Scripting Dance in Contemporary IndiaMaratt Mythili Anoop, Varun Gulati As stories of Indian dance’s renaissance span almost a full century, there has emerged a globally dispersed community of Indian dancers, scholars and audiences who are deeply committed to keeping these traditions alive and experimenting with traditional dance languages to grapple with contemporary themes and issues. Scripting Dance in Contemporary India is an edited volume that contributes to this field of Indian dance studies. The book engages with multiple dance forms of India and their representations. The contributions are eclectic, including writings by both scholars and performers who share their experiential knowledge. There are four sections in the book – section I titled, “Representations’ has three chapters that deal with textual representations and illustrations of dance and dancers, and the significance of those representations in the present. Section II titled, “Histories in Process” consists of two chapters that engage with the historiographies of dance forms and suggest that histories are narratives that are continually created. In the third section, “Negotiations”, the four chapters address the different ways in which dance is embedded in society, and the different ways in which the aesthetics of a form has to negotiate with social, economic and political imperatives. The final section, “Other Voices/ Other Bodies” brings voices which are outside the mainstream of dance as ‘serious’ art. |
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Adavus aesthetic Ananya art form artists audience authenticity Ballet Benesh Movement Notation Bharata Bharatanatyam body central Kerala chapter Chatterjea choreographic classical Indian dance Cochin Cochin Maharaja colonial contemporary context create cultural dance companies dance notation dance performances dance practices dance tradition dancing girls dedicated Delhi devadasi devadasi practices Devadasi system Ernakulam European female gestures global Government of Cochin Hindu Huzur Secretariat Indian classical dance Indian dance forms Interview with Lemos Jathi Kalamandalam Kerala Kalamandalam Kerala State Archive Krishna London Madras Malabar Mankwe Marriage Menon Mohiniyattam Mohiniyattam dancers Mohona Nair narratives Natya Natyasastra Nautch girl Nayar women nineteenth notation system Novetzke O’Shea odiśī Odissi outlaw performing arts present prostitution public memory ritual sambandham Sanskrit scholars sexual social Soneji South India specific story style Tamil Nadu teachers temple dance term thidambu nritham Thirumala thudam tion Travancore Trivandrum Vallathol visual woman writes