigorous training programme for its designed courses. The basic training programme in dance aimed at developing skills like concentration, observation, imagination, improvisation, composition, and choreography. USICC in Almora emphasized the need to engage with the history, aesthetics, psychology, and literature associated with Indian dance, and there were classes dedicated to these discussions every week.6 The training was essentially meant to teach students how to develop their own system of bodily movements and 5

The article is primarily a critique of Uday Shankar’s technique; however, Vatsyayan does acknowledge his contribution to the development of modern dance in India. 6 Shankar’s general classes started with an exercise, literally, walking—a practice that is followed even today at the USICC. The dancers walk in a haphazard rhythm, in a circle. As they begin to establish a rhythm, the beat of the drum or tabla slowly starts to match that, creating a general rhythm for everyone. The aim is for all participants to match the steps of the person walking in front. Thus, at some point, everybody starts walking with synchronized footsteps. Then come the instructions from the class instructor, one at a time, to add certain small elements to these steps: for example, a clap at the count of one, or a new rhythm or step introduced, or a movement of the right hand from the left upper corner to the right lower corner, as one keeps walking. These instructions have to be followed continuously as the movements become composite and more complex; one cannot stop at any point, not even to concentrate on the instructions. The exercise aids in developing a split concentration, where one learns to divide one’s attention to concentrate simultaneously on two equally important aspects of performance—the learnt movement patterns and those necessary elements that constitute the ‘present’ moments of the performance. What I wish to emphasize here are the creative stimulants that helped bring in elements of individuality into the creation of movements—an aspect of dance that the students subsequently became very confident about, unlike classical dancers who are often at a loss when asked to compose a new dance.

5.8 The Problem of Nomenclature and Changing Ecology in Dance

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evolve their own dance aesthetics, rather than teach them complete dances. The emphasis was laid on all-round personality development of the performer through cooperation and team-work. The opposition to and critical comments on his work were mostly from within India rather than from abroad, which, at the time earned him the dubious distinction of trying to woo the West by selling ‘Indian-ness’.7 Mohan Khokar refers to criticisms offered by prominent critics like Krishna Iyer, Sheshagiri and others, and also mentions a dictionary of musicians and dancers published from Tanjore that gave Uday Shankar a tidy ten-word entry: ‘Unorthodox. Performs Lasya type only. Unfit physically to perform Tandewa’ (Khokar, 1983: 79).8 The detailed analysis of the previous section raises several important questions. How was Shankar’s work of attempting to bring the East and the West together different from any of the later East–West encounters? When one considers the sheer variety of practices that emerged since Shankar’s experimentations, why is it a problem for dance historians in India to look at the creative urges of Shankar as the predecessor of the later works of Chandralekha, Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Daksha Seth, and others, under the same rubric of modernity?

5.8 The Problem of Nomenclature and Changing Ecology in Dance Dancers and choreographers in contemporary India sense the need to express their own ideas in addition or in opposition to, the repertoire taught to them during their classical dance training. As a result, critical and analytical skills and creativity, which, till recently, had been successfully kept at bay by the classicists, are now becoming unavoidable in Indian dance performances. The attitude of the critics, once sceptical of ‘Westernized’ ideas, about the idea of movement generation in dance as not being linked to any text or poetics or music, and also about mixing genres, has now softened. There is now a sharp division both within the performers and the audience, and one can clearly discern the existence of two distinct groups: the classicists, and the experimentalists/innovators, not necessarily as binaries but as setting investments and 7

Somehow, an understanding of the intentions of classical dancers, even in their own interpretative works, as ‘genuine’, and the threat perceived from the entry of the newly imagined ‘Indian’ body have always been a part of the review of dance history in India. I would like to argue that Tagore was less of a threat for he was not a dancer himself; unlike his other fields of expertise, he was not making interventions in terms of inventing movements, and that was safer than conceiving a completely new approach that called for freedom of the mind and body in creating a new dance vocabulary, challenging, even if unintentionally, the concept of national culture as a patterned whole, as was being visualized in the construction of the new post-independence India. 8 Mohan Khokar mentions that in South India, the citadel of orthodox dance styles such as Bharatanatyam and Kathakali—even if they themselves were restructured—Shankar was severely criticized. According to the critique of Sheshagiri, Shankar was ‘a typical example of the present-day decadence in one of our arts due mainly to the deterioration in our taste’ (Khokar, 1983: 79).

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priorities for the process of dancing, training, choreographing, and audiencing that these two groups choose for themselves. To international audiences, dance from India is still largely synonymous with classical art. As far as the West is concerned, and for many people in India as well, there is no such thing as modern dance in India. Whenever there is such a categorisation, present-day choreographers and dancers offer an explanation about how they started experimenting with multiple forms, only after having learned one or more of the classical dance forms. Hearing this many times over the years - I feel sad that such a connection to the so-called ’roots’ needs endless reiterations. Taken as a definitive word, ‘modernity’, in the opinion of Abhijit Pathak, is: “invariably related to the spirit of freedom. This freedom is rooted in the critical consciousness that it generates. It means: ‘Don’t take things for granted. Question it, verify it, and subject it to critical scrutiny.’” (2006: 13–14).9 The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines modern dance as: “Modern dance, theatrical dance that began to develop in the United States and Europe late in the nineteenth century, receiving its nomenclature and a widespread success in the 20th. It evolved as a protest against both the balletic and the interpretive dance traditions of the time.”10 In the West, modern dance movements were inspired and influenced by dance styles from different lesserknown cultures. One associated gain of modernity was that it opened up the world of dance, brought in intense dynamism, and aroused tremendous vertical/horizontal mobility. It gave many dancers—mostly from the West—a wide-ranging exposure. The term ‘modern’ fits the works of both Tagore and Shankar in terms of their philosophy, the celebration of individual freedom in their work and their creative impulse, which took them beyond the restrictive practices of any singular dance form. The later developments in the field of dance with contributions from Chandralekha, Manjushree and Ranjabati Chaki Sircar, Uttara Asha Coorlawala, and Daksha Seth were not designated as modern dance, but were significant steps towards establishing independent ‘improvisation’ as a process.

5.9 The Term ‘Contemporary’ and Its Problems Alessandra Lopez y Royo (2003), looking at the experimentation in dance taking place from the 1970s onwards, prefers to use the term ‘post-classicism’ in place of ‘contemporary’. She writes: I question the use of the term ‘contemporary’ dance in today’s India. The term obscures the relationship with ‘classicism’ which, I argue, remains the basis of Indian dance. It has too strong a connotation of Western contemporary which refers to Western modern and

9

Pathak deals with modernity and culture-specific identities in the global era. The concept of modernity, in terms of conceptualization of the freedom of thought and identity-building, is a notion that can be used to define the work of Tagore and Shankar. 10 Encyclopaedia Britannica, online version. Accessed on 2023.

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post-modern dance techniques, thus making ‘contemporary’ synonymous with a hybrid approach.11

Back in 2008, in the essay “Boundaries and Beyond”12 I had written that I would like to put forward a wider meaning for the term ‘contemporary’ beyond its use in the Western world of dance. In my understanding, contemporary dance is a philosophy, in its commitment to creating a dance vocabulary that can communicate the ‘present’ as conceived by the dancer. It is the time and space and the motivation that needs to be acknowledged, not the form. In the West, contemporary dance grew out of the modern dance movement and became an inclusive term in itself, embracing many genres of free and innovative dance practices, even though many of the techniques, as well as the practitioners, came from a background in ballet or some other specific training, such as Butoh or Tai-chi, and very often they resorted to the use of multiple techniques. Dance was not referred to as hybrid or inauthentic in that context, but the challenges around dancing the contemporary both from within and outside. Jayachandran Palazhy brings contexts of location and subjectivity as important elements when he describes ‘contemporary movement practice’ as made up of several strands of embodied perceptions, and he notes that such movements … could incorporate elements of one’s own inherited knowledge and culture as well as information and skills from other contexts—diverse influences now fuel the imagination. Today, a contemporary movement artist can draw upon all these resources and can tap sustenance from lived experiences and interactions with other human beings, the biosphere and evolving technologies.13

Surjit Nongmeikapam’s work (Fig. 5.3) makes a strong point of everydaymotivated mobilizational strategies that can bring identities, political expressions, and cultural traces into choreographies, while not being forced through the use of any fixed structure of dance and theatre vocabularies. It forces us to think beyond the past struggle to use definitive terms like ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’, notwithstanding their Western connotation. Of course, the terminologies continue to trouble 11

Royo in her 2003 article questioned the use of the term ‘contemporary’ in the Indian context and talked about ‘post-classical’ as a preferred term because she was of the opinion that contemporary dance continues to be sustained in a variety of modes by classicism. The contemporary dance of that time was, she believed, “about conservation, preservation, revival, and pain-staking reconstruction, but it is also about tension, rupture, dynamism, and subversion”. While I agree with Royo that the beginning of experimentations in new forms of dance expressions and pedagogies the classical techniques formed a major part of the skills and mindset of dancers in India, I would like to argue, looking at the process of creating a new language of expression through dance and movement idioms, that in the case of many dancers in India today, the attitude towards the use of the body in dance is distinctly different, making their dance vocabulary completely different from the classical dance vocabulary. And this process has been a continuous one from the beginning of the era of modern dance in India. 12 This section of this chapter, as stated earlier, is largely framed on my published Chapter “Boundaries and Beyond: Problems of Nomenclature in Indian Dance History”(Sarkar Munsi, 2008: 78–98). 13 See the essay “Contemporary Dance in Times of Transition” (Palazhy, 2021: 114–121), for details on his take on the evolving pedagogy at his institute, the Attakalari Centre for Movement Arts.

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Fig. 5.3 Surjit Nongmeikapam from Manipur makes challenging departures and returns between dance, theatre, everyday movement and skill. ‘Meepao’ is his recent work. © Sumedha Bhattacharyya

pedagogies in dance in terms of themes and the use of specific techniques, but it is very important to realize in this context that the use of such terms provides a certain sense of freedom to the dancer—for their very lack of specificity and element of indefiniteness allows immense space for the performer to be creative. By denying ourselves the freedom to use these terms in the past, we have actually restricted the possibility of being creative, which is so vital for the growth of dance and is, therefore, the lifeblood of any present-day dancer. Palazhy’s reference to the use of transdisciplinary modes of creating a performance is further explained by his words, and in contemporary dance the contents and approaches may vary drastically from one production to another and one artist to another. To end this section, I refer again to the works of Tagore and Shankar, as the way of opening up dance to a process of experimentation and to the coming together of multiple forms. Their relationship with dance has generally been seen as a way to self-discovery and self-definition. Tagore’s intercultural outlook is undeniable, as he tried to create an atmosphere in Santiniketan for the free and creative assimilation of dances from different cultures and of building a respectful attitude towards other cultural practices. Shankar began his dance by making a journey of self-discovery and experiencing movements that essentially belonged to an Indian tradition. His philosophy of choreography was never contained within the borders separating the East and the West, and he constantly moved across national frontiers to incorporate other ideas and images. His film Kalpana (Imagination), released in 1948, showcased many of his ideas, his views on life, and a lot of his choreography, and is a valuable

5.10 Our Multiple Contemporaries

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record of his ability to transcend borders, even though his dance continues to be described as ‘hybrid’ even today.14

5.10 Our Multiple Contemporaries No doubt, the situation is changing within and the existing borders, although perhaps the change needs to be even more rapid in order to truly acknowledge the growing restiveness among dancers to find their own voice in current times. The search is no longer for authenticity but for an identity, which may be hybrid, even deterritorialized, yet one that works towards building a new boundary and a new marker of identity by transcending the older one. To acknowledge the reality of the history of Indian dance, modernity, and other contemporary processes, there is a need to Foster the development of new techniques as well as attract new and exciting audiences. As newer possibilities open up by way of transnational as well as interartistic patronages in the international artworld as well as markets, some performers want to establish their works in the world of contemporary dance practice; and while some of them do not want to let go of the special advantages that references to their heritage would give them over dancers from Western traditions, others are raring to walk straight into the experimental space—with confidence in their power to process their relationship with the emerging everyday they embody. In some international spaces, the hegemony of colonial and post-colonial concerns are consciously countered with decolonising efforts, although it is easier said than done, and transgressions need to be continuously challenged. Today, as we claim to be inhabitants of contemporary India, the (neo)classical, the Bollywood and the contemporary dancers share time, space, and patronage. While the identity of the nation is being reworked both for ourselves and for the world, the policymakers remain largely unconcerned about the rapidly changing dance ecologies and the aspirations of the dancers and dance-makers at home and around the world. Meanwhile, dance continues to be used as a tool for asserting Hindu identity, wiping out presences of histories of practices by other religious groups—and women.15 The celebratory patronage of the Brahminic and upper-caste dance practices (as mentioned in Chap. 3) continue to be foregrounded (even more forcefully than ever before) to showcase the results of multiple canonisations within the regional dance scenario that were facilitated by assimilations and appropriations of dance practices in the post-independence era, which robbed a large number of regional hereditary communities of their rights to claim their place in the Indian cultural scape as dancers. 14

See Uday Shankar and his Transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Modernity (Sarkar Munsi, 2022). 15 Pallabi Chakravorty mentions, “it is largely accepted that the dance we are today familiar with as Kathak flourished in the Mughal and Hindu courts of Lucknow and Benares in Uttar Pradesh, Jaipur in Rajasthan, and Raigarh in Madhya Pradesh and these locations now exemplify the gharana tradition of Kathak” (2008: 26).

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The same contemporary times also are shared by dancers and dance scholars who aspire to and are excited by the creative potentials of dance as an expressive and communicative tool that can keep changing and absorbing signals, motifs, ideas from the changing ecology they inhabit. For these performers and the scholars, accepting multiple contemporaries is something essential in these times. This section thus does not aspire to describe contemporary dance as a genre or a skill set, but instead wants to establish at the outset that the contemporary in dance is a moment that is exploratory and may be even an unfinished journey, that is yet unaware of its goal or destination. The contemporary is an ongoing moment—transitional, reborn with changing aspirations and anxieties, and responding with the liveness of the bodies that are in negotiation with the fluid and varied ecologies of human polarities. In the West, contemporary dance as a practice emerged as a statement of freedom from dance’s wish, a way to perpetuate in bodies as a pedagogy. We in India might reach that rather contested space of ‘arrival’ in a few years, where each contemporary performer has started freezing his or her own pedagogies. But rather than almost dreading that moment of fixture, I would like to keep this chapter floating in the uncertainties of the search for ‘our contemporaries’. As of now the practitioners who want to continue their search for a practice that gives them a way to process the body, the mind, and the moving in a dialogic exploration, are largely free of such pedagogical shackles. That is not because they want to ‘arrive’, but because they want to search for the best route that helps them to trace their roots and connect that to a search for their aspired destination. The contemporaries are therefore multiple ways of belonging in the current times as well as the repositories of the infinite desire to map the dancing bodies in current time and space.

5.11 Mode of Generating Sustainability The contemporary times have not been easy on dancers in general. Restrictions of do’s and don’ts have increased around the classical dances, which have become more and more systematically structured and institutionalized with the consolidation of policies regarding government patronage and introductions of degrees and diplomas to make the ecology increasingly less inclusive over the years. The prosceniumcentric dance has become deeply divided in at least three categories, that also invite very different categories of patronage, audience, and sustainability. The classical dancers, or the ones who manage to overcome the initial hurdles of the Arangatrum or Mancha Pravesh, may get jobs as dance teachers in schools, or an empanelment in the Indian Council for Cultural Relations or the television ranking list. However, the popular dancers—in Bollywood, in television dance competitions or in bars, and public spaces—remain vulnerable with little or no protection for their old age, retirements, ill-health. As has been discussed in the chapter on dance and gender,

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extreme vulnerability, and lack of social/economic/physical—medical support limits the ability to generate value or sustainability beyond a few years. Regardless of the economic background, dancers who take this extremely precarious profession up for a living are constantly troubled with thoughts of ‘what next’. Choosing individual students becomes a common act, offering a frail and constantly challenged mode of sustenance. In such a circumstance, dancing itself is almost never a consistently stand-alone choice for sustaining oneself or one family. It is therefore always a short-lived profession unless one can reinvent oneself to carry on evolving with time and age.

5.12 ‘Assertion of the Present Against an Arbitrarily Imposed Definition’ (Johar, 2021)16 In a conversation published in Marg, Akram Khan writes, [t]he contemporary is a political shift from traditional work. For instance, I learnt Kathak in a conventional setting where dance was associated with the sacred and spiritual and also with storytelling. Then, rather late in my journey, I came across contemporary dance—and there was an abstraction there, which acted as a tool to question the tradition and the form. (Khan 2021: 101).

Khan also asserts that the body of a dancer, regardless of the historical significance of the dance s/he has learnt, always belongs to the contemporary times. He says, ‘The moment you learn a movement, it becomes contemporary’ (Khan Ibid: 107). Meanwhile according to Navtej Johar (Fig. 5.4), for dancers trained in classical dances there is always a pressing need to be identified as an able inheritor of the past traditions. They are completely controlled by the urge to identify that as dancers who continue creating a sense of ‘re-belonging in an imagined past. The nationalistic lure of such a re-belonging overrides even the will to be free’ (Johar, 2021: 108). He continues, On the one hand, the contemporary exists in reference to the classical. And the classical is a national project which idealizes the past and views the present as lamentably lacking in the "real" values of a textual past. Thus, the contemporary is an assertion of the present against an arbitrarily imposed definition—that of/by the classical—which smugly sees the present as wanting. The contemporary body may refresh and enliven this dead or denied present and even invest it with a will to be, to move, to exert, to erupt, and express itself. (Johar, Ibid: 108)

Along with the dance—the viewing, the patronage, the discourse, and the general effort formalizing the scopes and patterns of dance writing also registers this change. 16

Navtej Johar is a renowned Bharatanatyam dancer and a yoga practioner, with extensive choreographic as well as scholarly engagement with the changing scenario of dance in India. Considered to be one of the stalwarts trained in Kalakshetra and having experience of working and training under Chandralekha, Johar holds a very important place in the development trajectory of dance in India.

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Fig. 5.4 Navtej Johar’s choreography Fana’s Ranjha Revisited, 2023

We are thus at a moment where writings on contemporary dance need to become a journal of continuous documentation/analysis of the ‘contemporary scene and trend’, rather than giving us a fixed narrative and definition regarding what/where is contemporary in dance from India. To be able to produce a critical analysis, I work with the contextualisation of the contemporary space and time in dance, aiming to create an understanding of the plethora of contemporary imaginations rather than searching for one genre-specific meaning or form. It hopes to bring together critical questions such as what, why, and how the contemporary moment and space is important for all that is dance in India.

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5.13 A Space in Transition The intense and varied forms of dance-related experiments have created a performance culture that brings in philosophies, skills, and creative imaginations from different sources and perspectives. The ground zero is an ever changing fertile one. Ranjana Dave sees it as an area that has a close relationship to the structure of “education, cultural identity, and patronage” (Dave, 2017: 28–33). The roles of the forbearers and those who made a determined decision to embrace transition as individual performers, as choreographers and teachers, and as invested and dedicated artistes charged by the ideas and possibilities of improvisation. Their motivations were not identical. For many it was not perhaps important to change or compromise the classical vocabularies they were taught and had nurtured for years, but to experiment with and respond to contemporary times. Through their life-long experiments trained dancers have taken on the roles of teachers, institutions builders, choreographers, theatre artists, orators, yoga specialists, and scholars.

5.14 Individual Experience and the Corporeal Schema The emerging contemporary space in dance boldly claims a resistive identity for itself, firmly and passionately parallel with the promise of an “improvised future” (Dave, 2022), in contrast to or even against the (neo)classical dances and their hyperaestheticized theatricality. The space and its inhabitants need to be considered and nurtured as an emerging micro-ecology within the larger dance ecosystem. It still does not even know and most times does not acknowledge all that is dance in terms of marginalized and exploitative forms that provide a living to many in the same geographies. It also struggles for patronage like most forms of dance and dancers do, and hence looks for a smaller audience, offbeat and non-proscenium performance venues, and non-mainstream (even self/crowd based) funding. The movements and techniques are also often created in defiance of/as a resistance to the movement, skill, and aesthetic hegemonies that have become the default principles associated with dance in and from India. The tremendous pressure on a dancer/choreographer to be able to survive and dance in a short career of active dancing, while being on top of the process of keeping oneself actively experimental through embodied experimentations is a near impossible task. This process generates a competitive mode of doing things for oneself, rather than in any form of ensemble. Many a times, the solo sessions for experiments in a space and time for individual practice yields deeply individual (often appearing like an act of naval-gazing) experimentations without considering audience time and perception as important factors needing invested consideration. The space also often appears essentially urban, privileged and exclusive, with a built-in resistance to keep out ‘outsiders’ and non-sympathizers, and non-partisan ‘audience’—through the choice of venues, themes, advertising mechanisms. The

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public acceptance that is craved in this small niche ecology, is also simultaneously shunned as a defence mechanism against rejections and negative reviews. The community body is thus absent, with very few ongoing experiments in ensemble choreographies. Whether the problem lies in individualism of ideation and aspiration, or the lack of support for larger groups within the contemporary dance ecosystem has to be analysed, as we see more such experiments around us. Dancing against the stream of the usual flow of the so-called ‘Indian traditional culture’, needs a sizable amount of investment in the building of one’s own body, mind, and vocabulary. Aimie Purser in her essay “Getting it into the body: Understanding skill acquisition through Merleau-Ponty and the embodied practice of dance” (Purser, 2017) draws our attention to the “work of the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty [which is] drawn upon to elucidate expertise through a nondualist framework for understanding skill acquisition and bodily knowledge in sport and movement cultures.” She professes to explore “how theoretical concepts about practice might actually play out in practice by bringing the notions of tacit practical knowledge and the sedimentation of habit that Merleau-Ponty emphasizes in his theorisation of the corporeal schema into conversation with qualitative data from in-depth interviews with dance practitioners.” (ibid). Building on the concept of Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the habit-body, motivation, and the incorporation of a range of behavioural patterns into the corporeal schema, I have constructed the next part of this chapter on the contemporary dance practices of a few dancer/choreographers, that refer to their phenomenological subjectivity. The section includes published and written responses by dancers. While I privilege lived and embodied experiences, I also incorporate the individual understandings of the dancers regarding skill and acquisition of bodily expertise.

5.15 Vikram Iyengar, a Kolkata-Based Dancer/ Choreographer/Scholar Provides the Questions that Frame This Section What are the parameters by which one can define the contemporary dance space, rather than the contemporary dance form? How does this very approach to definition differ markedly from how one would go about defining classical dance space? Can this illuminate prevailing confusions and tensions about the term in any way? What does classical dance have to gain by an engagement with how contemporary dance views the moving body, physical space and accompanying ideologies, values and political positions? How might one choose to present and perceive the trained body in transition? How does one confront the challenge of letting go of physical knowledge to foreground a vulnerable body capable of becoming both form and content? (Iyengar, 2017: 34 – 35)17

17

See Vikram Iyengar’s commentary “Categorizing Dance: A Classic Case of Contemporary Confusion”. Marg. Vol 68. No. 4. pp. 34–43.

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A number of interviews with a few dancers provide me with the empirical basis to write about the phenomenological specificities of a few individual corporeal schemas.

5.16 Aastha Gandhi’s Response, Delhi, 202018 Dance to me is no more a given fixed skill and technique taught and imbibed in the initial years of my training in the classical dance form, Odissi. Over the past few years, since I have started creating my own work, it has become an exercise involving embodiment—of memories, past and present encounters with myself and others, the changing patterns of inhabiting space, interpreting text and more. For my choreographic work, “We Women//: Trigger Warning” (2017), my process of creating ‘dance’, originated directly from what I now call the Body-Memory archive. Reflecting back, I realize that the process of embodying the archive can be seen to consist of the following stages: – When the material archive is specifically based on a body-memory (individual or collective/ physical/emotional/intellectual) encounter with self and is interpreted by another body. – The images create an unwritten story—they often become the reference frames for me on which I improvise. Often the images empower ‘moving’ to create impulse for improvisation. This phase is long and arduous. The triggers for movement varied with wavering states of mind. The idea was to embody the emotion, to catch it and encapsulate it in movement when it is in that state of floating. – For me the final work is around fixing of the movements, though the body’s response and engagement with the material changes every time the embodied archive is performed. The embodied responses have kept changing in their forms, intensity and the “embodied-ness”—making the past body-memory a ‘contemporary’ part of my existence, that makes me wonder if any dance can ever be anything but contemporary. There is still a wide gap between contemporary dance and an active public sphere, which can lessen only with crucial engagement between the audiences and the dancers beyond their identification with the particular form. This would require to ascertain an identity beyond the form by creating intersectional work across various discourses— political, gender, sexual and cultural, and especially the South Asian experience of gender and sexuality. We have only begun to claim this space, and that is why this is a defining moment for contemporary dance in India. I believe that the future of contemporary dance in India can be secured by ensuring wider audience engagement.

18

Aastha Gandhi is an Odissi dancer, who has moved away from proscenium-based learning and performing. She is a lawyer and has completed her Ph.D. Degree on Circus History from the School of Arts and Aesthetics. This interview has been published with her permission.

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Srabasti Ghosh19 (Kolkata) responded the same set of questions asked to Aastha Gandhi (See Fig. 4.2, p. 177). I see dance in two ways in my life. On one hand, dance is a tool of self-expression and freedom. On the other hand, dance is a process, a method of connecting with the self and channelizing energy through body. Hence, dance is a process of healing, too. Therefore, dance has become an essential part of my being, and also something that I do for my own self. However, as a performer, I have faced certain situations where dance needs to be used as a product, in those cases, I try to create movements according to the understanding of the thematic requirement - if that is provided, and dance happens. When I started learning dance, I was 4 years old. At that point, dance was something that one has to do in a very correct way. Then I was told that the dancer has to have a beautiful figure and physique, so that the dance looks beautiful. At that point, dance came to me in a very strict manner, where I was focusing on the product I was expected to produce, either for my teacher or for myself. Then, I got introduced to dance movement therapy, where I have learned to acknowledge my own body without focusing on beautification. Apart from providing me with a specialized skill, this process of enhancing self-expression has helped me to re-discover dance in my own way. I believe, my own body and my existence contain the word ’contemporary’ in a holistic way. My body, gender, and my caste and class identities are not separated from the current socio-political scenario, as my existence is dependent on it. I often feel that my body reflects the word political, and it often creates meaning as a part of an ensemble. My movements ere often choosing between different combinations of reactive/reflective/retrospective methods of bodily meaning-making. I see two extreme scenarios in contemporary Indian dance. On one hand, many dancers are stuck only with the ’classical’ dance and the aura of Guru-Shishya Parampara. On the other hand, there are individuals and institutions in India, who practice contemporary dance, but my feeling is that their practice also has no progression with time. I myself became a contemporary audience, even before I wanted to become a thinking dancer in the current times. I prefer to see the dance that talks about/or talks to the contemporary in time and space. As a contemporary viewer, when all around us the social and the political realms are shifting and erupting, the beauty of the dancing bodies or the known soothing rhythm or the pure innocence of the mythological stories do not make sense anymore. When it comes to contemporary dance, as a performer, or as an audience, or as a participant-observer, I prefer to see my dance as a process, not as a product. I think contemporary dancers can always occupy a relevant space in any sociopolitical scenario, if dance can be seen as a tool of conversation. It needs to go beyond some techniques or movements. As a performer’s body is a political tool and contemporary space, its tendency is to make a political statement in the contemporary 19

Srabasti Ghosh is trained a trained theatre actor and a dancer. She has completed a Diploma course in Dance and Movement Theray from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Kolkata Sanved. She is also a Master’s Degree holder from the School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University, Delhi.

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scenario. It is our scared cautious mental space that asserts all kinds of control against any disruption that we may create and attract unwanted and punishing actions. Most of us are the self-disciplining individuals that Foucault had so aptly described! Mandeep Raikhy’s20 (Delhi) views on “contemporary dance” from published interviews with Anisha Tiwary (EARS, November 27, 2017) and Anishaa Tavag (The Hindu Businessline, June 21, 2021). According to Randy Martin, A particular movement is not a sign because, while repeatable, it represents nothing in and of itself. It is not a signifier to any signified. Rather, the movement communicates through its kinetic effects. Kinetic effects, the stimulation of the senses or sentience, are feelings expressed directly from one body to another and amongst a group of bodies. Hence, to study the experience of dance is to isolate both the unique communicative aspect of the body and the moment of pure action of an unrepresented (and unrepresentable) subject. (Martin, 1985: 55)

Randy Martin’s words resonate in Mandeep Raikhy’s opinion, expressed in his interview to Anisha Tiwary (Raikhy, November 27, 2017) where he expressed his excitement about building a community in the contemporary performance ecology, “I’m interested in spaces where people come together to share where they’ve reached, as far as our ecology is concerned. I’m very excited to meet a whole lot of people from various parts of the world and know all that they’re thinking about!”. In Raikhy’s opinion, the contemporary dance scene has developed fast, and in more than one way, and they are asking and responding to different sets of questions. While some are pushing their own vocabulary, others are challenging hegemonic forms of movement practices, dance forms, and ideas. He observed that “others are making direct linkages to the social political environment through their performances.” (Tiwary, November 27, 2017). One important point made by Raikhy is that the contemporary dance “is at different points around different parts of the world. In Europe, for example, a ceiling has been reached—around the kind of questions that are being asked, around the process, around the body, and one now is really looking for (new) reference points.” (Tiwary, November 27, 2017). He reiterates what has been put forth in the beginning of this chapter in the discussion on modern and contemporary dance from my work on dance nomenclature, as well as opinions expressed in previous interviews. What becomes clear here is that the vocabulary for the phenomenological subjectivities reflected in the dance and movement developed and used by individuals may differ from each other, but there is a common understanding around the absolutely essential openness and creative freedom, and also regarding the right to dance differently, within 20

Mandeep Raikhy is a well-known dancer/choreographer from Delhi. He is trained in Bharatanatyam and contemporary dance. He has played a major role in shaping the contemporary dance ecology in the post 2000 years. He and Ranjana Dave shaped and taught the Dance Studies MA course at Ambedkar University, Delhi for two years, before it was discontinued due to lack of administrative infrastructure.

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the small but invested community of contemporary dancers. Raikhy firmly believes that contemporary dance is not a form. In his commentary in MARG he says, So, what is “contemporary dance” if it is not a form? The closest I have come to finding a definition that makes sense to me, quite apart from its generic definition of “dance of the current times”, is imagining it as a “lens”—a critical lens through which one looks at dance in the current times. A lens that allows us to ask questions about the body as well as the world we live in, to confront existing notions of performance, to interrogate the relationship between dance and society and to challenge the definition of dance itself. (Raikhy, 2017: 69 -70)

In his subjective framing of the political choice of investing in and building on the diverse and contested space of contemporary dance in Delhi, through the timely, sustained and intense interventions through the works and activities of GATI Dance Forum,21 Raikhy feels that there are about three to four hundred people in a city, who are interested in the contemporary experiments in dance, and the dancers themselves must work hard to nurture the space they want to inhabit through the coming years.

5.17 An Ensemble Process of Creative Exploration and Performance—“Detritus: We Are What We Throw Away”. (Concept and Curation: Paramita Saha)22 The space looks like a ‘L’ and a well-lit net hangs from a tree where the two extensions of the ‘L’ meet at a right angle to each other. There are chairs for the audience in gaps and along the wheelchair ramps and the other edges. The open-air space outside School of Arts and Aesthetics Building II is filled to the brim with the audience waiting for the performance to start. The designated performance arena has a sense of clutter, with small and large cloth bags. The bags look uncomfortably like the daily garbage bags we create to get rid of all that we have acquired intentionally and not been able to utilize or consume. The concept note tells us, “Detritus is a multiform contemporary performance that proposes a lightness of being and living in a world that is overburdened by what we consume and discard. Through its participatory nature, the work invites viewers to contemplate space for all living and non-living elements that share space and time with us.” (Concept Note for Detritus, performance at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi on 16 January, 2023.) The performance (Fig. 5.5) uses the net in a variety of ways, often appearing as if it is the small space that have left for ourselves, by having created so much of clutter 21

GATI Forum began as an autonomous initiative to create a sustainable space and ecology in the field of contemporary dance. 22 In this collaborative creation (2022–2023) Paramita Saha, a Kolkata based dancer/choreographer/ art manager worked together with choreographers and dramaturges Surjit Nongmeikapam, Prashant More and Diya Naidu, and dancers: Amitabh Srivastava, Pintu Das, Sangram Mukhopadhyay, Ujjayee Banerjee, Srestha Das Choudhury, and Madhyama Halder; The music was by: Karshni Nair.

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all around. Then again, the space begins to look like the small space of escape, which is slowly getting filled by what the group of performers are bringing in. Throughout the performance, the bodies of performers carry share, push, and manipulate the debris that seem to control their lives and actions relentlessly. The movements are at the end of the forty-five-minute production, one is left with a sense of panic about the irreversibility of the damage that we have done to our universe, by desiring to acquire more than we need in an unending process of senseless acquisition. The show finishes as quietly as it has begun—as if it had captured a small segment of time from our daily lives that are filled with an unrelenting need to possess material

Fig. 5.5 ‘Detritus’ in JNU, Delhi, 2023

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things. It leaves us pointing fingers at ourselves to leave us all in an introspective space. Saha takes the mic to initiate a conversation between the audience and the artists after she discusses the motivation behind choosing this form and this topic for the performance drawing our attention to the climate crisis, and the impending disaster that we have created for ourselves. The questions and discussions were slow and few as the crowd digested the gloom of the message delivered without frills. They continued in classes over next three weeks, with surprising insights. The comments were on the repetitive and unstructured movements, the starkness of being —trying to read between unspoken embodied texts, and the readings of the created microecology with the help of bags signifying human waste (actually filled with sand, that went back into the gunny bags they had come out of), at the bodies that appeared burdened and distressed, and the lightness of the scenographic presence of the performance space that could be packed up within ten minutes without any remnants littering the site of the recently concluded performance. The remnants instead were thoughts and after-thoughts, which according the Saha, were rge germination for sustanable and sustained engagement. Detritus turned out to be a work that projects and celebrates an ensemble presence—of sharing of thoughts, planning, execution, and outcome.

5.18 Masoom Parmar on Dancing in the Current Times23 Parmar is trained in Hindustani Classical Music and is also a dancer of Bharatanatyam and Kathak styles. He continues to search for the secular and the contemporary idioms in these two forms. His dance for camera experimentations continue to push boundaries of inter-faith artistic explorations in a socio-politically challenging and an increasingly intolerant environment in contemporary India. He is an art curator and an arts manager. Parmar’s dance film for India Foundation for the Arts is named “The space between us”. Creating striking moving images around the idea of ‘practice’—shown boldly through his practice of religion and dance, he shares his idea of embodying several identities. This particular film, as well as another video of his dance to the song “Hori khelungi Bismillah” are unique experiments in audio-visual experience through direct yet understated co-existential references to Islamic and Hindu practices. In the same film he uses two dance forms from North India and South India, Kathak and Bharatanatyam. Parmar advocates for multiple identities in the same body, projected and contextualized through his stage and film performances. Thoughtful and aesthetically identifiable as classical, his presentations use Bharatanatyam and Kathak vocabularies, but experiment with extending their communicative possibilities by using them theatrically in creating contemporary narratives. His dance contains references of traditional 23

Parmar spoke on camera in his film “The space between us”, and also participated in the event “Our contemporaries” at JNU, participating in conversations on dance in current times in March–April 2022).

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expressions of culture but yet remains free of boundaries drawn and maintained by shackles that use reference of race, gender, religion, and caste to control creative freedom of young and bold artists. Parmar has built a presence in spite of the resistance he faces for his experimental work which searches for a meaningful engagement with the old and new vocabularies of embodied knowledge with which he has an everchanging and committed relationship.

5.19 Meghna Bhardwaj (Delhi) on Her Multi-media Work “Yarning” Bhardwaj is a well-known contemporary dancer from Delhi and a scholar of dance studies. Her training in contemporary dance/movement/choreography and international projects have taken her around the world.24 Bhardwaj’s project (Fig. 5.6) began with her deep feeling of anxiety and claustrophobia during Covid-19 lockdown, when she found herself isolated with her parents in their small living quarters during the uncertain days of contagion. She noticed her mother’s crocheting work and found comfort in looking at the movements of her hands during crocheting and finding rhythm and beauty that her own dancing body could respond to. But while she started dancing and moving alone in the ‘tiny space’ that was available for her dance practice, she also was concerned about the isolation and the helplessness that she felt regarding dancing alone in a small corner of her home with a camera looking at her. In her essay “Bearing witness to the knotting skies”, (accepted for publication in the book Embodied Enquiry in Art Making: The Fold, by Susan Sentler and Glenna Batson, editors. Under review. Intellect Books, UK.) she asks “So, my question would then be not just how to keep dancing, but how to keep dancing alone?” She mentions “seeking a sense of collage/collectivity, by gathering around the body objects like the crochet and the yarn”. The project and the film that came out of it have gone through several editorial processes. Experimenting with material, touch, colours, and tiny movements permissible in the restricted space, Bhardwaj’s explorations created her co-dancers in and through the filming process, where the images made her visualize multiple spaces within her. In the essay she speaks about a project named “F/ol\d” with Susan Sentler and Glenna Batson, that helped her conjure and imagine within her own mind and body, ... a feminist space, a radical space, a queer space, and a space for all those across histories and societies who have never had access to any horizons and open skies. Those who have always lived a claustrophobia–socially, culturally, politically, bodily. Those who have suffered a loss of meaning and landed in abstractions and absurdities they never chose. And those who eventually have had to learn to excavate their words and meanings, from the very creases, cracks, folds, and thresholds they could never escape. (Bhardwaj, in review)

24

After teaching dance practice and dance studies at the Shiv Nadar University for three years, Meghna continues her work as a freelancer. Her work Yarning has won her recognition worldwide.

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Fig. 5.6 ‘Yarning’: a multi-sensory, interart project by Meghna Bhardwaj. © Meghna Bhardwaj

5.20 Patronage, Decolonization/Neocolonization, and the Contemporary Dancing Body in India Veena Naregal provides a reference to the root of the vastly different contexts in which dance continues as a communicative/expressive embodied activity in contemporary times, as she locates “the 1940s and the 1950s as important decades when crucial cultural transitions were being put in place, particularly, within regional cultural spheres, in ways that were soon mobilized to define avenues and categories for patronage at the national level”. (Naregal, 2008: 33–39). In the wide range of embodied practices, some have adjusted to the fast-changing ecology of dance in the overall political context and complexities of polarities based on identities, while others have not been able to get the right patronage—from government or non-governmental source. Often dancing to the tune of the majoritarian politics is forced through patronage processes. Such processes are clearly visible in the forced and manipulative patronage of local forms like Chhau, Yakshagana, Gotipua, as well as the rewritings of histories of classical dances such as Kathak25 , Sattriya etc to suit the rewriting of regional histories that seem to create new narratives of origin of dances, These are common where scholarship is inadequate and often influenced by ideological motivations. To get back to Foster’s opinion, in all these transactions dance never loses its “resource-fulness” and is always beyond the ultimate fixed state of being managed, controlled, or assessed. As Foster has argued, the value of the product at any one 25

Pallabi Chakravorty’s scholarship on Kathak stands out as one of the few rigorously academic endeavours in a world filled with pseudo/mytho-histories that deny the Islamic past of Kathak to assert the Hindu hegemony of India’s cultural past. See Chakravorty’s essay “From Interculturalism to Historicism: Reflections on Classical Indian Dance” (2001: 100–112).“Dancing into Modernity: Multiple Narratives of India’s Kathak Dance” (2006: 115–137) and her book Bells of Change: Kathak Dance, Women and Modernity in India (2008).

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stage is important to understand in the context of providing livelihood to many people and thus becoming—by necessity—akin to any commodity that can be delivered according to the specifics of an order that is paid for. The writings in this book’s chapters takes note of customers/patrons of a range, beginning with the state to the grassroot level flying customers and different kinds of economic/ social/ political, or community-based contracts and demands that may decide the fates of dancers. One must acknowledge that, in the face of a peculiar biosocial vulnerability, it is predominantly the buyers’ market that a dancer prepares for, as soon as dance becomes a livelihood choice. At this juncture, as the contemporary dancers continue to struggle for sustenance regardless of their specialization or their socio-kinaesthetic positionality. Added to the consistent struggle to remain “present”— The struggle for survival unites the dancers from regional little known forms, in Bollywood, in the uncertain competitive world of classical dances, in popular forms that remain at the edge of erotic entertainment and those trying to create and nurture the fragile ecology of “contemporary dance”. In the power-zone of patronage there is the constant oppressive tool in operation to legitimise the choice of the suitable body/dance over others, that is often described through use of different terms, i.e. suitability, dedication, aesthetic requirement, audience reception, authenticity, popularity, marketability and many others, by the all powerful patrons. Patrons have direct or indirect presences. The direct patron who often supported a dance-product in the past was the government. Over the years that somewhat secure and direct / traceable oppressor has been replaced by corporate houses, smaller mediating art-managing agencies, Bollywood and related entertainment industry, and completely opaque spaces of individual “buyers” procuring dance-products (including classical and all forms of non-classical dance). The small and emerging community of movement-artists in the specific form of contemporary dance are trying hard in this ecology to develop their own patrons, by mobilising a like-minded community as supporters and individual patrons for experimental efforts. These negotiations are significant as they signify a way to build and gain access to a community, and an extended process of care and patronage that is excited to hold and nurture the process of experimentation, and does not necessarily want to control the dance or the body. It is the idea of control that also makes dancers vulnerable world-wide, as the tools of choosing and the evaluation remain opaque in all cases, leaving the dancers “in preparation” constantly. In such a space decolonisation remains a dream, as dancers carry on their struggle at home and in the world. In an important essay “Unpacking the buzzword “Decolonization” a Filipino Movement artist, researcher, writer, and cultural worker, Annielille Gavino26 wrote, The more I reflect on this, the more I realize that the artworld is no different. I came to this country believing in the myth of the American Dream but to this day, I find myself navigating the role of migrant body laboring for white systems. Art is a vessel for creative expression, a space of freedom. Yet, here I am, a dancer, dancing to liberate myself from dance itself. 26

(https://thinkingdance.net/articles/2021/05/24/Unpacking-the-buzzword-Decolonization) Accessed on 04-03-2023.

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The borders are clear, and so are the bodies preferred. And I share this as an active dance professional of over twenty-five years, tenaciously fighting for mobility in the American dance arena. (2021)

The right to dance has been allocated differentially—making it essential to prioritise the idea of “control” (both over visibility and survival) and not “choice” in critical studies in dance. As an example one could look at the increasing number of dancers and dance scholars of South Asian origin, who have been invested in protesting the continued and even growing racial discrimination, and have been actively engaging in the decolonisation debate. It is the harsh reality of discrimination that is being challenged in many recent movements in the west. Conference themes, university courses, books have made the theme a central one in the current times.

5.21 The Crisis, Decolonization, and the Clear and Present Danger of Neocolonization The United Nations website claims that ‘the wave of decolonisation, which changed the face of the planet, was born with the UN and represents the world body’s first great success’27 . In its declaration the UN also puts forth the beginning of the international trusteeship system that could be established through the UN Charter, which affirmed ‘the principle of self-determination’ and described ‘the responsibility of States for territories under their administration as “a sacred trust” in which the interests of their inhabitants are paramount’ (Ibid). This section of the chapter proposes understanding decolonisation by and for the dance ecology in India. It refers to the post-independence cultural policies, the patriarchal socialisation consolidated through caste, class and gendered oppressions and the problematic processes of social reforms as causes for marginalisation of dance and dancers through examples from different regional practices within the context of dance in India. It also wants to deepen the analysis to complicate the universal application of the word decolonisation and argues that the resistance to oppression cannot take the same form everywhere. In other words, the process of decolonisation cannot be the same for communities that have faced very different but nonetheless vicious forms of dispossession. We are losing thousands of students from India every year in all branches of studies. These are young scholars, who are leaving for any and every admission possibility in foreign universities, preferably in the United States, but if not, then anywhere in the world. The reason is well-known to us. The choice is made because of survival, fundings, freedom to be and become independent , as well as to be able to exercise one’s own choice in everyday context. For dance studies of and from India, it has been the same scenario that has been defined by the critical studies developed mostly in Euro-American spaces. The subject’s location in post-covid years remains more or less the same, with a severe lag between the qualification 27

See for details https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/decolonization accessed on 23-06-2021.

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of emerging critical thinkers in dance studies and the opportunities in Ground Zero as referred to in the introductory chapter. It is, therefore, essential and critical to establish the concept of neocolonisation in the context of art and humanities in general and dance studies in particular, as an outcome for which the West cannot be blamed completely. It is equally important that we do not make the specific danger of totalitarian majoritarianism of the current political moment invisible—by thinking that all problems in the Indian dance context can be solved through the particular path shown by the current discourse on decolonisation. This chapter would like to envision the critical dance studies in Indian context, that has the possibilities in itself of becoming the decolonizing tool for the university students, for whom, the de-colonisation of their ideas need to also move away from the Brahminic implications of neo-classical dance histories, while consciously acknowledging the regional hegeminies asserted by privileging certain dance/movement histories and their functions within the vastly varied living traditions embedded originally in community practices. The new movement practitioners also need their freedom to choose their engagement with the vastly varied landscape of dance and traverse it with dignity, happiness and awareness. In the critical reading/writing about dance and dance history and in dancing with awareness, acknowledging the ground (the space and the community of origin), the training and the history is essential. There are important voices to be heard and registered, not as individual ones fighting for their own recognition, but organised voices that do not shout each other down. Emerging discourses on dance and dispossession then ideally belongs to all that is dance in India, across class, caste, gender, power, region, religion and form. It is not only the historical wrongs that need to be corrected, but also the growing number of ongoing wrongs committed by politically motivated award-giving, patronage and wiping out of histories. It is also important to encourage dancers who have chosen a particular form—be it a classical, folk or a contemporary dance genre, as their specialisation—where they might want to create their own philosophy and vocabulary of acknowledgment as well as dancing structures of thoughts, practice and engagement as an alternative way to understand, so that the dancers from and in India understand and face their relationship with existing power systems in the dance ecology in India. The word “decolonisation” has emerged as one of the key ideas in the academia, often used indiscriminately to create a confusing space of carrying out different sets of academic as well as personal vendetta under it’s heavy-weight possibilities in the contemporary world. On the other hand, Wright and Xiao remind us about Mignolo’s idea of decoloniality that has emerged as a “radical praxis project” which involves both “thinking and doing”. (Wright and Xiao, 2021: 28), that offers the Third World (including, importantly, the Third World within the First World) “the opportunity to opt out of the white, Eurocentric ways” (Ibid, 2021:28). Research that focuses on dance in and from India copes with this difference in ways of being and doing. From within Indian University spaces, it is evident that the knowledge systems are now controlled internationally in the name of archives as well as English as the medium of expression and research specifications. With a growing exodus to Euro-American Universities the presence of the so-called Third

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World within the First World is growing in size. It is a strange time to write this book, as we lose more and more young potential dance scholars to Euro-American Universities who will be continuing their research on their part of the globe, while teaching Euro-American topics as the Teaching Assistant in class. The discourse on decolonisation therefore, shall possibly have to be framed for safeguarding the interests of the already privileged representatives of the Third World in the First World Universities. For critical dance studies to develop its own pedagogical and research tools, decolonisation has to be understood in parallel to neocolonisation, which according to me is one of the most dangerous problems and actually a crisis of far-reaching impact. The complexities are dangerous to ignore, otherwise we shall loose more and more active dancers/ scholars except those who feel safe dancing/researching Indian dance, in institutions far away from the ground zero in India. For people who have been dancing, both within community practices and in the contemporary proscenium space, such a discourse needs to emerge parallel to the efforts of the usually high caste individuals—in tenured (or otherwise secure) academic positions in US and UK universities, who are regulating much of the discourse from afar at their convenience, if we need to increase the precarity born of yet another form of hierarchy between those dance cultures and forms which have an academic saviour, and those which do not. The other more dangerous phenomenon unfolding in front of our eyes is the fact that now, in the name of the discourse on decolonizatio there is an all-out fight and polarisation being encouraged, and in fact forced, on social media platforms. There dancers with legitimate grievances about individual / community exclusion - from hereditary communities, and the dancers who are now seen as intruders are pitched against each other in a recurring and visible debate that often degenerates into namecalling instead of a encouraging a healthy historiographical challenge. Are we then falling into the same trap of proving heredity and belonging and agency, somewhat like the citizenship debates the Hindutva regime has introduced through the divisive impositions based on religion? This recent tussle is also completely removing focus from the overall political context and complexities of the hyper-Hinduisation of dance forms. The current discourses choose to highlight decolonisation, while rendering India’s current political moment of violent suppression of minorities to render them literally invisible - as if all problems in the Indian dance context can be solved through this particular path shown by the current discourse on decolonization in regional contexts. We therefore remain blissfully within our cacoons, while dance histories are being re-written and published with alarming regularity, from local publishing houses in multiple languages, whereby the already misrepresented histories of the classical dances, the dancers and their patrons are being rewritten. By the time the dancers/ scholars wake up from the personal agendas of creating our career-related securities, we shall find new histories in history books on Kathak (that claims that there were only Brahmin dancers and singers who danced Kathak) , or on Sattriya (where we shall learn about use of Natyashastra in Assam in a bygone era). There is already a string of newly manufactured histories imposed in the name of decolonization by

References

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the dispensation ruling India, claiming an Indic past. We stand guilty of trying to step carefully in order to avoid confrontations, until and unless we are ourselves the focus of attacks. While we keep quiet, this war within our small community goes on — whereby one selectively reads and hears about specific injustices, and is kept away from increasing cases of larger intersectional implications of continuous and rising discrimination and violence. Many young dancers are staying away from a dance sphere that they see as a toxic space of blames and counter-blames. While taking tokenistic sides in the fight for/against the rights, dignity and recognition, we the once-colonized are once again relegated to the stereotypes of people who are involved in in-fighting around dance history while the “new” scholarship in “critical” dance studies is left as a more advanced terrain of scholarship to be created in western academic institutions. It is time to step beyond this form of neocolonisation, where we shall again be letting the white world decide what and how we dance, think or write, and once again the intermediaries shall be the those, who are away from Ground Zero physically and emotionally because of their their academic engagements.

References Bhardwaj, M. (under review). Bearing witness to the knotted skies. In S. Sentler, & G. Batson (Eds.), Embodied enquiry in art making: The fold. Intellect Books. Chakraborty, R. (1995). Rangamancha o Rabindranath: Samakalin Pratikriya (Bengali). Ananda Publishers. Chakravorty, P. (2000). From interculturalism to historicism: Reflections on classical Indian dance. Dance Research Journal, 32, 100–112. Chakravorty, P. (2006). Dancing into modernity: Multiple narratives of India’s Kathak dance. Dance Research Journal, 38(1&2), 115–137. Chakravorty, P. (2008). Bells of change: Kathak dance, Women and modernity in India. Seagull. Chatterjee, P. (1997). The Nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories, reprinted in The Partha Chatterjee Omnibus. Oxford University Press. Dave, R. (2017, June–September). Significant issues for contemporary dancers in India. MARG, 68(4), 28–33. Dave, R. Ed. (2022). Improvised Future—Encountering the Body in Performance (India Since the 90s). Delhi: Tulika Books. Dutt & Sarkar Munsi. (2010). Ibid. Dutt, B., & Sarkar Munsi, U. (2010). Engendering performance: Indian women performers in search of an identity. SAGE. Coorlawala, U. A. (2016). East–West dance encounter. https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/ east¬west¬dance¬encounter¬1984. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781135000356-REM1234-1. Accessed on 10 Mar 2023. Naregal, V. (2008). Marginality, regional forms and stage patronage. Seminar, 589, 3–39. Erdman, J. (1996). Dance discourses: Rethinking the history of the oriental dance. In G. Morris (Ed.), Moving words: Rewriting dance (pp. 252–266). Routledge. Foster, S. L. (2019). Valuing dance: Commodities and gifts in motion. Oxford University Press. Gavino, A. (2021, May 24). Unpacking the buzzword “Decolonization”. https://thinkingdance.net/ articles/2021/05/24/Unpacking-the-buzzword-Decolonisation. Accessed on 20 Feb 2022. Ghosh, S. (1983). Rabindranath O Adhunik Bharatiyo Nritya (Bengali). Ananda Publishers. Iyengar, V. (2017). Categorizing dance: A classic case of contemporary confusion. Marg, 68(4), 34–43.

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Jalal, A., & Bose, S. (2018). Modern South East Asia: History. Oxford University Press. Kapur, A. (1990). Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila of Ramnagar. Seagull Books. Kapur, G. (2000). When was modernism: Essays on contemporary cultural practice in India. Tulika Books. Khokar, M. (1983). His dance, his life: A portrait of Uday Shankar. Himalayan Books. Martin, R. (1985). Dance as a social movement. Social Text, 12, 54–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 466604 Palazhy, J. (2021). Contemporary dance in times of transition. MARG: Performance: Responding Recollecting, Recreating, 72(3), 114–121. Pathak, A. (2006). Modernity, globalization and identity: Towards a reflexive quest. Aakar Books. Purser, A. (2017). Getting it into the body: Understanding skill acquisition through Merleau-Ponty and the embodied practice of dance. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health. https:// doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2017.1377756. Raikhy, M. (2017). Contemporary as a lens of Criticality. Marg, 68(4), 69–70. Rajagopal, A. (2004). Politics after television: Religious nationalism and the reshaping of the Indian public. Cambridge University Press. Royo, A. L. (2003). Classicism, post-classicism and Ranjabati Sircar’s work: Redifining the terms of Indian contemporary dance discourses. Roehampton Research Papers. http://roehampton.openre pository.com/roehampton/bitstream/10142/12584/1/royo+classicism.pdf. Accessed on 31 Oct 2007. Salon, M. (2021). What is contemporary dance. Marg, 72(3), 908–1009. Sarkar Munsi. U. (2008). Boundaries and beyond: Problems of nomenclature in Indian dance history. In U. Sarkar Munsi (Ed.), Dance: Transcending borders (pp. 78–98). Tulika Books. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2021a). Alice Boner across arts and geographies: Shaping the dance art of Uday Shankar. Alice Boner Institute and Rietberg Museum. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2021). Revisiting “Being Rama”: Playing a God in changing times. In P. Richman, & R. Bharucha (Eds.), Performing the Ramayana traditions: Enactment, interpretation, and argument. Oxford University Press. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2022). Uday Shankar and his transcultural experimentations: Dancing modernity. Palgrave Macmillan. Sen, A. (1983). Ananda Sarbakaje (Bengali). Utpal Choudhury, on behalf of the Tagore Research Institute. Tavag, A. (2021, June 1). Dance. How Mandeep Raikhy embarked on a quest for a secular India. The Hindu Businessline. Taylor, D. (2003). Archive and the repertoire: Cultural memory and performance in the Americas. Duke University Press. Tiwari, Anisha. (2017, November 29). Mandeep Raikhy ‘I wanted to use dance as a way to speak up’. https://ears.asia/2017/11/29/interview-with-mandeep-raikhy/. Accessed on 20 Feb 2022. Vatsyayan, K. (2003). Modern dance: Contribution of Uday Shankar and his associates. In S. Kothari (Ed.), New directions in Indian dance. Marg Publications. Wright, H. K., & Xiao, Y. (2021). Decolonisation and higher education: Theory, politics and global praxis. Postcolonial Directions in Education, 10(1), 23–50.

Online Sources https://www.newsclick.in/Huge-Map-India-Shaheen-Bagh-Ode-Unity-Amid-Diversity. Accessed on 23 Apr 2021. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/decolonization. Accessed on 23 June 2021. https://www.britannica.com/art/modern-dance. Accessed on 20 Feb 2022.

Chapter 6

To Be Continued: Thoughts on Dance as Response, Responsibility, and Resistance

6.1 Dance and the Social “While some social art practice seeks to forge social bonds, many others define their artistic radicality by the degree to which they disrupt the social”. Shannon Jackson (2011: 14). “[o]ur so-called ‘modernity’ has turned out to be a movement that privileges the ‘bourgeois self’, enabling an elite aesthetic to distort and de-eroticise the real and the liberating energies of the body”. Chandralekha. (2022:10).

This chapter interrogates the role/function of dance once again—as it continues in its various forms of practice and presentation, specifically in the Indian context. While the spectre of the fast-changing scenario of contemporary dance scenes in the world remains as a reflective presence, the basic focus remains on the ways in which dance in India has become more and more defined by its presentational possibilities as a proscenium art, often obsessively dependent on its aesthetic fixities. A number of examples of the works of dancers, choreographers, activists, somatic arts specialists, and trained dance therapists are used in this chapter. The purpose is to bring into focus words like response and responsibility and their possible interpretative explorations, in the works of these persons who actively engage with dance in their lives and yet do not give in to its overarching functional possibilities regulated by audio-visual modes of control. The critical concerns of the ‘Ground Zero’ in the Indian context of critical dance studies become the basic premise of this chapter through explorations around some theory and praxis interfaces made possible by certain dancers/choreographers and their consistent engagement and commitment. These become the lived realities, not just to write and claim theoretical understanding about, but as active participatory experiences that demand dance and dancers to engage with community realities through civic participation and involvement. The functional applications drive these dance works initially. In their descriptions and analyses, I hope to bring into focus a number of issues that are vitally important in critical dance studies.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_6

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The larger corpus of dances was reshaped and reinvented for the proscenium, and the purpose of projecting a strong and spectacular form of cultural nationalism has been useful in establishing the aesthetic principals and has served their purpose. They have also become forms that are largely controlled and driven by patronage and expectations rather than creativity and wish to remain true to their strictly structured representational principals. In a constantly shifting global scenario, this chapter looks at select examples from the works of Chandralekha, Maya Krishna Rao, Alokananda Roy, Sohini Chakraborty, and Navtej Johar, as endeavours from within the contemporary ecology. These examples set themselves apart from mainstream presentations of dance as meaningful interventions that are intrinsic to dance as a tool of communication. The chapter also investigates the possibilities of social, political, and therapeutic engagements that these individuals and their works have established, as possible modes of pedagogy and sustainability. One of the principal understandings of this chapter comes from the writings of Shannon Jackson (2011), who states, in the context of theatre ensembles: “[w]hether cast in aesthetic or social terms, freedom and expression are not opposed to obligation and care, but in fact depend upon each other; this is the daily lesson of any theatrical ensemble” (2011: 14). This brings us to examining the range of responsibilities that have become known and accepted as the responsibilities and social obligations of dancers (especially classical dancers) to the nation. Many dancers, as we all know, have unquestioningly taken on these responsibilities, while the audience’s needs and expectations have always remained secondary to the call of the nation. This chapter posits these examples as case studies of artistic autonomy and responsibility, towards building an ecology of support and care through their expertise in embodied communication. Jackson’s work reflects directly and indirectly on motivations for performance making, and these motivations influence ‘the language of cross-arts collaboration’ (2011: 14), usually energizing the creative process to integrate several art forms. She says, that through her research and writing the book she is “most interested in sites where these aesthetic and social provocations coincide” (2011: 5). While neoclassical dances in India remain extremely insecure about their purity and continuity, they are also protective and insular about the larger ecology of dance, to the point of being completely detached from everyday concerns of the society. Many collaborations have become the ways in which the dancers work, especially when they want to use dance as a tool for ‘social works.’ According to Jackson, “this aesthetic heterogeneity is complicated further by what might be called the social heterogeneity of social practice.” She observes that, “whereas for many the word ‘social’ signifies an interest in explicit forms of political change, for other contemporary artists it refers more autonomously to the aesthetic exploration of time, collectivity, and embodiment as medium and material” (2011: 14). Her questions, which are grounded in the specific areas of theatre research around binaries that are often established between aesthetic and activism-based performances, help us frame this chapter. She brings into focus the uneasiness about choices made between aesthetically driven performance, versus performances that “might

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compromise an aesthetic practice, especially in the context of social engagement” (2022, 14), and asks: What if the formal challenge of performance lies, in the ambiguity of such a division? What if, for instance, the formal parameters of the form include the audience relation, casting such inter-subjective exchange, not as the extraneous context that surrounds it, but as the material of performance itself? What if performance challenges strict divisions about where the art ends and the rest of the world begins? (2022: 14)

The patronage of dance has developed as a controller of directions in more ways than one. Hence, how ‘autonomous’ art can be, especially in case it is patronized by nameless but powerful patrons, such as governmental academies or university spaces, is debatable. Very critically, and almost cynically speaking, therefore, what is meant by ‘creative freedom from’ or dedication to styles, pedagogies, Gurus, ideologies, or conviction is sadly very often actually dependent on how free the patron wants you to be. In other words, it is the patron who holds the leash of control. One can of course work without controlling patrons, but dancers are also conscious (maybe even more so than theatre artists) about the dire situation outside of such patronage circles. One such very alive and ongoing example is the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, an event that celebrates the 75th year of India’s independence. On its website, designed by the Government of India, it is announced as; …an initiative of the Government of India to celebrate and commemorate 75 years of independence and the glorious history of it’s people, culture and achievements. This Mahotsav is dedicated to the people of India who have not only been instrumental in bringing India thus far in its evolutionary journey but also hold within them the power and potential to enable Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of activating India 2.0, fuelled by the spirit of Aatmanirbhar Bharat.1

Beginning on 12th of March 2021, the festival is continuing for 75 weeks till the 75th anniversary of Indian independence on 15 August 2023. It is important to understand that while the patronage to related celebrations is provided by the Government of India for all the major mainstream events that are planned directly by them, this form of coercive patronage is visible in the way the logo of the festival is given to all performers who ask for venues and advertisements or any other form of direct or indirect help. There is an uneasiness and fear about being singled out for non-compliance of any kind, even if the performance is not directly funded by government authorities. As a result, many dance events carry the logo of the “maha” (mega) event, spanning more than one year. In my analysis, this occasion is an example of the self-motivation, due to a forced sense of fear of missing out on a rare occasion, and be a part of the national space. It produces an anxiety—of not being part of a ‘once in a life time event,’ of missing the chance to be a part of the newly reconstructed historical framework that obviously starts in the 2013–2014, 1

The website https://amritmahotsav.nic.in/ puts forth the vision and mission of this Mahotsav, or the mega-festival and outlines the principal five themes: Freedom Struggle; Ideas; Resolve; Actions@75; Achievements@75. Accessed on 21–12-2022.

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of a new kind of assertion and identification required to be a part of the historical moment, in the reconfigured political ecology of the geopolitical space named India. The corpus of the mega event is therefore built on coercion, control, and cultural conformity that does not get restricted within India, but spills over the geographical boundaries in its “join this or else….” message to the diaspora community. The dialogue can be strangely traced back to the period of selectively stamping the identity of “anti-nationals” on anybody who dared to raise a doubt, regarding the measures of control that have since then become normalized, as a part of the sense of doom that now grips the citizens of a so-called democracy. Anurima Banerji, in her powerful article,2 writes about the striking absence of dancers in the list of artists and writers who returned their government-given awards, in protest against the rise in violence against marginal and minority communities and their economic practices. Banerji writes, …. not a single dancer participated in the Award Wapsi campaign, despite other performers doing so–in fact, in a counter-manoeuvre, key political assertions against Award Wapsi came from several dancers embracing the government position instead. Other dancemakers either offered support to their artistic peers from the sidelines, without taking part in the agitation, or they abstained from the campaign altogether– such that the void created by the dancing body’s withdrawal from the space of oppositional politics assumed a haunting presence of its own (Banerji 2022).

6.2 Dancing Compliance In an essay published in 2017,3 my attention was on the absence of the dancers mentioned by Banerji. The essay titled “Response and Responsibilities: Creative Interventions and the Dancer as a Social-Being” referred to the mainstream classical dance repertoire and the scope within it to engage in any kind of sustained artistic negotiation, through explorations of the changing milieu of the dancer(s), their life-experiences, and their fast-changing ecology. While theatre has continued to respond to socio-political, economic, and aspirational changes, dance hardly ever strays beyond the traditional structures of movements and metaphors. This disconnect/silence and the lack of reaction and public stands from most dancers against everyday changes/adjustments/injustices often draw comments about dancers being controlled by their aesthetic compulsions. As Banerji’s essay amply demonstrates, the discourse has acquired a different level of urgency, beyond just public performance on the proscenium and other spaces.4 It has gained a national currency, whereby 2

See Award Wapsi and the Politics of Dance, South Asian History and Culture. 2022, for details regarding the public announcements, media notes, and the analysis for the absence of dancers’ names in the list of artists who returned their government-given awards from 2014 to 2017. 3 I am referring to my essay “Response and Responsibility: Creative Interventions and the Dancer as a Social -Being” published in an edited volume Contemporary Indian Theatre: Theatricality and Artistic Crossovers (Sarkar Munsi 2017a, 2017b, 2017c: 88–102) that has since become part of this chapter’s framework. 4 Ibid.

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there is a declared and open pinpointing of the figure of the ‘anti-national,’ who has been now graphically identified in the bodies of ‘anybody who dissents.’ The identification also has the strong possibility, and in fact in reality making possible, the process of hierarchizing dissent, by creating a stratification between religion, region, caste, and political identities. This chapter presents an updated and newer version of the essay on “Response and Responsibility: Creative Interventions and the Dancer as a Social Being” (Sarkar Munsi, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c: 88–102), as an ongoing process of building a discourse on the functions that dance is made to perform in contemporary times.

6.3 Interrogating the Scope of Looking for Agency and Politics in Choreography Is choreography a response to something? Where is the creative urge born? Why is it that theatre in modern India became more and more responsive to everyday life, while dance moved more and more away and became ensconced in a self-absorbed search for aesthetic perfection? Why is it that we find either simplistic or didactic representations and tokenisms in dance? Even today, why do we have to think for a long time and then come up with only a handful of names of dancers/choreographers, as people whose creations did not merely remain a presentation, but moved beyond the creation of Rasa into the realms of affect? What kind of responsibility is one supposed to look for in dance choreography? What is the meaning of responsibility in case of a dance creation? Some of these questions plague us, as we start writing, and become concerned about the amount of dance that disappears simply because there remains nothing beyond the ‘here and now’ of the experience. This disappearance is largely due to a lack, in part, of the presentations to create an affect that goes beyond the time of viewing. It is also due to the coveted position that dance (classical forms in particular) has enjoyed vis-à-vis other forms of art, where it had an automatic presence within the Indian culture, and therefore enjoyed the privileges of being a part of the cultural capital that was claimed by the urban elite. French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu critically engages with the term ‘cultural capital’ in his book The Forms of Capital (1986). He mentions three forms of cultural capital: Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in the embodied state, i.e., in the form of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body; in the objectified state, in the form of cultural goods (pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, etc.), which are the trace or realisation of theories or critiques of these theories, problematics, etc.; and in the institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be set apart because, as will be seen in the case of educational qualifications, it confers entirely original properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee.

In addition to cultural capital, Bourdieu discusses the term ‘habitus’ in his writings, in the books The Logic of Practice (1990) and Distinction: A Social Critique of the

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Judgement of Taste (1984). He explains the process in which the body, mind, and emotions are simultaneously trained in a certain habitus, as a response to which the body habits generate certain cultural features and social structures. He also discusses the role of class status and ideological and moral positions in forming the thoughts, actions, reactions, and responses of individual agents, to the objective social conditions they encounter in everyday life. It is important to connect Bourdieu’s idea of ‘habitus’ to Foucault’s idea of the ‘docile body’. The cultural capital that is seen to be contained in dance is passed on from one generation to another, in the ways of socialization. In order to logically connect the dance to the role of the dancer/choreographer as a social being, we need to look at the larger politics of post-colonial India, where dance became the art of the ‘disciplined,’ and theatre remained largely untamed. The cultural capital itself created an unquestioning docility, along with a docile body that became the ideal image of the dancer. This elite position accorded to dance through its historical journey created its cultural capital and allowed a position of ornamentation for dance as a high art. This process also pushed dance away from the everyday, communicative, overtly challenging, and resistive role it is capable of having and still continues to occupy within marginal communities and left the urban dancers free to remain satisfied within their own world. And last, it also created an audience which expected from dance, none of the active engagement with daily lives and issues that it demanded from theatre.

6.4 Responding as the Political and Responsibilities as the Existential5 A live and ongoing debate in the dance community in India is about the role that it plays in society. In the post-colonial society, the role assigned to dance has been that of a form of art, a form of entertainment, and a form of performance that embodies the nation’s cultural capital to a large extent. The other view has been that the movements constructing the corporeal elements of dance are always political and social. Starting from externalizing embodied knowledge, to making visible sex, gender, sexuality, caste, class, and community, dance is invested with the responsibility of being an important medium of registering identity, resistance, and change, according to anthropologists. In post-colonial India, with specialized neoclassical forms taking shape one after the other, the theoretical realms of the functionality of dance as a bodily register and tool for processing and communicating the self, community, and identities have always held a separate and problematic relationship with the culture of practice and presentation in the formal proscenium spaces. The proscenium has become 5

This section is a restructured and updated version of the essay “Response and Responsibility: Creative Interventions and the Dancer as a Social Being”, first published in Contemporary Indian Theatre: Theatricality and Artistic Crossovers, Rawat Publications, Delhi. 2017, pp. 88–102.

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exclusively occupied by more and more aesthetically rigid forms, with the emergence of the classical forms like Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Manipuri, etc. Here, dance reemerges as a tool for aesthetic reaffirmation and entertainment in the new time and space. In this binary of functionality, of course, there have been more works of the ‘aesthetic’ kinds than the ones that have taken on the responsibilities of making a statement—either social or political—by using the body as a political tool. The first focus is on the works of the late Chandralekha—the famous choreographer trained in Bharatanatyam and a practitioner of Yoga, who is considered as a path breaker in Indian dance and choreography, and Maya Krishna Rao— trained in Kathakali dance, currently a self-proclaimed, well-known theatre artiste, and performer creating solo performances using comedy, cabaret, Kathakali, multimedia, and theatre techniques as her tools. The third woman, who calls herself a choreographer, dance educationist, and a social worker, is the well-known dancer Alokananda Roy, whose work with prison inmates has brought her to the limelight as a dancer with a cause, almost at the end of her own dancing career. The intention here is to formulate an understanding of the relationship between art and society in general and dance and responsive empathy/social responsibility in particular. The coveted position that Indian dance finds itself in, in post-independence times, as an emblem of a great tradition of the Indian nation-state becomes important to critically engage with for the understanding and historicizing of dance and dance communities. This understanding is rooted in the context of the response of the community to everyday life and citizenship responsibilities. It becomes necessary to investigate the methodologies behind the creation of exceptions like Chandralekha and Maya Krishna Rao’s work, when the world of the dancers remain largely unaffected by the critical issues of day to day and are comfortably immersed in their mythical and aesthetic cocoon. The introspective works of Chandralekha and Maya Krishna Rao have created a body of choreographic or theatrical productions that carry a strong reference to their original skill set or a grammar originating in their basic trainings. It is evident that both women have reorganized their relationships with the original form of classical dances that they have learnt and practised, in completely different ways. Their social commitments have become more evident through their choreographic journeys, as their performance practices have consistently been born out of and shaped by their everyday existence, concerns, and convictions. In continuation of the discussion on dancers’ responses to social realities, I would like put Alokananda Roy in the same platform as Chandralekha and Maya, acknowledging at the outset, the difference in the very basic engagement and the end that she envisioned for her choreographic practice. Alokananda Roy remains distinct from the other two performers, because of her very different relationship with her art, and its unquestioned traditional embodiment in her performance, and which she does feel the need to question or restructure. The examples of care-based work by Sohini Chakraborty and Navtej Johar that are included in this chapter are analyzed as careproviding possibilities embedded within dance and embodied arts. The area remains

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distinct from that of the other three. The common realm is that of the social engagement that remains the defining relational space created through artistic and civic responsibilities. Dance has mostly been seen as a mode of non-verbal communication. Susan Leigh Foster sees choreography ‘as a theorisation of body and self, gender, desire, individuality, community and nationality’ (Foster, 1996: xii). A dancer is a product of both discipline and creativity. Therefore, when not completely mechanically reproduced and restricted by the grammar and the Margam,6 or actually even when it is shaped by traditional structures of presentations, choreography reflects the dancer’s experience, processing, interpretation, and a reflection of the self and the world around them. In this context, the incorporation of ‘everyday practices’ or ‘ensemble procedures’ (Michel De Certeau, 1984) as differentiated from a cosmetic reproduction of traditionally handed down knowledge systems becomes two polar methods of dance productions and presentations and needs to be contextualized in the context of the Indian contemporary dance in the twenty-first century. It is also important to foreground the importance of the communicative role between the dancer and the everyday surroundings which becomes the incentive and the precursor to the work that is produced, which is in turn returned to the surroundings of everyday through its audience. Susan Foster’s challenge of the ‘assumptions of a natural or spontaneous connection between the dancing body and the viewer’s body’ (Foster, 2011:2),7 and her demonstration ‘that what is often experienced as unmediated is, in fact, carefully constructed’ (Ibid) is followed by her observation, ‘the dancer’s performance draws upon and engages with prevailing sense of the body and of subjectivity in a given historical moment.’ (Ibid). She goes on to say how ‘the viewer’s understanding and rapport is in turn shaped by common and prevailing senses of the body and of subjectivity in a given social moment as well as by the unique experience of watching a particular dance’ (Ibid). The referencing of the everyday happens both within the work of the choreographer and in the meaning making process of the viewer, and the meaning making itself is deeply embedded in the politics of everyday, as perceived and acknowledged by both. Hence, one holds both the choreographer and the viewer equally responsible for the making and receiving of the choreography/performance, but may even be inclined to accord a bit more of the responsibility to the choreographer as the creator of the piece for ‘consumption’ and making it available for all to receive it. A special mention of Foster’s work on the practices of bodily disciplines, experiencing the body and movement, and the ‘drawing upon and producing a kinesthetic experience’ (Foster, 2011: 9) is necessary, to move into my two case studies—the works of the choreographers Chandralekha and Maya Krishna Rao. My choice of

6

Indian classical dance, like all other classical forms of art, survives on the sincere reproduction of the learnt repertoire, leaving very little possibility for choreography. Hence the word choreography has come to mean the organization of dancers on stage in different positions, keeping the movements and the content unchanged. 7 Susan Foster, in her book Choreographing Empathy (2011: 2).

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the two women is not because I claim that they are the only people who acknowledge kinesthetic inputs as well as experiences, as the basis as well as the results of their creations. Rather, for a large number of Indian choreographers of contemporary times, working both with classical and non-classical vocabularies, the perception of experiencing of daily lives is sieved through their sense of aesthetic, politics, or the deliberate choice to not align their everyday experience or identity with what they think they can or should ‘present’ as their choreography. It also foregrounds the fact that in case of many Indian dancers, prominently choosing and being chosen to represent India today in different world forums, empathy—as a constant and consistent part of cognitive understandings and reactions—gets deprioritized by habit of practice. This is born out of the age-old sense of responsibility that the dancer has been bound within and also in the idea of womanhood, aesthetics, and dance as a high art, in-built within the idea of the Indian nation-state. Alokananda Roy’s work, however, is an interesting mix of both the idealized “aesthetic” representation of the classical repertoire and Rabindranath Tagore’s dance dramas8 and repeated productions of classical repertoire. She has not moved away from them, even in her latest works with the prison inmates. This makes her inclusion within this paper debatable and therefore even more challenging and intriguing. Lastly, it is also important to understand the logic of the ‘contemporary’ in dance— as it has claimed a space for increasing number of individual dancers in current times and his/her choice within the realms of praxis. This chapter tries to relate that to the claiming of agency and responsibility, for the statements that the dancing body makes in terms of its empathetic understanding and sharing of the feeling of what another body is feeling, and about the everyday experience of many bodies as one and chooses a few examples from the many dancers and practitioners who claim contemporariness through their engagement rather than only through their movement vocabularies.

6.5 Chandralekha: The Radical Feminist Choreographer and the Choreography of “Open Body and Open Mind” Chandralekha (Fig. 6.1) started as a Bharatanatyam dancer. Her well-known anecdotal writing talks about the way in which she suddenly felt that her dance performed at an event for raising funds for severe drought, and describing the flowing waters of Jamuna, was completely out of place. She withdrew from active performance as a Bharatanatyam dancer for a while and then returned as a choreographer/dancer, pushed by her own political and gendered understanding of her own vocabulary and the need of creating choreographies that spoke of the body and its realities. She

8

Rabindranath Tagore’s influence on the dance in West Bengal has remained the mainstay of the choreographic presentations, which West Bengal dancers have repeatedly produced like the Margam of the Bharatanatyam repertoire.

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Fig. 6.1 Chandralekha with dancers—Namaskar 1986. © Sadanand Menon

maintained that her choreographies took off from the bodies and their labour, and the sexuality and sensualities embedded and embodied within them. Chandralekha created a number of choreographies dealing with the culturally sensitive issues of ‘centrality of the body’, sexuality, the coalescing of male and female energies. She used Tantric philosophies liberally to justify her principal choreographic choice of specifically demanding attention towards the body/bodies that express contestations of different dimensions. The explicit and slow stretching out of movements demand attention to every micromoment/movement, as each complete choreographed section works itself out. Seeking such microscopic attention also creates a different relationship between the viewer and the viewee, as well as the explicit and implicit elements of the movement. It generates a process of assimilation which challenges viewing norms and creates a conversation within the viewer’s mind, as the piece gives ample time to the viewer to develop his/her individual relationship with the performance. According to Rustom Bharucha, Chandralekha was not religious, “her ‘life-style’ (as we put it so glibly these days) was assertively ‘modern’, if not ‘radical’…. Early in her career Chandra knew that ‘art’ and ‘life’ had somehow to go together” (Bharucha, pp. 51–52). According to Bharucha, Chandralekha “found her own ways of relating to the Parampara which may still be too ‘traditional’ for some feminists, but as Chandra would put it: ‘You don’t throw away your culture when you reject some of its taboos, codes, rhetoric, and cliches’” (Bharucha, Ibid). Thinking through Chandralekha’s selected works in the next section, the debates on traditionalism/radicalism may be addressed in detail.

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6.6 Choreographing the Open Body of Padmini Chettur9 in Sloka The dancing body is clad in a white saree. The saree has a structured relationship to the woman’s body, in the way it becomes a part of the image they both create together. For those who have grown up in India, this ‘correct’ image is to do with a deeply socialized understanding of what parts have to remain covered by the five or five and half yards of cloth. It has to remain in place, and the areas which are to remain covered or uncovered are also etched very deeply within the people’s minds. The name of the performance is Sloka, choreographed by Chandralekha in 1999, and explained to be a performance of “Self and Renewal” in the performance note. The body in the choreography looks like an everyday one. But the audience is shaken out of its comfort zone as the slow movements force the viewing to assume intensity, unlike in most other dance performances on the proscenium space. The hyper-controlled, slow opening up of the legs, folded at the knees, and facing the audience not only force people to give attention to the sense of force with which the usually guarded and covered secrets of the woman’s body opens up to claim an agency, presence, acknowledgement, and, through that, respect, but also force them to view a woman’s body in the birthing position. Along with that whole range of acknowledgements, the viewing also includes the slow uncovering of the legs as the spreading of legs also displaces the saree. Uneasiness is what the audience members have expressed as feeling, when they viewed this opening up of the yoni or the reference to the female genitalia, also referring to the female principle and power, with specific reference to the Tantric traditions. My argument, in this context, is that a large part of this uneasiness stems from the fact that sarees need to be in place; and a displaced saree implies violations of the female body in view, either intentionally brought on by the wearer, or by some violent unsocial or anti-social act. Many experienced viewers of contemporary western choreography in the audience recall being actually shocked by their registering of the fact that the saree was getting displaced, as they were accustomed to viewing and dancing in leotards and tights very often. Another equally important assertive process is the way in which the excruciating slowness and continuity of moving demands hyper-attentiveness and connectivities that force the viewer to register photographic moments. This deliberately creates empathetic understanding, not only thematically, but also as a separate and parallel register of experiencing the body and its possibilities. Continuing in her own process of choreography and performance explorations in her own work as an independent performer, Chettur departs from the classical repertoire of gestures, posturing, and mythical tales, to shape an alternative no less strict, but very condensed. Looking for complete detachment from her formative 9

Padmini Chettur was born in 1970. She began her training in the traditional Indian dance form of Bharatanatyam. Between the years 1991 and 2001 she worked with the choreographer Chandralekha, performing in the productions Lilavati, Prana, Angika, Sri, Bhinna Pravaha, Yantra, Mahakaal, and Sharira. Her own artistic research began in 1994.

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classical years, she resists the temptation to seduce, choosing instead to convince. At the core of Chettur’s work is resistance. Her work unveils a taut vision that takes the contemporary dance of India, from what it is and how it should look, to radical dimensions. In her website, her brief profile note says, With a background in the classical Indian form Bharatanatyam, Padmini’s research since the early 90’s has been leading her to find an authentic vocabulary, an authentic set of movement ideas that carry the traces of her physical history, but at the same time are open to new developments in the way that we understand the body.10

6.7 Raga: Reading of Alternative Sexuality? Raga, choreographed by Chandralekha in 1998, is explained as “In Search of Femininity” in the programme note. Blamed of homoeroticism, it evoked negative comments from both Western as well eastern audiences. It has a section where two male bodies are seen in deep connection, deeply involved and communicating in a language of love. Yoga and Kalari Payattu (the martial art form from Kerala) are used by the two male performers. The story is of two birds making love, in the middle of which one of them is shot by the hunter. The connection between the two bodies intensifies through the way the performers hold each other’s gaze constantly. The intensity of the slow pace of the movements is coupled with the connecting gaze and the strong synergy of the two male bodies. Introducing the choreography, the choreographer said that womanliness is to be found ‘deep down in the bodies of men, waiting to be evoked, waiting to be invoked.’ (Programme note for Raga, 1998). Raga starts with female dancers, but in the following scene two bare-chested male dancers entwine and fold into each other’s bodies, in what is described as homoerotic postures. The thematic of the two love birds remains as an idea, while Raga as a choreography avoids metaphorical references. Chandra revels in the strength of the chemistry created by the sheer imagery she is able to choreograph, giving herself the freedom to not be bound by either by the theme or the music or by the bodies and gender of the performers. The idea of using immersive slowness and mimetic acts that necessarily were not direct imitation but through Chandra’s choreographic strategies acquires power over the original acts that the story refers to. Anna Gibbs’ words become useful in this context,11 Mimesis operates at every level of experience, from the most immediately corporeal to the most abstract. Understanding the corporeal, nonverbal dimensions of mimetic communication is crucial to explaining its pervasiveness in human social relations and its centrality to cultural forms such as cinema and performance, which aim to bind spectators into complex forms of sociality, including story, cinematic spectatorship, and audience membership.

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See http://www.padminichettur.in/, accessed on 23/12/2022. Anna Gibbs, pp 202, Chap. 10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0_8, “AFTER AFFECT: Sympathy, Synchrony, and Mimetic Communication, The Affect Theory Reader, 2010, Duke University Press, USA.

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While showing excerpts from Raga at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 2006, Chandralekha had said that she had used two male dancers instead of one male and one female, because of the availability of dancers at the time of the creation of that piece. Though the sex of the dancers was of no importance or relevance to the choreography itself, according to Chandralekha, the image that the two male bodies in close communication created in the audience also cannot, and should not, be ignored. This is especially important, as Chandralekha managed to stir and displace a huge number of stereotypes associated with dance viewing and appreciation and through a lot of critical phases managed to create an audience which crossed the boundaries of traditional meaning making. The autogendering process where the viewing of two bodies together in intimate connection ascertains a certain notion of either heterosexual or homosexual connections, and the genders and the sexual orientations are automatically assigned and assumed by the viewer because of the stereotypical readings of physical implications of the bodily connections. Breaking the stereotypes is not related to just sexualities here but is rather about how to view human bodily acts beyond gender. It remains till date one of the most interesting performances, with multi-layered suggestions and directions regarding viewing performances and performing bodies.

6.8 Sharira (The Body): The Universe Made Out of the Male and the Female Principles Sharira was Chandralekha’s last choreography. Chandra worked with two performers—one female and one male—on the principles of male and female energy. The performance starts with the starkness of a single female body on stage. Tishani Doshi, the female performer, is not a trained dancer. She is trained in Yoga. The vocal is provided by the Gundecha Brothers—famous Hindustani classical singers/ musicians. The movement of the female body draws and holds complete attention, with challengingly unconnected slow movements that do not need to ride on the tune or the rhythm of the musical and vocal accompaniment. Neither does the music need the body in performance. Both of them create their own places, until the moment the vocals start singing about the Jagat-Janani or the mother of the world, and the body of the performer creates and holds an image of a woman in a complex yogic position. The entry of the male performer, Shaji John, an expert performer trained in Kalari Payattu and Yoga, complicates the picture. The viewer is challenged to make a connection between two expert bodies working together, sharing a space, but yet remaining separate as entities, till there is a visible and tangible shift towards establishing a connection between them. The constant binary of viewing is formed out of a series of photographic moments which can be imagined as a string of beads, and the complex male–female principles visibly coming together in a fusion of energies. Chandralekha’s increasing fascination with a shifting flow of photographic structures

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of the bodies as choreographic principals, over the years, finds a culmination in her last creation. Again, there is a challenge thrown to the viewer. Does one see the bodies beyond the images, which match the traditional ways of the reading of two bodies being or coming together? Or does one have to restructure the ways of viewing, to see the philosophical meanings emerge on stage? I feel many of us who accepted the challenge that was thrown towards us, actually got shaken out of our socially structured, and clichéd meaning making abilities. Chandralekha spoke of the piece as follows: Sharira depicts the secrets of creation, the secrets of life in a woman’s body. It is about the living body without compartments where sexuality, sensuality and spirituality exist together. The yoni hasta is crucial to it. The geometric forms, the story as told by the body which we take for granted make us aware of the body as a path towards a return to vast inner spaces of hidden resources.

The politics of visibility and visual culture, where so-called traditional aesthetic principles become a way of controlling independent thinking and understanding, have been repeatedly challenged by Chandralekha. Several times I have felt that her choreography had a tongue-in-cheek approach towards testing and challenging the very boundaries of viewing, though her performance notes and explanations have always referred to images from traditional iconography as her base material. It was almost as if she was saying ‘I shall shake you out of the way you hide behind the so-called traditions of Indian culture’.

6.9 Viewing Chandralekha’s Major Choreographic Works Chandralekha writes, “In our contexts, I believe dance is a ‘project’ that would enable a recovery of the body, of our spine, which for me, is a metaphor for freedom”. Her own process of using the traditional techniques within the structure of Bharatanatyam is perceived by her as a way to explore, expand, and universalize the form, as a mode of “Working with—and making a departure from—the exclusive classicism of Bharata Natyam” (Chandralekha, 2003:57). For the viewer who is not restricted by the revived post-reforms vocabulary of Bharatanatyam, extremely controlled bodies exhibiting structures of Bharatanatyam and a strong presence of the grammar and training in this particular form are powerfully evident in most of her earlier choreographic works. Creativity is easier defined and theorized than brought into the dance pedagogies of different genres of dance in India. The bodies hold on to techniques, and minds hold on to the images, narratives, and values. They are framed by their embodied repertoire, which—once learned—is difficult to remove or completely replace. Chandralekha’s resistance was against all those shackles, but she could not necessarily move beyond all of them. For one, the clear presence of a very upper-caste/class Hindu aesthetic frame was deeply engrained in the imagery built by Chandralekha, especially in the references to masculine and feminine bodily divinity.

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In this context, we look at Tishani Doshi’s response to Karthika Nair’s question on how much her dance experience with Chandralekha—and her performance in Sharira—continues to shape her and her poetry: I danced solely with Chandralekha, and I only ever worked on a single piece – Sharira. So, for fourteen years I have been immersed in a single work. Much has changed over time. Chandra died in 2006, but we still continue to perform the piece. And every time we perform it, there is this bringing to life, not just of her vision and choreography, but of a separate entity, almost. And so, as a group, our decision has been that as long as we are able, we’ll continue to perform it. I can’t imagine any other relationship or conversation as this is the one that has dominated my life, but it feels far more permanent to me than my life as a writer, which has always been fraught with so many uncertainties.12

The contemporary world of dance has evolved and moved out of its fixation with the spectacular choreographies of Chandralekha. In my opinion, she remains the bridge between the contemporary space that the dancers have created for themselves in the twenty-first century and the modern experimentations in Indian dance that never really got their due acknowledgement within the dance praxis–theory–pedagogy in the first five decades of post-independence cultural shifts in India. In hindsight, Chandralekha’s contribution remains a complex one, where the push and pull of radicalism, as well as a somewhat contested brand of feminism, are always presented in an encounter with the upper-caste/class sensibilities, within an ecology of a fragile support system, unimaginable by many dancers of the current times.

6.10 Maya Krishna Rao—Reacting to Here and Now/ Developing Meaningful Content Kathakali helps me connect myself (who I am) to where I am. It also creates my space between the audience and me (Published interview “Sitting in my Skin”, 2018: 228). In her interview to Vishnupriya Bhandaram, in The Hindu, (14 September 2011), Maya says that she likes working stories that take her from the personal to political and back. ‘It should go back and forth, bring out the bigger picture through a personal narrative. One of my first plays Khol-Do is a story by Saadat Hassan Manto, about a father who loses his daughter; it is engaging because it is set in the backdrop of the Partition; that lends a purpose to the story.’ She is also quoted in the same interview as saying, ‘Anything to do with pure personal relationships doesn’t interest or move me. There should be a sort of a political or a circumstantial backdrop.’ Even in her comedy acts and cabaret, she uses her bodily and acting skills to create and drive home important social and political messages. In the interview mentioned above, she concludes, ‘Nothing about the work that you do should be simple. Don’t accept things as they are, everything should be questioned.’ 12

See Tishani Doshi’s interview on https://granta.com/in-conversation-tishani-doshi-and-karthikanair/. Accessed on 29-10-2022.

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Fig. 6.2 Maya Krishna Rao performing during JNU protest. ©Saumya Mani Tripathi

In another interview in the Nukkad Janam Sanvad Maya says, ‘I think my work is political so I won’t make the distinction between the creative and the political’. In this section I have taken two performances by Maya Krishna Rao (Fig. 6.2). The first one is called Walk, created after the 16 December gang rape incident in South Delhi. The second one is Ravanama, a solo piece, where she liberally uses movements and expressive materials from Kathakali.

6.11 Maya Krishna Rao’s ‘Walk’: In Response to the Delhi Gang Rape and Murder The night of 16 December 2012 has become etched in the minds of the Delhiites as a night of shame and sorrow. A young girl was raped and violated in the most heinous manner by a gang of men in public transport, in the presence of her helpless male friend, and then both were thrown off the bus, grievously wounded. The spontaneous protests that started the very next day, after the victim of the gang rape and brutal murder, were discovered included students, activists, feminist protesters, and a lot of ordinary people from all walks of life. These were people who felt that they had to go out on the streets to register their utter disgust, anger, and protest towards a malfunctioning hyper-patriarchal society, which structures the judgments of politicians, religious leaders, police, and law makers. Many of us were constantly in the streets, taking turns to hold up the protest. Maya was one of the protesters.

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Her work as a Kathakali dancer, a theatre artiste, a theatre activist, and a faculty at the National School of Drama is based on her feminist background and her theatrical extractions of moments of human predicament.13 In her performance named Walk,14 she uses her voice to create a dialogue, at times with the victim, at times with the numerous young women who fear or go through explicit or implicit social/sexual violence, and also with the audience. She tries to create a larger framework of all that is violence against women and the silences that are the expected and usual responses from the victim, the society, and the legislative bodies. Maya’s body and movements are androgynous, alternating between the male and the female movement structures. Her cultivated moves are almost aggressively male at times, borrowing heavily from everyday movements, stamped with socialized male bodily activities, and stylized using the Kathakali vocabulary for male dancers. Her femaleness is carefully structured on the same realms as well, an everyday theatrical representation of the feminine, and a stylistic representation of female dancers from the Kathakali style of body grammars. She also keeps alternating between sad empathizer and aggressive resister, daring the audience to feel and acknowledge the feelings. She deliberately does not aestheticize in dance or theatrical terms, but leaves the imagination and reaction in the hands of the audience, banking on their memory of the hideous rape and mutilation of a woman and their empathy for the victim. She aims towards provoking the rest of the reaction from them as a continuity of the ‘performance’ to be carried on as collective responsibility in daily lives. Since her first production, Maya has performed Walk many more times, altered for different audiences and spaces. Her monologue becomes different each time, incorporating the necessary alterations, keeping up with the everyday occurrences around sexual violence in the news in India, the general construct of personal and sexual freedom, and the idea of resistance that she develops as her core thematic. 13

See http://mayakrishnarao.blogspot.com/p/street-theatre.html, accessed on 23/12/2022. A number of performances of “Walk” are available on YouTube that are recorded on different days, for performances, that are named “Walk” but are instigated and created for the particular day’s central concern around which the protest gathering was organized. https://www.google. com/search?q=maya+krishna+rao+website&oq=Maya+Krishna+Rao&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i 57j35i39j46i512j0i512j69i60l3.7631j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid: 157f49df,vid:msUvCWKcCVQ. This was organized on 08 February 2013 during the protest against Delhi gang rape and murder. Accesses on 24/12/2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=hkTyvOKUZ4E organized on 22 February 2013. Accessed on 24/12/2022. https://www.goo gle.com/search?q=maya+krishna+rao+jnu+walk&sxsrf=ALiCzsasJMgnzdOJwW1sHqZXTUnljp rZLw%3A1671871415343&ei=t7umY4fAFKeK4-EP6vq3sAw&ved=0ahUKEwjH98iu7pH8A hUnxTgGHWr9DcYQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=maya+krishna+rao+jnu+walk&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3 Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQAzIECCMQJzoKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzoFCAAQgAQ6BQgAEIYDOgYIA BAWEB46CAgAEBYQHhAPSgQIQRgASgQIRhgAULoHWL0oYMIuaAFwAXgAgAGwA YgB8RCSAQQwLjE1mAEAoAEByAEDwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid: f3625332,vid:vxMsVeyzWmU. Performance at the Freedom Square, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in solidarity with the resistance movement now well-known as “Stand with JNU”, on 13 March 2016. Accessed on 24/12/2022. 14

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Walk has been growing as a performance demanding social justice. It has also been growing in presence—with the bodies that it addresses, energizes, and informs—by virtue of having performed it for the first time after the heinous Delhi gang rape in 2012. Rao said in her interview, ‘I couldn’t sit at home at that time, when all those people were out there walking for justice’ (Rao, 2018: 232). She explained the circumstances that Walk got created as a response to a call from the Jawaharlal Nehru University to be a part of a gathering for justice, in the midst of working with a production for the Annual Festival of National School of Drama, a celebrated event in Delhi, named Bharat Rang Mahotsav. [But] WALK didn’t happen like that. Walk happened because, while these protests were on, one day I was meant to be rehearsing for a comedy show, and when my rehearsal team arrived, I told them I wouldn’t be able to rehearse… I just could not rehearse, and told my rehearsal team that I could not rehearse the comedy.

In her interview she said that in the call from the university, the caller had asked her to come and express whatever she wanted ‘but not through a speech. It has to be a performance’ (Ibid: 232). She remembers having somehow agreeing to do it and putting down the phone to look at her team, thinking of what she had committed to do, in a distraught moment where most people in Delhi were suddenly united either through the process of mourning or by being completely shaken by an all-consuming emotion of anger and outrage. She had to be on stage the very next day. She talked about responding to that particular moment, as a deeply emotional as well as charged commitment, and emphasized that this was the first time in her life that the piece ‘had not come from within me, but from the world outside which had pulled something out of me, and I had felt duty-bound to live up to what was being expected of me.’ Rao describes her performance for which she had hastily created a text that day: For the first in my life in theatre, during the JNU show, which happened in Munirka, near the site of the crime, I took these sheets with me and I was holding them in one hand. I did not want to miss a single word because it felt like I owed it to Jyoti Pandey and I owed it all these people. So that was a very different way of making a show. It was about Jyoti Pandey - about the girl who needed to walk, who needed to sit, who needed to lie in any place, in any part of the city, at any time of the day or night. (Sarkar Munsi 2018: 233)

Rao’s performance had a hastily written text that she tried following that night, in her anger she used her rigid Kathakali postures and large movements to express them—possibly because that was her embodied, ‘go-to’ vocabulary. She also used strong voice and gestures to create a feminist and also androgynous strength, which since then have become part of her devised performance of ‘Walk’ that takes on a new avatar every time it is performed. This is an ideal example of the assimilation of embodied knowledge in a space of innovation that neither directs nor stops you from assimilating the already present skill sets and grammar, but rather energizes you to think and externalize thoughts and emotions through the need for engagement that is urgent and immediate. A critical reading of Susan Leigh Foster’s article “Walking and other choreographic tactics” (Foster, 2002: 125–146) at this juncture will help us understand the mobilizational strategy utilized by Rao.

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Critically engaging with some experimental ‘Walk’-based dance works by dancers and bringing in easy-to-locate, distinctly identifiable and deliberate productions of corporeality in public spaces, Foster put forth the following questions: Is anyone else watching? Are we the only ones willing to stop for a moment and savour this assault on the normal? Is this an exercise mostly for the benefit of those who are doing the following? What do they learn from it? What do they hope we might see, if we pause to watch? (2002: 125)

Thinking through the theatricality and the communicative possibilities beyond dancing, Foster continues to highlight the approach and the outcome for these dance works. They also saw their dances as opening up dance to a broader constituency of practitioners and viewers. Not explicitly political in their approach, they nonetheless extended an invitation to dance to bodies who had previously been denied access. (2002: 128)

Foster continues with Yvonne Reiner’s comments on the applicability of such forms of embodied activities (and the lack of political engagement thereof), while highlighting the sense of self-centred functionality of such public engagements, by quoting Reiner: Whose life is so excellent and at what cost to others? Let’s focus on the means by which we will awaken to this excellent life: by getting our minds and desires out of the way, by making way for an art of indeterminacy to be practiced by everyone, an art existing in the gap between life and art. (2002: 128)

To make a public intervention through dance or theatre then is not necessarily automatically a political one. It can end up as a show of choreographic or embodied excellence, remain just a meaningful visual engagement, and provide a valuable sensory journey. It could also end up being a completely disengaged spectacle, unable to share the corporeal space for the viewers or even the community it is involving, in terms of space and time. Tokenisms for the essential ticking of boxes to acquire funding are also another reason why such performance strategies are placed in public realms. This again brings us back to the question of the ‘political’ body in performative actions involving dance and other movement practices. I am again drawn to the word ‘mobilisation’ by Randy Martin, in this context. As a word that makes a repeated appearance in actions within ideological affiliations in politics, the word mobilization really infiltrates into the world of performer-audience connections and the implications of the sharing and cocreating of a resistive space, between the performer and their public. Foster’s words again are important in this context: Moving between past and present, tacticians seeking insights into the kinds of resistive action pertinent to their moment will find that their responses can only be formulated while in motion, in response to the movement that their situation creates. (2002: 144)

The availability of public performative interventions as catalysts to ongoing processes of engagement with issues beyond the ephemeral theatrical moment may be understood, according to Foster, from what De Certeau writes ‘in his formulation of antidisciplinary resistance’, where he ‘points to the necessary historical and cultural specificity of any tactical operation’ (2002: 144).

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Rao’s walk has become a tool of protest. It also has established itself as a vocabulary of resistance, whereby Rao has taught herself to take along her now-familiar text, as well as her Kathakali and street theatre toolkit, into spaces where she is invited to perform, and perform another ‘new’ resistive enactment using walking/moving/ dancing/performing and speaking.

6.12 Event 2: Walking as a Bodily Strategy: The ‘Walk’ as a Vocabulary Maya Krishna Rao performed at the Jawaharlal Nehru University once again in 2016, while the university was experiencing a tremendous turbulence as a result of a period of unrest and state-led propaganda against its culture of inclusivity, debate, and democracy. Several students had been arrested, and the university’s students and teachers were sitting on protest at the Academic Block. Maya Krishna Rao was at the School of Arts and Aesthetics in JNU that day, and after she finished her work, the students requested her to visit the protest site once. They also tentatively put forth a request for a short performance or a talk to her. Rao just asked for a microphone—it was hastily arranged for. A laptop operated speaker was carried by a student, who followed her down the stairs of the Academic Block, as Rao began performing, completely impromptu. Rao is an alumnus of JNU, and like many, she was also very disturbed already. She saw herself as a part of the protest, but also as a person who has been engaged in street theatre and theatre-based activism. On the steps of the protest site, she reperformed a version of her popular performance Walk. Rao’s performance’s body training has a strong root in her dance training and her embodied experience in Kathakali as a form of dance technique. She refers to that history as her base and sees her immense and ongoing experiments with theatre-making as a tool to experiment with her skills and imagination (Dutt, 2018; Sarkar Munsi, 2018). Her encouraging words at the end were ‘Aap apna mashaal khud ban jaiye to andhera hoga kahan se?’ which literally means ‘You can become a beacon of light yourselves, how will there be any darkness then?’ The words were accompanied by a movement that shows her holding a square posture with feet apart and knees bend— strongly balanced and determined, with one hand raised in an imaginary gesture of holding up a light.

6.13 Art as Support/Response Maya continued to be a formidable presence with her evolving, resistive pedagogy in COVID-19 times, as the roles of women as dissenters/homemakers found various levels of responses. These responses varied from state action and threats and acts of

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violence on one side, and the supportive acts of the community of artists and others whose responses were often a range of mixed aesthetic expressions and public art projects for declaring support and political commitments. Care, support, and community solidarity were highlighted through various such projects, now documented as an extraordinary collection of public protest art. In times marked by political turbulence, artists have been exploring urgent and fresh ways to raise critical questions and respond to social impulses through artmaking. Scouring a wide range of creative expressions like floor paintings, graffiti, invisible theatre, dance walks, slam poetry, and protest songs, art-making has been integrating with political action to stage synchrony of radical articulation. The recent past has witnessed artistic outpouring on the streets and social media, alongside speeches and sloganeering, signalling a strong return of protest art. “We the people” was first performed by Maya Krishna Rao during the women’s march in the capital city of Delhi, on 3 January 2020. The performance was a solo act (that is usual for Rao), where she enacted the draping of a saree, an unstitched garment worn by many women all over India, from a very early age. The saree is also a garment that is recognized by all Indians and many people from all over the world as a typically Indian material—though there are unending varieties of the same length and breadth known by the same name. Sarees are also draped in widely different ways in different parts of India, but the same garment can be used by all wanting to use it as a saree—without being fitted to the different sizes and shapes of the body it is creating a cover for. The act of wearing the saree on stage, therefore, takes on all possible ways in which a constitution is available to all citizens. Rao’s performance of draping the saree while reciting the Preamble to the Constitution on stage was possibly creating an audio-visual metaphor for this. The length of the saree also acted as a metaphor of unity. The act was accompanied by recorded music. According to Rao “Every time one can approach the Preamble from a different lens. In the context of the women’s march, I wanted to create devices that speak to women, and can be read with ease. The sari is not just a garment, it is layered socially and culturally. Many women wear the sari from girlhood till the day they die, and for an Indian woman, it is often a layering of her own skin” (Sahai, The Hindu, 9 January, 2020). Rao’s performance Kaisi Khushboo Hai, referring broadly to the scent of the land one loves and belongs to, was one of most creative anti-CAA protest performances, made for the specific act of being performed in different protest sites such as Shaheen Bagh,15 Jamia Milia University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and others, for generating awareness/support. In this performance, she invokes the sense of belonging by referring to the strength of the connection to the land and identity, through the aroma of one’s own connections. It is done by her by scooping up a handful of soil, while appearing strongly grounded by using a Kathakali pose (Mandala Sthana)—a square placement of the legs with the knees turned out and the feet apart. The inner soles of 15

Anwar, T. (2020, January 18). Map of India in Shaheen Bagh—An Ode to Unity Amid Diversity. Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://www.newsclick.in/Huge-Map-India-Shaheen-BaghOde-Unity-Amid-Diversity.

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the feet are raised, while the outer soles touch the ground. The holding of the ground in visible steadiness, while depending on it for support, is what stood out in her negotiations of this posture and the movements including walking across the stage, with hand and upper body gestures. She refers to the strength of belonging and clearly challenges the acts of validation to prove citizenship. Simultaneously mocking and challenging the registering of citizenship, she celebrates the constitution and the strength it lends to every citizen. She celebrates women’s unity and strength, calling them the guardians of Indian Constitution. She calls for unity, holding on to the idea of belonging, affirmation of democratic rights. She reenacts the performance with the saree in the same manner as in her performance of “We the people”, cautioning anybody who tries to tear the saree into small parts. The performance ends with volunteers, urged by Rao, spreading knotted pieces of cloth (dupattas) being as the several links that connect people who are holding them. These knotted long chains are spread far into the audience, and the performance ends in holding on the cloth-line and being moved or moving to the music, together as an ensemble. Several of the participants expressed their surprise at the way the simple act of being mobilized by the cloth-line generated a sense of belonging together, beyond the scepticism, and cynicism that “tend to overcome us very often in these harsh circumstances”, said one of the volunteers after the performance. Apart from using her artistic creativity and training(s), Maya has worked with the process of developing a pedagogy for theatre in education for a long time. This for her has meant bringing together training and creativity from both dance and theatre and working on genres like dance, theatre, street theatre, dance-theatre, stand-up comedy, cabaret, and many other forms. In her essay “Pandita Ramabai: The Making of a Participatory Theatre Programme around a Character from Indian History” (2013: 206) she writes, “Our folk forms, in song, dance, theatre, arts, are rich with devises in ‘distancing, storytelling, play-making and participation. For me the most exciting part of the journey begins now: to rediscover some of these forms, distil them and take them into workshops for teachers so that they can be equipped to use them for promoting learning with students.”

Maya’s use of her body foregrounds her training in Kathakali, but it is interesting to note that whenever she has wanted to create a socially relevant, activist performance, she has moved away from directly using the ornamental aesthetic of the dance techniques of Kathakali.

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6.14 Alokananda Roy: “It Was not just Dance….”16 Alokananda Roy (Fig. 6.3) does not begin or end her story about her work with prisoners with reference to dance. In fact, dance, she said, was a tool for her to be able to teach the prisoners to be human again. “And I was not just teaching them. I was reminding them about all the beautiful things that they had forgotten about life. I tried to connect with them as one human being does to other human beings—and that was a kind of communication they had forgotten in the confines of the jail. I did not know what I was going to do; except for the fact that I felt I had to do something to restore their faith in themselves.“ She also says that she only had dance as her skill set, and a deep interest to do something for the gaol inmates who were introduced to her during one of her trips to the gaol, on invitation from the officials. She noted with sadness that for some people in media, and later in a commercial feature film made on the story of the reform that transformed the life of one prisoner Nigel Akkara, along with many others, the process of transformation in a correctional home might have a saleable aspect. For many others, however, it means a new beginning and a rebirth that has changed their lives forever. Alokananda calls herself a dance educationist, choreographer, and social worker. She started dancing at an early age, and her introduction to the proscenium was as a performer in Children’s Little Theatre. She became a professional classical dancer, trained both in Bharatanatyam and Odissi, and has won several awards as one of the most successful Odissi dancers based in Kolkata. She has established a school for teaching Odissi, where she continues to teach students from disadvantaged families, who cannot pay for their dance tuitions. Her dance grammar and choreographic process has remained conventional, though her efforts have become more and more based on empathy and dedication towards using dance for creating a sense of empowerment and equality, simply through the level of skills. In most of her choreographies, and as a professional dancer, she has been best known for performing the heroines of Tagore’s dance dramas, over a long career. Though not trained in any psychotherapeutic process of working with creative arts/ Dance Movement Therapy, she took on the project of working with prison inmates using culture therapy. Her plan was to teach them martial practices like Kalaripayattu and popular folk forms like Dandiya, as well as use the skills that were available among the prisoners. Alokananda has constructed the toolkit for cultural therapy out of her engagement with the empirical reality that she has had to deal with, in her process of work with the gaol inmates. For her, culture therapy involves “training prison inmates in different performing arts that form an integral part of Indian culture—music, theatre, dance, recitation, painting, sculpture and sports through production-oriented workshops, with the help of mainstream resource persons and

16

Alokananda, in her presentation at the conference “Moving Space: Women in Dance” at the School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (03/02/2013), talked about her experience as a dancer before and after her work at the Presidency Jail, Kolkata, with women and men prisoners.

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Fig. 6.3 Alokananda Roy during her project at the Presidency Jail or the Correctional Home in Alipore, Kolkata. © Alokananda Roy

trainers. This is aimed at rehabilitation and reformation of the inmates so that they find it easier to get into the mainstream when they are released”.17 Alokananda candidly admits that for her, the urge to do something was clearer than the process she would have to follow. Though as a trained choreographer, she was quite sure that she would be capable of training and shaping body languages, and she became overwhelmed as she saw how the angry minds and bodies become more pliable and open to the empathetic process that dance brought along, with discipline, hardship, and structure of practice. As Shoma Chatterjee writes: For those who are sentenced to life as Nigel was, it becomes a creative outlet for social networking, a remedy for bouts of depression and violence within the prison bars. Public performances are subsequent to this therapy to invest the inmates with a sense of human dignity and also to make them develop a different perspective on life. For mainstream society, it is a way of sensitising them about the potential these inmates have even within captivity. Beyond Borders was followed by a performance of Rabindranath Tagore’s dance drama Valmiki Pratibha, which was written in 1881. Ironically, the story of Valmiki is something Nigel can quite closely identify with. Valmiki was originally named Dosshu Ratnakar, and 17

Shoma A Chatterji, “CULTURE THERAPY: A life beyond prison”, in India together: A news in proportion, 30 July 2012, http://indiatogether.org/nigel-society, accessed on 03/01/2015.

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was a dreaded dacoit who changed his life after a cathartic incident, becoming the Rishi Valmiki credited with composing the Ramayana. ‘I have played Valmiki for approximately 50 performances with other jail inmates across West Bengal, Mumbai and Pune and have not missed a single performance till now. In Mumbai, we were 87, including security personnel, who went for the show,’ Akkara says.18

In both her major works with the prison inmates, Valmiki Pratibha and Ashoka, of which numerous shows have been organized to full halls across the country, she has used grandiose spectacular stage-craft and a large number of participants, most of whom were male and female prison inmates. Many of the inmates have since been released and have started their lives as free citizens, but continue to work with Alokananda as guest artistes.

6.15 Choreographing Mediations Around an Alternative Concept of “Work:” Reimagining the Bodies of Survivors of Trafficking19 Many women who are rescued and put in shelter homes in large cities are part of their marginal populations. They are unable to return home to their families, because of the stigma about their ‘work’.20 They have repeatedly raised the issue of “work” and their definition or attitude towards how they see their body as their tool/source of income that is linked to what they see as ‘skill.’ A large number of websites give detailed explanations and advice on human/sex trafficking and sexual slavery. A recent UN report states: According to a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the vast majority of all human trafficking victims – some 71 per cent – are women and girls and one third are children. “Trafficking for sexual exploitation and for forced labour remain the most prominently detected forms, but victims are also being trafficked to be used as beggars, for forced or sham marriages, benefit fraud, or production of pornography,” said UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov.

18

Ibid. This section of the chapter is an updated and reworked version of my paper “Mediations around an Alternative Concept of “Work:” Re-imagining the Bodies of Survivors of Trafficking,”. © Lateral 5.2 (Fall, 2016), special issue on “Leveraging Justice” https://csalateral.org/archive/issue/ 5-2/, eds. Janelle Reinelt & Maria Estrada Fuentes. This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. ISSN 2469–4053. Please find the terms of the licence on the website: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. 20 A series of interviews was conducted, recorded, transcribed, and translated by the author in person in 2015, 2019, and then in 2022. Most of these women agreed to give interviews only on condition of anonymity or wanted to use other names. They repeatedly brought up the issue of “work” and their definition or attitude towards what they see as their body as their tool/source of skill. Transcriptions and translations are mine. 19

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According to the website of Legal Service India, https://www.legalserviceindia. com/legal/article-3245-human-trafficking-laws-in-india-.html,21 which is quoting the UNODC. Human Trafficking is defined by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the Trafficking Protocol as ’the recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person by such means as threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud or deception for the purpose of exploitation.’ The UNODC estimates that: 51% of identified victims of trafficking are women, 28% children and 21% men 72% people exploited in the sex industry are women 63% of identified traffickers were men and 37% were women 43% of victims are trafficked domestically within national borders

Not all slaves are trafficked, but all trafficking victims are victims of slavery. Human trafficking is a particularly cruel type of slavery, because it removes the victim from all that is familiar to her, rendering her completely isolated and alone, often unable to speak the language of her captors or fellow victims, and therefore extremely vulnerable. I acknowledge that in terms of the day-to-day use of the word “labour” in the context of sex work, a particular configuration of the organization of labour needs to be understood, which includes both sexual and social labour, structured by a set of life constructs, “made up of living and working arrangements, practices, ideas, norms, ideologies, and consciousness that are unique to the sex industry.”22 What intrigues me is, however, a different conceptualisation of work (meaning the actual effort of sex as work). This may appear completely theoretical, when looked at from an outsider’s perspective, but constructs the basic tenet of “survival” for many such women who take conscious decisions to discontinue with the “work” that was their livelihood. Sex trafficking may be forced, coercive, or consensual. Usually, in the case of survivors of forced trafficking there are greater incidences of direct violence. Symbolic and systemic violence23 are ingrained within the system of the sex trade, where one person can buy the rights to control the acts of another person. During the interviews I conducted, almost all interviewees acknowledged their reaction to such 21

See https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-3245-human-trafficking-laws-in-india-. html. Accessed on 15-12-2022. 22 Prabha Kotiswaran, “Born Unto Brothels–Toward a Legal Ethnography of Sex Work in an Indian Red-Light Area,” Law of Social Inquiry, 33, no. 3 (2008), 579–629, SOAS School of Law Research Paper No. 07/2010, accessed on 15 February 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1636966. 23 Nivedita Menon describes the effect of sexual violence by saying “its harmful effect lying not so much in the physical assault, but in the transgression of the victim’s conceptions of selfhood and sovereignty.” Nivedita Menon, Recovering Subversion: Feminist Politics Beyond the Law (Illinois: University of Illinois, 2004), 141. See also, “Resolution adopted by the General Assembly 48/104. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women,” United Nations A/RES/48/ 104, 1993, accessed on 10 March 2016, http://www.un-documents.net/a48r104.htm. This defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such act, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in pubic or in private life”.

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violence, obtained by an act of separating the mind and the body of the sex worker, whose daily “work” routine forces her to keep the realms of the body and the mind as separate as possible, as she continues the work of “pleasing.” That dissociation produces a certain amount of ability to resist any outsider’s control over the mind, even while controlling the body-object and its activities, for a while. From the way in which the women I interviewed describe their relationship with their body, they dissociate as a form of resistance which helps them to create a split between intimate and public space and also between secret and public behaviour. This split actually subverts the definitions of what is intimate or secret, by making the mind a secretive and intimately controlled tool. It is only available to self-control in defiance to the “public-ness” of sex as work that is a commodity and therefore available to the public and accountable as a product. This distance also is strengthened most times through a deep disrespect that the woman has towards her body and the work it does. Sex work assumes a certain skill of providing entertainment and pleasure to the client on the part of the seller, but actually the biggest skill that this body learns through a series of often violent and completely subjugating experiences is to submit to the wishes of the client, to make available her body for the person who pays for it, and to use for sexual pleasure. Though the woman is assumed to be in the business, the work itself hardly includes anything that can be seen as her agency. Giving in to the client’s wishes is the “work” that the woman is required to learn. This distance between the body and mind is something that has been talked about by practitioners and activists who work with the rehabilitation processes at many levels and in many geographies. Eve Ensler, in Kolkata for a collaborative programme with Kolkata Sanved (December 2014), talked about “One Billion Rising” which exhorts women to dance. Ensler pointed out in an interview, in Telegraph India, the “statistics say one in three women will be beaten or raped during her lifetime. That makes the figure roughly one billion.” In the same interview she also says that after sexual assault, the body “becomes a landscape of terror. It alienates the owner from her body. She may hate her body. Yet, how do we get back into the body?” Continuing the conversation, Ensler asserts in the same interview, that dance “helps me live in this thing that I have left—my body… Dance brings us back to our bodies.”24 Ensler’s assertions about returning to the body—or to continue to live in it—are what came out as the most important day-to-day struggle for the young women I have interviewed. The toughest journey, for the survivor of extreme alienation, is to return into her own body. For a survivor, emerging from the submissive body and unlearning the autosubmissive mode is in itself a huge and gradual process, which more often than not needs outside stimulation and help. Inhabiting that body again, 24

Eve Ensler’s interview was published in The Telegraph while Ensler was in Kolkata in 2014, as one of the organizers for the event DANCE FOR REVOLUTION, jointly organized by Kolkata Sanved in collaboration with the American Centre and St. Xavier’s College. Chandrima S. Bhattacharya, “Dance To Reclaim The Body,” The Telegraph Calcutta, India, 20 December 2014, accessed on 15 January 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1141220/jsp/calcutta/story_4383. jsp#.Vy61wPl97IU. Also see the facts she quoted from “Unite to End Violence Against Women,” United Nations, February 2008, accessed on 18 February 2016, http://www.un.org/en/women/end violence/pdf/VAW.pdf.

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with a redefined intent and purpose (and not just using one’s body as a tool), is the most difficult and lonely process. While this process is “rehabilitation” for the counsellor or therapist, it is “rehabitation” for the survivor. If that is negotiated in and through a community—a sharing process with other surviving bodies—that is what can start anew the relationship between the survivor and her body. In this context, does one refer to the body of a survivor of sex trafficking as “the victim’s body,” “the violated body,” “the traumatized body,” or “the survivor’s body?” The arguments between different groups of feminists in India have foregrounded issues of self-determination, perpetual victimization, and a debate between voluntary and coerced prostitution. Giving these arguments their required recognition, I would consciously like to move away from such arguments, to the world of the child/teenager/woman, who by being forced or coerced to travel to another region/country/territory gets dispossessed of community membership, identity, and citizenship, where her only identity and “choice” of labour are the act of selling sex. The systemic disposability, dispossession, and invisibility that permeate the discourses around survivors of trafficking—surviving in marginal spaces of rehabilitation processes, as their “work” stops, and their “skills” are no longer usable—are mediated through media, state agencies, NGOs, or even performers trying to embody or address the trauma and dehumanization. In a market-driven world, all rehabilitation, empowerment, and recovery efforts around trafficking become judged, even by the survivor herself, on the basis of the economic status that opens up through alternative occupations after having left the “work” that she used to perform. Unequal economic relations have been the single greatest push factor in making female children and women vulnerable to trafficking and sex work as a means of subsistence, where the body is considered as the only available tool for earning a living. Neoliberalism and globalization have resulted in increased demands for cheap labour, including various forms of sexual labour, e.g. trafficking, forced prostitution, pornography, and other exploitative means. In such a circumstance being born as female citizens in a society which sees them as expendable and redundant creates a severe sense of dispossession.

6.16 The Issue of Embodiment and Empowerment I now understand that our bodies are the core of our existence—I feel so sorry that I have spent 25 years of my life constantly hating that core, and all the things it knew so well to do. (ekhon jani amar shorir ta amar mool dhon, shara ta jibon—poncheesh bochhor-shorir ta ke, aar shorir diey je kaaj kori taake ghenna korei je katiey dilam, ki hobe!)25

25

This translated excerpt is from an unstructured, recorded, and transcribed interview of Meena (Name changed), in Mumbai, August 2014, conducted by the author. Since then, 7 of the 10 interviewees from Mumbai and 4 from Kolkata (retired after an active life as a bar dancer/sex worker) in 2018 and 2019 have reiterated the same self-hate in their recorded statements.

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The conversations about the bodies of survivors of sex trafficking are mostly hosted within the discourse of empowerment, in the context of bodily violations and trauma. Roger Bechtel’s work on trauma and traumatic memories applies specifically to the scenario of the survivor. Trauma is the unprocessed or unprocessable experience that manifests in disorders such as mind/body separation, uncontrollable anger, or severe depression. Roger Bechtel writes: Traumatic memories do need to be “recovered” in order for the victim to mourn, but they are not holistic and intact, waiting anxiously for a probing therapeutic intervention to reveal them. In fact, what makes an event traumatic is one’s inability to transform the lived experience into memory at the time of its occurrence. A traumatic memory, then, is not one that is hidden, but is one that is not yet made. Instead, the traumatic experience becomes trapped in the body—“possesses” the body, as Cathy Caruth puts it—for the traumatized body cannot let down its guard, the lingering activation of its “fight or flight” response to the traumatic threat keeping it in a state of adrenalized hyperarousal.26

In such a situation of “hyper-arousal” as mentioned by Bechtel, cognitive assimilation becomes impossible and the result is an ongoing loop where the mind tries to claim the experience, while the body’s response is more defensive and could be anything starting from complete withdrawal and hype-ractive processing of signals like touch, smell, look, gesture, and acts. The traumatized person is thus unable to either own the past or live the present. The common symptoms are flashbacks, nightmares, guilt, anger, and anxiety. I examine the possibilities of changing the dynamics of the mind and body through a revisiting, representation, and reconstruction of the self-image. I am drawing here from my background fieldwork in a range of experiences such as Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) workshops for school children and the so-called normal population, survival workshops and corporate well-being programmes, performances by survivors (many times critiqued as victim-art), and training sessions for trainees of Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) programmes, sessions conducted by trainee or trained young DMT advocates, who have come out of similar circumstances of trafficking and have started working with the community, and mediatized representations by the trauma “survivors,” like films made by them or about them. Simultaneously, and alongside the work of therapeutic workshops for empowerment/recovery/ rehabilitation experiments, I have been looking at activism and performance works and different representations of trauma through visual art within spaces of social work, pop culture, or art. I will be drawing on these experiences in the remainder of my analyses. One important example is a particular project that I would like to refer to in this context, named “Transforming Steps,” initiated by a non-governmental organization, Kolkata Sanved, in Kolkata and Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, in March 2012. Six dancers from Kolkata Sanved went through a programme of workshops and training with two choreographers provided by Sadler’s Wells, as part of the Sadler’s Wells Connect Festival. The dancers from Kolkata Sanved took part in this project, which 26

Roger Bechtel, “The Body of Trauma: Empathy, Mourning, and Media in Troika Ranch’s Loopdiver,” Theatre Journal 65, no. 1 (2013): 77.

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was aimed at raising awareness on human trafficking. The ‘Transforming Steps’ project coincided with the London Olympics and was aimed at raising awareness about the increase in human trafficking during major sporting events. A series of workshops, movement practices, and choreographic encounters were conducted, both in Kolkata and in London. The survivors (young girls rescued from trafficking) received training in videography and created short videos as part of this project, which were then edited to be made into a film and shown at the same time in London. The performance itself took place at the Lillian Baylis Studio in London. “Kolkata Sanved dancers perform at the Sadler’s Wells Connect Festival.”27

6.17 Redefining “Work” Through Dance and Movement The social constructs of two definitive words—“victim” and “survivor”—along with the links between the embodied cognition of the survivor, and that of empowerment, in the context of the violations experienced by victims of sex trafficking, became important while processing my experience of working with survivors of sex trafficking at Kolkata Sanved (Fig. 6.4), which uses Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) as a tool for rehabilitation. I have tried to understand the embodied distress of the victim, whose frame of reference to herself is the way she is framed by the society, comparing her own body and labour (work) to the existing frames of a conceptual body of the woman constructed as the regular, the normal, or the perfect. In spite of many debates over issues of sex work, or sex as work, it is difficult to make these women register themselves as resistive and subversive citizens as they tend to fall back on the common social categorisation of themselves as those whose labour is itself constructed as a pollutant and therefore marginalizing. Thus, the trauma that is already a part of the experience, and which repeatedly surfaces as not-fullyprocessed memory gets reinforced in much well-meaning rehabilitation work, unless there is a specific and careful therapeutic direction towards dealing with the trauma of individual survivors. Roger Bechtel writes about performances that work on trauma: What is missing from the common conception of trauma is thus not simply an accurate account of the role of memory, but the understanding that trauma is an affliction not only of the psyche, but also of the body. Unfortunately, aesthetic representations of trauma, whether of the pop-culture or high-art variety, all too often reinforce the misconception by reprocessing it. They exploit the inherently dramatic elements of the stereotype of trauma—recognition, reversal, the demon within—and using trauma as a convenient narrative trope.28

27

Paul Hamlyn Foundations News, 27 March 2012, accessed on 8 May 2016, http://www.phf.org. uk/news/kolkata-sanved-dancers-perform-sadlers-wells-connect-festival/. 28 Bechtel, “The Body Of Trauma,” 77.

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Fig. 6.4 Kolkata Sanved Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) senior team of practitioners/trainers during a workshop. © Photography: Amy; identifiable participants: Sabita, Sreeja, Tilottama

6.18 Survival The extremely repetitive and often violent structure of sex work as a livelihood induces a sense of disconnect between the body and the mind of the women. Thus, being rescued does not necessarily or automatically mean survival. Survival in the case of rescued victims of trafficking means to arrive at a (more or less) sustained state of being away from the death grip of the situation of slavery and to be in control of their future. For survivors of such a severely dehumanized mental and physical landscape, Dance Movement Therapy has been used as a tool, to establish a conversation between the self and body and to readjust the self-body-work dynamic. In this process, recovery means a realm of possibilities that the therapeutic encounters are able to create, by focusing on building a different self-image of the survivor’s body, her relationship with it, and her reclamation of the work it can do. In this context, to move systematically in a therapeutic workshop, for many survivors, is to acknowledge their bodies in their physical locations, composition, existing musculature, strength, weakness, pain, heaviness, and other physical conditions. To dance is to extend that physicality into specific directions, to find systems of moving within the body, to acknowledge effort, to channel energy—and to feel, emote, and also to acknowledge processes that connect what one feels with what one expresses through bodily and facial expressions. That is a lot of “work,” and that chain of work can then easily extend to more and more challenges—expressing still unspoken words

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through bodies or moving for reasons beyond survival. This process, most importantly, helps create another definition of work for the previously violated body, for shaping the dramaturgy of rehabilitation and a life beyond it. It is important to acknowledge that a lot depends on the survivors’ ability (many times through the help that one could get from therapeutic encounters) to perform and celebrate this journey away from victimhood for a consistent length of time, so that it becomes a habit—of thinking beyond vulnerability and victimhood with growing self-confidence. Therefore, it is the performance of “surviving” that becomes one of the key factors in rerouting one’s relationship with one’s own body and helps place it in the so-called everyday situation. In my research, I continue to look at the roles of embodied practices as tools to address the vulnerability factor, which can then shape the case-specific dramaturgy of rehabilitation, to access the differential referencing of strains of the past life, in the life beyond rehabilitation. I suggest here that shifting locations from victimhood to empowerment and the recovery of self-hood silently surpasses one in-between location—the location of the survivor. There is an important registering of the huge capability of the woman herself, in this location of the survivor: to have taken the final step out of her “everything is lost” state of hopelessness to “I can survive—if I can hold on to this new found strength” stage of being. The biggest violence that is registered by many of the survivors is that of being denied authority over one’s own body. These women share a systemic disposability and invisibility, as the business relies on the victim’s illegality and criminality to generate maximum revenues. This is aggravated by repressive state apparatuses on every side of the trafficking scheme. Therefore, it is important to understand that the shift from embodiment to empowerment has to be a process involving detailed work, within a script (I choose to call it “dramaturgy” as, in this case, it is to be used as the background work for the therapeutic process or the performance). The dramaturgy essentially needs to have two layers. One important part is to locate the victim’s body—with its problematic vulnerabilities stemming from a distorted self-image, fear, anger, negative sexuality, distancing mechanisms, and reactions to touch—in a space with other vulnerable bodies. Most activities, including those as intimate as the act of bathing, are conducted in shared spaces using sparse facilities. Hence, even in terms of therapy, group works are important. It is also a reality that, given the lack of support, space, time, and adequate funding, such therapeutic sessions are possible only in groups, in most cases. Grouping together bodies with different issues of vulnerability for sessions of therapy becomes a difficult, yet necessary task. The varied sources of vulnerability create different mind–body dynamics in each of the participants. Some such source of vulnerability is due to the fact that in India, in most lower-income group families, women grow up with very little sense of individual space and also with little or no sense of agency. Though the facilitator gets to work with a group of women in a shared space for a specific time period, these women need to be essentially taken as bodies of difference. These body stories, that are part of these therapeutic sessions, are replete with reactions to nearness/touch/feeling that get communicated as bodies move together. The roots of such actions and reactions

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may be located in different histories of violations and generated from very different memories of vulnerability. Connecting such bodies of difference through the second layer of dramaturgical manipulations thus becomes a challenge for such recovery processes. For example, for many participants of survival/recovery workshops, the usual reaction was a sense of disconnection or disrespect towards one’s own body and a problem of coping with proximity to other bodies. To make oneself invisible by crouching and putting one’s head down between knees or sitting with one’s back towards the room was some of the most common reactions, when asked to occupy a space. In the same group, some women were more confident and could be termed as initiators. Some participants came forward and took initiatives to volunteer and try out processes introduced in the workshop. For some others, even holding hands with other participants took a long time. The shared space created a sense of comfort, which also helped the process of changing texts of embodiment for the participants. The body is always in movement, and no two bodies move in the same way. The vulnerability factor becomes evident with subtle and small changes in expressions, contractions of muscles, stiffening of the spine, and almost indiscernible shifts in postures. When the therapeutic activities succeed in changing the relationship between the body and the mind of the survivor, one can observe six emerging themes of empowerment and changing definitions of “work.” First, from the disconnectedness or the rejection of the body, there emerges a familiarization with and liking of one’s own body—through movements that replace painful associations of violence, with a sense of security and control, and belonging to the present. This change is motivated by movement exercises that start and develop a systematic acknowledgement of body parts and a connection to them. Second, from a sense of guilt and marginalization, one can experience a sense of being empowered and the freedom to express through the uses of dance and movement. This opening up occurs literally and physically, through walking, sharing space, and mirroring. Third, the process changes movements which are light and indirect, reflecting a lack of confidence, selfassurance, and grounding to confident, direct movements, with participants taking responsibility and pleasure in self-confident moves. These changes are visible in the mirroring exercises with partners in DMT workshops that increase confidence and empathy for others and enhance emotional understanding through the increased use of the mirror neuron system. Using mirroring often helps in enhancing the sense of the surroundings, by helping the subject to focus on the other body with focused concentration. Mirroring activates a group of specialized neurons, which mirror the movements and actions of others. The activation of the mirror neuron system is said to facilitate social cognition, empathetic understanding, and communicative skills. Often used in standard dance and theatre training, mirroring is a tool that enhances inter-personal communications and observational capacities (Buccino et al., 2006: 55–63). Fourth, many women talk about being tired of speaking about pain and deprivation, to justify their involvement in the sex trade with stories of horror. They find it a

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great relief to move instead and bring their feelings out through their bodies. Superimposing a pleasurable experience of the body through movements over an existing uneasy relationship with it is one of the powerful potentials of “performing” empowerment. The participants experience this change through reclaiming their selves and bodies through happy, sad, light, heavy, big, or small movements that come to establish a grammar of “pleasure,” in place of “pleasing.” Fifth, there arises a sense of community and kinesthetic empathy from a state of constant anxiety, in which many of the survivors can never close their eyes or relax, even while lying on the ground. Movement induces “calming down” processes in persons whose sense of marginalization ranges from being without a state or a sense of home, a complete or partial disconnection from family, to neurotic fear, psychosis, or anger. The constant enactment of the word “freedom” (of the body, mind, and most importantly of any choice that the person wants to make) through performance can create extensive and lasting confidence, a sense of resolution, and a long-term vision of the future. Finally, moving from having guilt, stigma, anxiety, depression, and self-induced blocking of memory and expressivity, to moving together with verbal and non-verbal kinetic engagement, leads to the creation of a communal intimacy among a group of survivors coming together in a session of Dance Movement Therapy. Group exercises help in sharing the “work” of creating a movement sequence, improvisations on storytelling, sharing of movements of vulnerability, and risking coming out of it. While in a group, the awareness that others are also going through the same process increases their sense of self-worth, as women feel part of a shared time, space, and work process of moving beyond the past together. In terms of these six shifts, a sense of confidence in the preliminary stage after the rescue is transitory. Constant residual “holding back” is experienced side-by-side with the elation of finding the new self, until the process normalizes the reference points and connections between the body-subject and the body-object, over prolonged performative journeys. This is where the creation of a personalized healing text becomes essential. To move from “I fear…” to “I am not afraid of…,” and from “I was…” to “I can…,” one needs a dramaturgy that is capable of creating one’s own route to a sustained sense of healing and alternative definition of “work.”

6.19 Reworking Life Redefining the self after rescue and rehabilitation is a time-consuming process, in which progress is often marred or hampered by setbacks. An ongoing and processual well-being programme has been seen as the only way to keep the path of recovery as smooth and continuous as possible. It is commonly asserted that the process of recovery consists of stages to improve social skills, self-awareness, and enhancing one’s connection with one’s own bodily activities. There are a number of arguments regarding the appropriate terminology or status to be accorded to all activities that were previously grouped under “prostitution.” However, the shift to the more recent term “sex work” does not take care of the social conditioning that the survivors

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create for themselves through their interactions with the outside world. A large part of what the survivors think of themselves also comes from the use they put their bodies to—as a space to be rented out for short or long durations. Bringing the mind back into the body is easier said than done, unless processual activation and actual exercises of inhabiting the body are introduced to them as available skills. Thus, it is important to make available concrete tools for creating mind–body connectivity through a system of default mechanisms. Activating an alternate sense of work through a systematic and therapeutic use of movements and dance is easily understandable by the survivors, as it is a tangible sense of activity, and the exhaustion is immediate and inevitable. This physical activation process is accompanied by the awareness of the building activities of dialogues and individual/group reflections, whereby subconscious activities and motivations may be discussed and assimilated as a more permanent sense of achievement. The convincing of the body and mind may require different time-engagements for different survivors, but the process yields results and is considered as worth a try by most therapists. This research serves to highlight the necessity of providing paths for survivors to reclaim their bodies and redefine their ability to be productive, as a counterbalance to the injustices they have suffered as trafficked women—unprotected by the state, and often uncared for by society.

6.20 Towards a Pedagogic Analysis of Dance Movement Therapy29 Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) has become known as an important tool used to initiate and nurture a process of well-being that aims to address the problems arising out of post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD). This section focuses on four principal conceptual strands behind the structuring of the tools that address trauma related to histories of sexual abuse and violence on women, resulting in different psycho-social symptoms in women survivors such as low and fluctuating levels of self-esteem, withdrawal from social spaces and social interaction, vulnerability often resulting in retraumatisation, hyper-sexuality, bouts of anxiety, violent anger, depressive disorder, and self-harm. The use of the kinetic-cognitive powers of dance has been known to create an affect that ultimately leads to psycho-social rehabilitation in many cases. The work of DMT is based on the premise of creating processes through which the survivors are helped to identify and address vulnerabilities in their own mindscape. This process

29

This section of this chapter is a reworked and edited version of my published essay “Towards a Pedagogic analysis of 6”, published in 9,780,367,134,433 | The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance—vol 2. Chapter No. 18.| Edn. 1 | Hardback. Pages 198–208. The original edited publication is edited by: Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, and published by: Routledge London. ISBN-13: 9,781,000,177,077.

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also augments and aids the process of counselling for survivors of sexual violence, by offering options of reimagining self-hood, agency, and respect for their own bodies. This section will discuss four principle conceptual premises—Somatics, Kinesics, Proxemics, and Touch (Haptics)—as tools for addressing the survivors’ mental and physical vulnerabilities, by first creating a somatic map on which the bodies of survivors place themselves with and vis-à-vis others. Based on the interviews of two practitioners and facilitators—Sohini Chakraborty30 (Founder Director, Kolkata Sanved, Kolkata) and Navtej Johar (Director, Abhyas Trust, Delhi) about their works on DMT and Somatic Practice, respectively, this paper aims to suggest a structure for the pedagogy of Dance Movement Therapy and research how the frameworks of Somatic, Kinesics, and Proxemics are utilized to create a logical structure and progression to commonly used DMT exercises. While working with survivors, and also looking at DMT as a therapeutic tool over a period of twenty years, it becomes evident that it is not always possible to have a clear structure of progression in mind while working with trauma survivors with different histories. At the same time, these four principle concerns are to establish an understanding of the progressive stages and the nature of outcome, in the tools for therapeutic methods commonly used for different body awareness programmes, movement education, and DMT in India. According to Sohini Chakraborty, Founder Director of Kolkata Sanved, an organization that uses DMT as a tool to work with young women survivors of trauma from sexual exploitations, most of these therapeutic endeavours take place in group sessions in India. It is also not common for survivors to access therapy as individuals, nor is it an economically viable option for many. Such sessions are introduced in shelter homes for young female survivors rescued from situations of sex trafficking and subsequent exploitations, in the hope that dance would bring happiness and relaxation in the survivors’ lives, in a very general manner. Until the Kolkata Sanved started its diploma course in DMT about five years back, in collaboration with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, there was no training process of creating “wellness” using dance and movement. Recovery or survival in such cases also cannot be formulaic and depends much on the individual survivor’s conditions, and the way in which a long and sustained process of well-being is managed for her. Kolkata Sanved currently works with DMT in numerous shelter homes and similar organizations, with a group of young women who have diverse histories of trauma and are at different stages of adjustments and recovery after rescue by police from situations of trafficking or bondages. Most of the young adult women survivors live with an almost universal and yet very personal histories of trauma—often generated from different situations of exploitations and slave-like situations. One also finds many such women reporting nonviolent experiences—deeply exploitative but at the same time creating a sense of material comfort and freedom—compared to the family situations from which they may have run away or been taken away from. Some are from organized brothels, 30

Chakraborty’s Ph.D. Thesis is published as the first detailed academic publication on DMT from India.

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while others are from unorganized situations of sexual slavery. Some are daughters of sex workers who have life only in similar ‘work’ spaces as their mothers. Their experiences are as diverse as the circumstances that they have originally come from. The range of trauma leads to them being differently receptive to any therapeutic intervention. For many of the survivors, living with mild or severe trauma and its recurrence at sudden turns of life have become a part of the psycho-social environment they survive in. The resurfacing of trauma, with specifically identifiable but often uncontrollable manifestations, is known as PTSD.31 PTSD is a “neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorder” according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM) and may be identified by exceptionally low self-esteem, withdrawal from social spaces and interactions, acute anxiety attacks, violent mood swings, bouts of uncontrollable anger, hyper-sexuality, and tendencies to cause self-harm. It may occur at any age but is more common in young adults. Retraumatisation is common, and survivors suffer such recurrent trauma-induced symptoms, as a result of the deep scars and related residual trauma (Javidi and Yadollahie, 2012: 2–9).32 DMT is a comparatively recent tool for psycho-social rehabilitation in India— developed largely through the works of a few individuals such as Sohini Chakraborty33 and Tripura Kashyap,34 over the last fifteen years. The tools developed within the structure of the therapeutic process of DMT are largely influenced by the works of the Laban Institute, London, and the American Dance Therapy Association, which have managed to establish standards of therapeutic courses, followed by a large number of trainees the world over. Though its origins are from the Western world, its practitioners in India have felt the urgent need of creating their own tools, or at least tools that use the large repertoire of body and movement languages available within dance in India. It is only after DMT training courses were being established that the critical understandings of the pros and cons of each of the elements from the toolkit got analysed. One such important course is the Dance Movement Therapy Diploma Course offered jointly by Kolkata Sanved (Kolkata) and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai). This course marks an important departure from amateur experimentations with DMT, whose origins may be traced largely in the personal experimentations by dancers 31

Javidi, H. and M. Yadollahie. (2012). Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 3(1), 2–9. 32 See for details, Elliot, D. M. & Briere, J(1992). Sexual abuse trauma among professional women: Validating the Trauma Symptom Checklist – 40 (TSC-40). Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 6, 391–398. 33 Kolkata Sanved—a non-governmental organization working with DMT as a tool—has been working with DMT as its process of psycho-social rehabilitation for survivors of trafficking and sexual exploitation. Kolkata Sanved also trains facilitators and trainer for conducting DMT for working with PTSD among young adult survivors. Their work and method of working have both become more organized and structured as Kolkata Sanved became more experienced through the years of experience working with affected population of survivors. 34 Tripura Kashyap is a Dance and Movement therapist based in Delhi. She is the cofounder with Mahnoor Yar Khan of ‘Rainbow Inc’, a creative arts therapies centre working with trainers and team leaders in dance, drama, music, and visual arts therapy.

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who were equipped with only their dance training and their passion to engage in creating paths of personal and communal well-being. According to Chakraborty,35 Kolkata Sanved and other such organizations have to be able to provide services to a large group of people, be it in schools, institutions for mentally or physically challenged people or shelter homes, and specifically to housing age and genderspecific inmates rescued or detained from different social situations. As the work with young adult women has also become more specialized through diplomas offered through certificate courses36 and community-based training programmes,37 the work is seen as essential and extremely fruitful—even if it is an uphill task. The output of such programmes is difficult to assess, but easily visible in the changes of world view, body language, communicative skill, handling of personal trauma, and in helping others deal with their own traumatic experiences. This struggle to create a record of progress can be eased through the use of the conceptual frameworks of Somatics, Kinesics, Proximics, and Haptics. They create a clear connection between each of the exercises used by DMT practitioners and the goals those exercises intend to achieve. Permutations and combinations of the desired end results can thus help the practitioners to plan and thereafter map the path to recovery in a more cogent manner.

6.21 Somatics and the Image of Self [I have been told not to come back home. My body is unclean. So is my mind. I did not resist or kill myself therefore I must have enjoyed the time in the brothel. I have not been allowed to say a word in the one hour I spent standing near the door, while my father, uncle and sister-in-law decided my fate. As I walked away from them, I wanted to kill myself for the first time. And since then, I have never looked at my body. I feel like there is a filthy smell coming from me all the time. I bathe and bathe, but it does not go away.]38

According to somatic movement therapist Martha Eddy, soma is an “embodiment of a process—constantly adapting and enduring the changing patterns of embodiment through time”. She quotes Thomas Hanna (father of Somatics, according to her) in

35

Interview with Sohini Chakraborty, Founder Director of Kolkata Sanved, Ph.D. Scholar Tata Institute of Social Sciences (School of Social Sciences), dated 16 September 2016 (Kolkata) and 20 December 2018 (Kolkata). 36 According to Kolkata Sanved website http://kolkatasanved.org/kolkata-sanved-academy/ [accessed on 10–12–2018], Kolkata Sanved—Centre for Lifelong Learning Tata Institute of Social Sciences “Diploma in Dance Movement Therapy is the country’s first university-affiliated course which spans one year and is offered at two locations: Kolkata and Mumbai. Due to the human rights perspective inherent in the course, it explores not just the DMT process but also the role of dance and DMT in bringing about social change”. 37 Training of the Trainers (TOT) Programme offered by Kolkata Sanved creates livelihood opportunities for survivors of sexual violence, by which survivors can become healers. http://kolkatasa nved.org/training-of-trainers/ [Accessed on 10–12–2018]. 38 Translated and transcribed from an interview of a survivor, New Delhi, 20 December 2017.

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asserting that the soma is made up of “embodied elements which cannot be separated from their evolved past or their adaptive future” (Eddy, 2002, p. 46). Navtej Johar, dancer, choreographer, and somatic practitioner, defines Somatics on his website39 as “derived from the Greek word ‘soma’, meaning ‘the body in its wholeness’”. In his interview40 he described his own method of somatic practice as ’Abhyas Somatics’ and sees the process as a method that involves mapping and scanning the body, such that it creates an understanding of the physical structure of the skeleton, muscles, bones, joints—or the materiality of the body. This is in an experiential journey in which the participants engage not only with the dynamics of the material body, but also, its emotionality. According to Johar’s website, beginning with facilitating individual self-care the method helps the participants to prepare their bodies as sensory instruments of clarity. In case of vulnerable women survivors, many of the somatic perceptions are the socially informed ideas that are confirmed by the physical experiences of violations that leads to a deep sense of guilt, a disrespect, and an altogether difficult relationship with one’s own body—often accompanied by a derogatory self-image, leading to, or born out of a lack of self-respect and looking at the self through others’ eyes. As one of the important processes that are aimed at establishing or reeducating such vulnerable persons, somatic tools may be used for creating body-mind integration, regeneration of respect for self-awareness, for understanding and practising relaxation, energizing the body through self-care, and acknowledging love for one’s own body, with methods to focus attention to body parts by using specific exercises. According to Johar, one of the important achievements of somatic exercises is to reeducate the body about its possibilities of feeling, being, and moving, and methodically distilling the materiality of the body while simultaneously observing the process of distillation through the BARPS method. His website states ……. the somatic practice aims to make the performative body thrive on its own sensitivity. And it hopes that this self-reliance will foster a “sensory authority” which in turn may promote movement autonomy in the mover! As much as a performer can benefit from this practice, so can a non-performer. The focus given to breath, voice, touch, gaze, attention, and intent, all come together towards building an awareness and sensitivity and hence immensely enhance mental, physical, and emotional health as well as the creativity of an individual; many a times also leading to a knowledge of self-healing.41

For survivors of sexual violence and abuse, the therapeutic concerns rising out of a recurrent sense of guilt and the insecurities about their own body is often exacerbated by the rejection of the family, after their rescue from the situations of oppressive and often-forced exploitation of trafficking. In order for the survivor to start the journey of self-healing, it is essential to start with rebuilding her natural confidence in her 39

Abhyas Trust, Navtej Johar’s 6-month long course on somatic trains participants to claim movement autonomy, through training in yoga, body movement, choreography, and monthly conversations and workshops with experts from various artistic practices. 40 Interview of Navtej Johar dated 03/01/2019 in Delhi. 41 Website… https://www.abhyastrust.org/forthcoming2.htm.

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ability as a person as well as a social being. A simple exploring of the somatic contours of the survivors—especially patients diagnosed with PTSD, is part of the techniques developed by Chakraborty in the specific context of India. The healing approach begins with reestablishing one’s connection with one’s own body (soma), as the first step towards creating coping mechanisms, to deal with retraumatisation. According to Eddy. When remaining at the unconscious level, these imprints may lead to imbalance and conflict; when explored and expressed consciously and creatively, the connection between body, mind and emotion makes a vital contribution to the artful development of the self. (Eddy, 2002, p. 49).

6.22 Kinesics42 and the Survivor [A room full of young adult survivors have registered for a workshop. All of them are doing an exercise. They have been told to take a comfortable standing position in any part of the large room. A young woman – let us imagine her name is Chuni — stands with a clenched fist and a rigid spine, facing the wall. She insists on telling her story. Her posture adds to the story. Her spine and her fists convey the intensity of the range of emotions she is feeling. She stops abruptly and continues with the exercise the class is doing. Dropping down, she crouches with her head between her knees. Her hands encircle her knees, holding them protectively, as if shielding her core from probing eyes, as well as intrusions from others. The facilitator can only see the participant’s back, along with the other bodies on the floor, while she continues her instructions … suggesting a circular motion be introduced - to the upper parts of the bodies on the ground. Bodies move tentatively, bodies hesitate to move, some bodies take support of the hands as movements of hands and upper body grow bigger and confident. More than fifteen minutes pass. The hands of the young woman have visibly loosened – the body has relaxed, at least for a while.]43

The two principle intensions of conducting the above kinesic exercise are: – Tracing paths of past journeys from memory as well as imaginary and ideal journeys one would like to go on are two exercises used—kinesic experiments, often aided by words or phrases, sounds, or emotions. – Manipulative movements to motivate and help the survivor relax and release emotional tension. The word Kinesics (body-movement communication) was first used in the early 1950s by anthropologist Birdwhistell (1970, p. xi), to propose that the movements of the body—intentional or unintentional—makes up non-verbal language for humans. According to him, kinemes, like phonemes, are identifiable sets of movements, conveying a set of meanings of ideas. Important movements of the body, from involuntary stiffening, cringing, relaxed/stiff postures, large and small gestures, bodily 42

See R. L. Birdwhistell’s book Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body, Motion, Communication. 1970). 43 An exercise that is commonly done in the sessions by the author.

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reactions to other bodies and their positions, gestures, and postures and communicative movements of the head, body, and limbs are part of this field of research. In the context of DMT, the unconscious and conscious moving patterns as well as reactions become a matter of observing and reading the person’s areas of strength and vulnerability. They also reflect and reveal the memory and experience of violations, exploitations, and abuse that the body stores within it. Much of bodily activities are unconsciously learnt by people, as members of a particular community. Each socially identifiable community has its own codes of norms and values attached to the body, its appearance, aesthetic evaluation, and socially permissible acts and movements. The fear of severe value judgements is set to deter aberrant behaviour. In the same structures of socialization, all communities create an ideal woman—by setting codes of using voice, body, and movement. The use of limbs, postures while walking, and the use of the lower and upper body are value judged consistently. In cases of bodily violations, the self-imposed codes of the image of the “good woman” become a tool for self-policing among survivors, who are convinced (even if they have never been told by anyone), in most cases, that they are trapped in a polluted, imperfect body which they live in and move with. In other words, these young adult women judge themselves as imperfect because of a past that they may not have chosen to live. Kinesics becomes an important tool for me to use, to recreate communicative pathways and alter the relationship between the survivors and their bodies, by introducing possibilities of integrating the physical body to the cognitive, social, and emotional realms of functioning. In an exercise to express and externalize suppressed anger, rapid Kathak steps in simple rhythmic patterns were used to transfer the concentration on the personal feeling and helpless memory of anger, to a following the rhythm in the steps. Thus, the gradual transformation of energy, from the suppressed anger to the execution of steps to match the accompanying rhythm, is often used to address trauma-induced stress.

6.23 Proxemics and Gaze Behaviour [In a room of 13 young women the DMT instructor asks for a volunteer for a walking exercise. She is asked to walk around through the scattered crowd. She is asked to stop in front of any one, look straight into the eyes and extend her hand in an invitation to hold hands and walk together. A friend hesitantly holds hand with her, without looking at her at all, but starts walking with her—still holding hands. They repeat this with another participant. Slowly the line of friends grows long and clumsy, but holding hands now has become an easy and playful activity. Slowly letting go of inhibitions—giggling and relaxing—participants hold hands across bodies, shoulders, and the line that formed following the instructions, has now become a group. The group has no leader any more, it is just enjoying moving together….]44

I have analysed proxemic and gaze behaviour as 44

An exercise often used by the author—in which starting from walking is a way to put bodies at ease and in an everyday space.

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….. indicators of the way in which people share spaces with other human beings. In terms of reactions to and acknowledgement of other bodies in the surroundings it involves coded behavioural structures that become indicators of trauma and PTSD in survivors of sexual violence. Jinni Harrigan’s work on ‘relevant variables for operationalizing gaze behaviour and spatial parameters in social settings with respect to territoriality, intimacy, personal space, public behaviour, and cultural differences’ (Harrigan, Rosenthal, Scherer, 2005: 4) helps in locating the strength of understanding these abovementioned connections while working on a structure for group therapeutic exercises for PTSD patients among the survivors of sexual abuse and violence. (Sarkar Munsi, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, p. 116)

In community workshops, group exercises are sometimes preferred to simultaneously build confidence and interpersonal communication. Even though each individual participant’s behaviour is often the focus, in the two previous categories discussed before, in case of DMT, Proxemics is applicable to largely facilitate affective relationships and community solidarities among and between participants in a larger group (Harrigan, 2012: 137–198).45 By facilitating situations through meaningful interpersonal and group movements, non-verbal communication is introduced in different experimental settings with friends, strangers, and intimates. Strongly monitored and yet creative solidarity and trust building exercises are thus introduced—with the aim of helping participants rebuild a sense of confidence, belonging, responsibility sharing, and empathy—and a view to ultimately creating a community in which the participants can open up. Through actively engaging with eye contact, creative enactment, and assertive movements to explore different types of distances such as intimate, personal, social, and public, DMT creates varied psycho-social experiences for survivors. The interactions between two persons, person to the group, of encroaching others’ spaces, and responding to approaches from others in return can be seen as efforts to create longterm well-being, under the purview of proxemic process. For example, a mirroring exercise between two partners facing each other, mirroring each other’s movements, while holding two ends of the same thread between their teeth involves gazing at each other constantly and intently, to be able to follow the movements of each other. Such forced coordinations also push participants into proxemic understandings of sharing space and help them in restructuring their social uneasiness around other bodies.

6.24 Haptic Communication [I do not close my eyes. If I do—I cannot be ready for any surprise like sudden violence. But I also do not reside in my body while it is being used by someone else. During that time, I plan my marketing, I listen to the sounds of my daughter playing or humming. My mind roams while my body is given on rent. At that time, I just cannot be inside my body. You will 45

Harrigan, J. A. (2012).” Proxemics, Kinesics, and Gaze”. In J. A. Harrigan, R. A. Rosenthal, & K. R. Scherer (Eds.), The New Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (pp. 137–198). Oxford: : Oxford University Press.

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not understand didi. That is the only way I can go through the repeated exposure to touch of different kinds.]46

In the psychology and neuroscience literatures, Haptics is the study of human touch sensing, specifically via kinesthetic (force/position) and cutaneous (tactile) receptors, and is associated with perception and manipulation (Hannaford & Okamura, 2016, p. 1063). Touch is a way of communicating with other human beings. It is extremely culture specific and may be interpreted in very different ways by people from different parts of the world. In DMT processes in India, touch is one of the tools used with caution. It is used as an advanced tool for survivors of sexual violations. In some of the tools used in Proxemics, haptic communication becomes an additional or advanced technique for creating or restructuring the ability to deal with personal spaces and territory. As is evident from the interview quoted in the beginning of this section, touch signifies the key aspect of sexual violation for most survivors. Each survivor carries a body that is etched with experiences of repeated and unwanted touch that a reluctant sex worker has to endure, or the hyper-sexuality and sensitivity that some survivors develop as a psycho-social fallout of their profession. Touch or haptic studies has not been explored much, as a specific area within DMT, in the Indian context. While Indian classical dance vocabularies have restrictive and specific grammatical usages for touch, in most of the community dances among the large tribal population in India one of the most common format of group dancing is to hold hands and link bodies somatically and visibly. The movements, often repeated and appearing simple in their structure, generates a common kinetic thread through the linking of hands, bodies, and the uniform steps that creates and regenerates the sense of togetherness and community bonding in psycho-somatic ways. (Sarkar Munsi, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c, p. 116).

Socialization plays an important role in the understanding of good, bad, acceptable, or unacceptable ways of touching. And their part is in this structure of understanding as well. While many survivors struggling with PTSD symptoms may develop a complete antipathy towards any manner of touch and aggressively reject any sudden touch, some others display symptoms of hyper-sensuality and an exaggerated need for touching. The exercises that are commonly used in DMT playfully establish categories of touch for the survivors, so that they are able to distinguish between different qualities of touch such as bonding, guiding, greeting, playful, submissive, controlling/aggressive, and healing touches, among many others. The DMT sessions often end with an experience of the healing touch, which is often used to create a soothing and calming experience for the participants.

46

Translated and transcribed from an interview of a survivor, New Delhi, 20 December 2017.

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6.25 Proposing a Structure of Progression in DMT In two interviews in 2016 and 2018, Chakraborty emphasized the importance of the systematic use of a work plan for DMT—which must be specifically designed according to the needs and requirements of the target group. In her opinion, DMT needs to attend to the specific requirements arising out of trauma and post-traumatic stress, after the survivor is identified to have such symptoms by trained experts. Severe negativity associated with body image, moving, and social activities are the principle focus needed for a module that ushers in long-lasting needs for well-being. This can be understood as an evaluative process for the facilitators helping PTSD patients to grow their own mechanisms of coping with the recurrence of retraumatisation, as well as for helping survivors to develop communication skills, and deal with depression and negative memories. Categorizing goals or achievements clearly, to associate them with Somatics, Kinesics, Proxemics, and Haptics, is a way of marking progress and may be a tool for the self-assessment of the DMT programmes that are being developed for the first time in an organized, scientific manner in India.

6.26 Summing Up: The Possibility of ‘Committed’ Art Most of the dancers/artists mentioned in this chapter have gone beyond establishing a straight forward relationship between their dance practice and the aesthetically and stylistically motivated presentations of dance. In doing so they have defied audience expectations and also the accepted structures of presentations within the forms they have been trained in. Some works stand in simple defiance of the expectations while others dismantle stereotypes actively with body movements, texts, and theatrical tools. In assigning a clearer role or function to these works discussed in Chapter 6, I return to Shannon Jacksons Social Work (2011), where she quotes Claire Bishop, to acknowledge – “[A]rt practices that seek to create a harmonious space of inter-subjective encounter—i.e., those that “feel good”—risk neutralizing the capacity of critical reflection. Furthermore, – [a]rt practices that seek to correct social ills—i.e., those that “do good. (Jackson, 2011: 47). In Jackson’s understanding, the self-conscious engagement of many artists with “‘the social’ in their work (Ibid: 44) leads us to search for the reason why the actual number of such commitments from the community of Indian dancers is small compared to those from theatre”. Jackson refers to the works of “thousands of artists and art organizations who self-consciously engage ‘the social’ in their work”. She explains, “For those who measure a work’s success on its degree of community “selfdefinition,” its efficacy is measured in its outreach strategies, its means for providing access, the representational demographics of its participants, and its identifiable

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social outcomes” (ibid: 44). Coming to the Indian context, and in order to conclude the discussion on commitment, I draw attention to thoughts expressed by Chandralekha way back in 1984, at the “East–West Dance Encounter” that remains significant even today. According to her, with advancement of capitalism and unchecked growth of industrial/urban society the vital link between body and its ecology snaps due to repeated attacks by political, economic, and social systems. She asks, “What role can dance play in such a society?… Can it initiate a living flow between individual and community?…. Can it infuse people with joy for life, radical optimism, hope, courage, and vision to negate all that is ugly, unjust, and hurtful?”(Chandralekha, 2022: 6–7). Such a discussion remains hopeful, and yet inconclusive, but points towards the control of established and invisible threads of control that large governmental patronage systems bind the front-ranking dancers with. Such invisible control mechanisms of course keep track through a surveillance mechanism that may make or break careers as well as aspirations. The younger and less favoured dancers (who do not receive or accept patronage from similar agencies) have lesser to loose, and hence their works give us hope for dance, for social justice, and for an embodied communication for care and resistance.

6.27 Post-script: Thoughts on Purpose and Criticality This book is ready to go to press, but my relation to dance is completely shaken. Manipur suffers and burns in ethnic violence since last few months. The picture gets darker every morning with newer stories of extreme sufferings surface, and my body rejects the idea of aesthetically shaped dance presentations. This book is ready to go to press, but my relation to dance is completely shaken. Manipur suffers and burns in ethnic violence since last few months. The picture gets darker every morning. So many dancers, actors, and thinkers from the state have been my colleagues, students, and friends over last twenty years. I have danced with so many of them and learnt so much from them and their friends and families in return. So many of these young performers, regardless of which community they represent, have been contributing to the current dance scenario in spectacularly significant manner. Their pain is unimaginable and ongoing, stopping them from doing whatever they do in the world of performing arts. As I get the updates, I realize nothing I say can be appropriate or enough for this moment, and while finishing this manuscript I realize once again why there is an urgent need to rethink and reclaim dance as a critical tool of resistance. That is the only way this embodied form of art will continue to speak social justice and peaceful reconciliation through the bodies that matter… and that is the way the bodies need to speak through their art, to resist, and to challenge divisive violence and politically instigated injustices. I revisit (literally) the writings by Shannon Jackcon where she quotes Claire Bishop to suggest a possible ‘lexicon for evaluating a committed art practice’ (2011: 48), by making art practices answerable to ‘a critical barometer measured an artwork’s place among a number of

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polarizations: (1) social celebration versus social antagonism; (2) legibility versus illegibility; (3) radical functionality versus radical unfunctionality; and (4) artistic heteronomy versus artistic autonomy’ (ibid). I read such an evaluative process as a possible tool for self-evaluation for dancers/choreographers/interartictic performers, for collaborative rethinking of artistic responsibilities for social intervention. While dance always does not have to be for a cause, it has always been relevant as a tool for communication as it is able to create affect—for all who experience it by doing or seeing. Dance is able to create different affective worlds for different people and gives them individual and subjective experiences and powers. It also has an extraordinary power to create a shared world of kinaesthetic empathy. The contemporary dancer/choreographer and Director of Attakalari Centre for Movement Arts, Bangalore, Jayachandran Palazhy’s words sum up the idea of these multiple possibilities in his interview47 “I thought, maybe I don’t have to discover contemporary dance. If there is a wheel existing already, I need to be able to use the wheel.” The wheel exists and it offers endless ways to travel. How that travel becomes a journey worth the trouble in terms of all the thoughts, labour and time, and as a voice of significance is a matter of how that wheel is or can be a part of our meaning making process. The important thing is to be able to place dance in larger economic, historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts for it to become accepted and understood as an essential part of society and not just as an ornamental aspect of human capability or activity. At the end of the journey as a writer of this book that has made me deal with loose ideas and anxieties about dance in India on an immediate basis, I find myself with questions rather than answers. The first question that troubles me is that many of us agree that most of our dance trainings and performances draw heavily from the selective past that we have (un)comfortably located ourselves in, but what about the today and tomorrow? How do we even think of a future of dance as a communicative practice that people find meaningful as a language of the current times? The second question is a more conceptual one: since we have already assigned dance a role of ornamental praxis far removed from our everyday life, how do we create a pedagogy of meaningfulness beyond ornamented aestheticization and a practice-theory interface that will help each of us assign a specific value to the dance we do? Shall we ever be without fear of normative evaluation that has already made dance into an exhausted praxis? Shall we ever let dance breathe? Andre Lepechi in the Introduction of the book Exhausting Dance: Performance and Politics of Movements (2006) wrote, “Choreography demands a yielding to commanding voices of masters (living and dead), it demands submitting body and desire to disciplining regimes (anatomical, dietary, gender, racial), all for the perfect fulfilment of a transcendental and preordained set of steps, postures, and gestures that 47

See https://performingarts.jpf.go.jp/E/pre_interview/2108/1.html [accessed on 16–06-2022]. Palazhy is a well-known, internationally acclaimed dancer/choreographer, who has been working to bring together traditional as well as contemporary dance forms to speak to each other through a praxis that emphasizes acknowledging different forms of dance pedagogies from around the world.

References

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nevertheless must appear ‘spontaneous’” (2006: 9). There could not be better description of the preparation of the mindset of an ideal dance student. The grip of the pedagogical space is stifling in the modern Indian systems of teaching classical dances. Any ‘new’ work of building/creating/experimenting is seen as arrogantly resistive of the docile subjecthood that is presented as the normative principal towards becoming a successful learner of dance. In this stifling eco-sphere, the learner (Shishya) and the teacher (Guru) both police each other and the selves, and dance remains straightjacketed and bounds within the structural impositions, ever-suspicious of creative imaginations. Yet, one cannot rob dance of agency and mobilizational power.48 Susan Foster’s work Valuing Dance (2019) needs to wrap up this book.49 In the chapter “Dance’s Resource-fullness” (2019: 42) she acknowledged the power that dance has of mobilizing—the bodies, the movements, and the communities, when she wrote, Dancers thus construct an identity based in actions that are social rather than individual, and they increasingly assume an authoritative agency over the dance as both enacting and purveying its meaning. Yet what the dance means most centrally is nothing more nor less than people moving together (2019: 42 - 43).

As a dancer and scholar of dance studies it becomes clear that dance will have to be given the freedom to define and redefine itself. As a communicative tool and an expressive practice, it is always trying to fit into spaces and times and their requirements, while making those specific situations its own in manners that evolve and adjust to the human social, political, religious, and economic conditions, enhancing capabilities of sociability, sustenance, and aesthetic existence. The critical dance studies focused on India must carry on asking questions, generating debates around dance’s functions in such changing times and spaces as a tool that has power for creating an imagination and reality of a better world.

References Banerji, A. (2023). The award-Wapsi controversy and the politics of dance. South Asian History and Culture, 14(2), 263–284. https://doi.org/10.1080/19472498.2022.2101761 Bechtel, R. (2013). The body of Trauma: Empathy, mourning, and media in Troika Ranch’s Loopdiver. Theatre Journal, 65(1). Bhandaram, V. (2011, September 14). One-woman show: Chat solo-artiste Maya Krishna Rao throws light on what goes into her performances. https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/one woman-show/article2452306.ece. Accessed on 12 Oct 2013 Bharucha, R. (1995). Chandralekha: Woman, dance, resistance. Indus. Birdwhistell, R. L. (1970). Kinesics and context: Essays on body, motion, communication. University of Pensylvania Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–58). Greenwood. 48

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Buccino Giovanni, A. S. (2006). Functions of the mirror neuron system: Implications for neurorehabilitation. Cognitive Behavioural Neurology, 19(1), 55–63. Chakraborty, S. (2023). Dance movement therapy and psycho-social rehabilitationthe sampoornata model. Routledge. Chandralekha. (2003). Reflections on new directions in Indian dance. In S. Kothari (Ed.), New directions in Indian dance (pp. 20–31). Marg Publications. Chandralekha. (2022). I believe dance is a ’project’ to enable a recovery of the body, of our spine— recorded during East–West dance encounter, 1984. Reprinted in Wire. 29–04–2022. https://the wire.in/the-arts/chandralekha-dance-east-west-body-spine (Accessed on 30 Apr 2022) Chatterji, S.A. (2012, July 30) Culture therapy: A life beyond prison. In India together: A news in proportion. http://indiatogether.org/nigel-society. Accessed on 03 Jan 2015. Das, Mohua. The only way for women to stay safe is to speak up: Eve Ensler. The Telegraph, 24–12–17. Accesses on 25 Dec 2014. De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press. Dutt, B. (2018). Protesting through gestures: Maya Krishna Rao in dialogue with dance and theatre. In U. Sarkar Munsi, & A. Chakraborty (Eds.), The moving space: Women in dance (pp. 123–137). Primus Books. Eddy, M. (2002). Somatic practices and Sance: Global influences. Dance Research Journal, 34(2), 46–62. Foster, S. L. (1996). Corporealities. Routledge. Foster, S.L. (2002). Walking and other choreographic tactics: Danced inventions of theatricality and performativity. SubStance, 31(2/3), Issue 98/99: Special Issue: Theatricality (2002), 125–146. .Accessed on 03 Dec 2011 Foster, S. L. (2011). Choreographing empathy: Kinesthesia in performance. Routledge. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Random House. Gibbs, A. (2010). After affect: Sympathy, synchrony, and mimetic communication. The Affect Theory Reader. Duke University Press. Hannaford, B., & Okamura, A. M. (2016). Haptics. In B. Siciliano & O. Khatib (Eds.), Springer handbook of robotics (pp. 1063–1084). Springer. Jackson, S. (2011). Social works: Performing art, supporting public. Routledge. Kotiswaran, P. (2008). Born unto brothels-toward a legal ethnography of sex work in an Indian red-light area. Law of Social Inquiry, 33(3), 579–629. Martin, R. (1998). Critical moves: Dance studies in theory and politics. Duke University Press. Mattingly, K. (2007). Intertwined shapes: Chandralekha group’s ‘Sharira—fire/desire’ at republic.” http://www.tishanidoshi.com/dance_reviewSharira.html. Accessed on 12 Dec 2013. Menon, N. (2004). Recovering subversion: Feminist politics beyond the law. University of Illinois. Palazhy, J. (2018). Interview. https://performingarts.jpf.go.jp/E/pre_interview/2108/1.html. Accessed on 16 June 2022. Rao, M. K. (2013). Pandita Ramabai: The making of a participatory theatre programme around a character from Indian history. In A. Jackson & C. Vine (Eds.), Learning through theatre: The changing face of theatre in education (pp. 190–210). Routledge. Sahai, S. (2020, January 20). Maya Rao leads the way in art uprising. The Hindu, https://www. thehindu.com/entertainment/art/maya-rao-leads-the-way-in-art-uprising/article30521874.ece. Accessed on 27 Feb 2020. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2016a). Re-imagining the bodies of survivors of trafficking. Lateral, 5(2) (Fall, 2016), special issue on “Leveraging Justice”, in J. Reinelt & M. E. Fuentes (Eds.). https://csalat eral.org/archive/issue/5-2/. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2017d). Sitting in my skin: Kathakali as a transformative space—an interview with Maya Krishna Rao. In U. Sarkar Munsi & A. Chakraborty (Eds.), The moving space: Women in dance (pp. 225–237). Primus Books. Sarkar Munsi, U. (2020). Towards a pedagogic analysis of dance and movement therapy. In T. Prentki, & A. Breed (Eds.), The routledge companion to applied performance (Vol. 2, pp. 198– 208). Routledge.

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Index

A Ableism, 69–71 Absences, 3, 6, 46, 51, 56, 108, 120, 122, 127, 137, 149, 151, 154, 157, 159, 163, 196, 236 Acculturation, 58 Aesthetic colonisation, 104 Aesthetic hierarchy, 150 Aesthetics, 2, 8, 10, 11, 17, 24, 28–30, 33, 39, 45, 50, 78, 87, 100, 107, 131, 132, 138, 139, 159, 162, 173, 177, 183–186, 189, 193, 200, 208, 209, 219, 222, 241, 245, 252 Ageing dancer, 69 Archival material, 3 Artistic labour, 45, 62, 178

B Bodies as pedagogy, 214 Bodies in dance, 25, 38, 39, 64, 69, 123, 128, 169 Bodily purity, 144 Bodyscape, 35 Brahminic aestheticization, 5

C Category of movements, 19 Chorepolitical interventions, 81 Choreopolitics, 80 Classical dance traditions, 3–6, 13, 18, 19, 21, 24, 34, 36, 51–53, 69, 71, 85, 95, 100, 103, 117, 118, 123, 130, 140, 143, 170, 180, 184, 209, 215, 234, 239, 240, 279

Cohesion, 90 Cohesive embodied behaviours, 90 Colonial anthropology, 102 Committees of experts, 127 Communicative gestures, 20 Communicative practices, 1, 278 Communities, 1, 5, 8, 10–12, 15–21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 31, 39, 44, 48, 51, 54–59, 62–64, 66, 69, 74–76, 85–97, 100–106, 108–111, 113, 114, 116, 119–126, 128–130, 138, 140, 141, 144, 154, 155, 159, 163, 165–167, 177–181, 184, 213, 222, 236, 238–240, 253, 261, 273–277, 279 Community ritual process, 167 Corporeality, 113, 251 Corporeal schema, 30, 38, 217–219 Creative, 3, 13, 21, 22, 26, 34, 35, 41, 45, 70, 91, 92, 96, 130, 131, 178, 180, 188, 199, 201, 203–210, 212, 214, 217, 220–222, 225, 234–238, 248, 253, 255–257, 269, 272, 274, 279 Critical dance studies, 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 21, 28, 30, 37, 100, 112, 138, 161, 233, 279 Cultural labour, 66, 137, 164, 179–181 Cultural reconstruction, 21

D Dance as commodity, 129, 130 Dance as community identity, 15 Dance ecology, 2, 13, 18, 22, 28–31, 38, 54, 64, 86, 87, 108, 138, 179, 180, 183, 184, 188, 199, 202, 221 Dance history in India, 17, 209

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024 U. Sarkar Munsi, Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-7359-0

283

284 Dance practices, 1, 11, 12, 16, 17, 107, 113, 114, 179, 182, 211, 213, 218 Dance theory, ix Dancing bodies, 2, 5, 13, 16, 19, 25, 29, 38, 39, 42, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 58, 64, 66, 69, 75, 129, 150, 169, 181, 183, 189, 214, 220 Dancing girl, 18, 40, 41, 141 Decolonisation, 9, 13, 30, 144 Diasporic scholarship, 4 Differential agency, 38 Disciplinary, 2, 6, 28, 188, 251 Discourse, 2–7, 11, 13, 14, 16, 24–29, 37–40, 46, 52, 54, 58, 65, 69, 103, 104, 112–114, 124, 128, 129, 138–140, 142, 147, 149, 158, 161, 163, 165, 166, 168–171, 177, 182, 185, 188, 215, 219, 230, 237, 260, 261 Disenfranchisement, 141, 161, 177 Dispossession, 11, 15, 25, 30, 104, 112, 126–129, 138, 141, 170, 181, 185, 189, 260 Docile bodies, 51, 52, 238

E Embodied communication, 20, 234, 277 Embodied dissent, 72 Embodied practices, 1, 2, 5, 6, 15, 18, 39, 43, 44, 58, 85, 86, 97, 102, 264 Embodiment, 3, 20, 22, 36–39, 52, 96, 124, 167, 168, 219, 234, 239, 260, 264, 265, 270 Ensemble, 7, 11, 22, 38, 39, 42, 56, 58, 59, 88, 97, 142, 217, 218, 222, 224, 234, 240, 254 Environment, 1, 20, 26, 38, 51, 55, 76, 81, 104, 118, 119, 123, 125, 165, 193, 221, 224, 269 Erotic movements, 19, 68 Ethnochoreology, 3, 85 Ethnographic informant, 4 Ethnography, 2, 3, 9, 24, 138, 193, 197, 198 Exclusion, 1, 103, 105, 142, 169 Ex-colonies, 4 Exhibitive spaces, 90 Expressive abilities, 20

F Female subjectivity, 152 Folk/classical narratives, 25, 112

Index G Geopolitical, 1, 23, 138, 236 Government patronage, 140, 214 Guru-Shishya Parampara, 7, 101, 106, 121, 127, 140, 185, 186, 220 H Haptics, 43, 101, 268, 270, 274–276 Historiography, 2 History, 2–5, 8–11, 13, 14, 16–19, 21, 23, 24, 27–29, 39, 42, 43, 47, 48, 52, 62, 67, 86, 99, 101, 103, 106, 107, 118, 120, 121, 125, 128, 130, 131, 138, 140–144, 150, 155, 164, 165, 182, 183, 185, 186, 188, 199, 200, 208, 211, 213, 235, 236, 244, 252, 254 I Identities, 1, 10, 11, 14, 15, 23, 30, 63, 89, 109, 111, 113, 119, 129, 141, 178, 210, 211, 220, 224, 237, 238 Indian cultural policies, 19, 110 Indian dance, 1–3, 8–10, 12, 17, 18, 21, 24, 29, 46, 112, 117, 121, 123, 130, 131, 138, 141–144, 158, 177, 184, 199–201, 204, 205, 207–209, 211, 213, 220, 239, 243, 247 Indian dance theory, xi Intersectional identities, 25, 188 K Kinaesthetic elements, 6 Kinesics, 268, 270, 272, 273, 276 L Living traditions, 4, 11, 18, 44, 52, 87, 103, 105, 109, 114, 117, 166 M Marg, 3–5, 48, 112, 215, 222 Marginalisations, 3, 6, 12, 14, 15, 24, 27, 28, 95, 104, 177, 178, 188, 265, 266 Micro-marginalisations, 6 Micro-specialities, 1 Migrant South Asian academics, 4 Mohenjo-Daro, 18, 39, 40 Movement grammar, 6, 52 Movement systems, 6, 20, 63, 85 Multi-body presence, 25 Museumization, 6, 8, 58, 63, 89, 115, 128

Index Mytho-histories, 2, 5, 7, 17, 23, 50, 121, 144, 173, 179 N Nataraja, 18 National/cultural ecology, 87, 95 Nationalistic, 3, 140, 215 Natyashastra, 6, 11, 12, 16, 22, 24, 45, 51, 52, 97, 171, 200 Neocolonisation, 9, 22, 30, 95 O Oral history, 3, 60, 62 Orthodoxy, 55 P Patronage, 4, 6, 15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 25, 26, 42, 45, 95, 99, 103, 110, 112, 114, 115, 123, 127, 130, 138, 139, 142, 145, 149, 153, 165, 169, 172, 177–179, 181, 183, 189, 193, 201, 213, 214, 217, 226, 234, 235, 277 Performative presence, 137, 161 Phenomenological, 106, 218, 219, 221 Philosophy, 2, 9, 10, 13, 24, 37, 39, 138, 210–212 Pollutant women dancers, 143 Post-colonial, 4, 12, 13, 24, 27, 47, 52, 59, 107, 161, 168, 171, 183, 188, 189, 213, 238 Post-colonial dance discourse, 179 Post-colonial subjectivity, 4 Post-graduate, 2 Practitioner, 1, 6–8, 13, 18, 21, 23, 28, 86, 94–96, 100, 105, 108, 109, 111, 112, 115, 118, 123, 124, 126, 128, 138, 141, 147, 162, 177, 182, 186, 203, 211, 214, 218, 239, 241, 251, 259, 263, 269–271 Promissory representation, 94, 95 Proscenium performances, 20 Protected ignorence, 53, 100, 141, 188 Proxemics, 268, 273–276 Q Qualitative, 218 Queer, 225 R Reconstructed history, 144

285 Regional dance histories, 177 Reinvention, 55, 80 Representation, 3, 5, 14, 18, 23, 29, 40, 42, 45, 48, 52, 53, 60, 76, 87, 88, 90, 93, 95, 104, 106, 109–112, 124, 127, 141, 143, 153, 188, 189, 194, 195, 206, 237, 249, 261, 262 Research programme, 2 Rhizomic, 1, 199

S Sangeet Natak Akademi, 3–5, 7, 11, 20, 29, 85, 100–102, 105, 107, 117, 125, 126, 130 Sensual, 18, 38, 156, 158–160, 162, 165 Sexuality, 17, 30, 54, 129, 164, 170, 171, 178, 182, 184, 185, 188, 238, 242, 245, 246, 264, 267, 269 Solidarity, 1, 44, 58, 89, 90, 119, 122, 179, 253, 274 Somatics, 268, 270, 271, 276 Spiritual, 17, 18, 101, 168, 187, 215 Structured/unstructured movements, 85, 224 Subjectivity, 37, 38, 152, 161, 211, 218, 240 Surveillance, 1, 12, 51, 73, 142, 188, 277 Survival, 1, 11, 15, 18, 44, 62, 69, 88, 91, 93–95, 104, 114, 115, 123, 141, 181, 182, 258, 263, 264, 268

T Transdisciplinary modes, 212

U Under-graduate, 2

V Vulnerability, 28, 54, 67, 69, 87, 114, 139, 154, 160, 162, 163, 181, 196, 215, 227, 264–268, 273

W Woman dancers, 30, 51, 53, 62, 137, 138, 140, 151, 152, 158, 166, 167, 169, 187 Worker/dancer, 67