Between Cinema and Performance: Globalizing Bollywood Dance

What initially emerges through my research in Bombay, Kathmandu, and Los Angeles is a contrast between the mobility of the filmed dances that seem to circulate freely through various digital media and the geographical rooted-ness of the dancers who perform Bollywood inspired dances. In Bombay, Bollywood dance classes are set to the latest Hindi film remixes and taught by dancers who allow students to begin to access the promises of success of India's current globalizing tendencies. In Kathmandu, Bollywood inspired dances exist on the unstable border between tradition and modernity, stigma and nation, and pollution and purity. In Los Angeles, nostalgic and hybrid definitions of Indianness collide against Orientalized preconceptions of India and Bollywood. Yet, even as they remain geographically disparate, a deeper examination of these instances of Bollywood dance begins to reveal a mapping that connects these sites in ways that comment upon globalization through performance.