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Journal articles on the topic 'India dance'
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1
Dharmalingam, B., M. S. Kanagathara, M. Muthumari, and P. Avanthraj. "Dance form of Karagattam - The Regional Folk Dance in Tamil Nadu." Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science and Humanities 7, no. 1 (July 1, 2019): 71–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.34293/sijash.v7i1.485.
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India is a land of varied cultures and traditions, diversities in all spheres which make the Indian culture quite unique. Indian folk and tribal dances are the product of different socio-economic set up and traditions evolved over ages.. In India, we have festivals and celebrations virtually every day and dances are performed to express joy and festivity. This has added to the richness of Indian culture. Since every festival is accompanied by celebration of folk and tribal dances and almost all of them have continually evolved and improvised.
In India, we have festivals and celebrations virtually every day and dances are performed to express joy and festivity. This has added to the richness of Indian culture. Since every festival is accompanied by celebration of folk and tribal dances and almost all of them have continually evolved and improvised. Folk dances are performed for every possible occasion – to celebrate the arrival of season’s birth of a child, a wedding and festivals which are plenty with minimum of steps or movements. Indian folk dances are full of energy vitality. Some dances are performed separately by men and women while in some performances, men and women dance together.
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Katrak, Ketu H. "Toward Defining Contemporary Indian Dance: A Global Form." Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings 40, S1 (2008): 129–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s2049125500000613.
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This essay explores innovations in contemporary Indian dance based in classical Indian dance, martial arts and Western dance vocabularies. Who is making change and how does change work? I delineate the parameters of contemporary Indian dance as a genre (since the 1980s) and distinguish it from Bollywood style “free” dance. I analyze the creative choreography of one prominent contemporary Indian dancer, Chennai (India) based Anita Ratnam. Ratnam's signature style, evoking the “feminine transcendental,” is rooted in Indian aesthetic along with a pan-Asian scope. Ratnam's over twenty-year dance career of solo, group, and collaborative work, along with pioneering artist, Astad Deboo, serve as role models for second-generation contemporary Indian dancers such as Los Angeles–based Post-Natyam Collective's movement explorations, among other dancers based in the diaspora.
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Sarwal, Amit. "Louise Lightfoot and Ibetombi Devi: The Second Manipuri Dance Tour of Australia, 1957." Dance Research 32, no. 2 (November 2014): 208–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/drs.2014.0107.
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Manipur, a small state in the North-Eastern India, is traditionally regarded in the Indian classics and epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata as the home of gandharvas (the celestial dancers). Manipuri is one of the eleven dance styles of India that have incorporated various techniques mentioned in such ancient treatises as the Natya Shastra and Bharatarnava and has been placed by Sangeet Natak Akademi within ‘a common heritage’ of Indian classical dance forms (shastriya nritya): Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, Mohiniyattam, Odissi, Sattriya, Chhau, Gaudiya Nritya, and Thang Ta. In the late-1950s Louise Lightfoot, the ‘Australian mother of Kathakali,’ visited Manipur to study and research different styles of Manipuri dance. There she met Ibetombi Devi, the daughter of a Manipuri Princess; she had started dancing at the age of four and by the age of twelve, she had become the only female dancer to perform the Meitei Pung Cholom on stage––a form of dance traditionally performed by Manipuri men accompanied by the beating of the pung (drum). In 1957, at the age of 20, Ibetombi became the first Manipuri female dancer to travel to Australia. This paper addresses Ibetombi Devi's cross-cultural dance collaboration in Australia with her impresario, Louise Lightfoot, and the impression she and her co-dancer, Ananda Shivaram, made upon audiences.
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Kang, Manpreet Kaur. "Bharatanatyam as a Transnational and Translocal Connection: A Study of Selected Indian and American Texts." Review of International American Studies 13, no. 2 (December 31, 2020): 61–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.31261/rias.9884.
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Bharatanatyam is a classical dance form derived from ancient dance styles, which is now seen as representative of Indian culture. In India, it is the most popular classical dance form exerting a great impact not only on the field of dance itself, but also on other art forms, like sculpture or painting. The Indian-American diaspora practices it both in an attempt to preserve its culture and as an assertion of its cultural identity. Dance is an art form that relates to sequences of body movements that are simultaneously aesthetic and symbolic, and rooted in specific cultures. It often tells a story. Different cultures observe different norms and standards by which dances should be performed (as well as by whom they should be performed and on what occasions). At the same time, dance and dancers influence (and are influenced by) different cultures as a result of transcultural interactions. Priya Srinivasan’s Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor is a particularly valuable source wherein its author critically examines a variety of Indian dance forms, especially Bharatanatyam, tracing the history of dance as well as the lived experience of dancers across time, class, gender, and culture. With the help of this text, selected journal articles, and interviews with Bharatanatyam dancers in India and the US, I explore larger issues of gender, identity, culture, race, region, nation, and power dynamics inherent in the practice of Bharatanatyam, focusing on how these practices influence and, in turn, are influenced by transnational and translocal connections.
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Kang, Manpreet Kaur. "Bharatanatyam as a Transnational and Translocal Connection: A Study of Selected Indian and American Texts." Review of International American Studies 13, no. 2 (December 31, 2020): 61–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.31261/rias.9884.
Full textAbstract:
Bharatanatyam is a classical dance form derived from ancient dance styles, which is now seen as representative of Indian culture. In India, it is the most popular classical dance form exerting a great impact not only on the field of dance itself, but also on other art forms, like sculpture or painting. The Indian-American diaspora practices it both in an attempt to preserve its culture and as an assertion of its cultural identity. Dance is an art form that relates to sequences of body movements that are simultaneously aesthetic and symbolic, and rooted in specific cultures. It often tells a story. Different cultures observe different norms and standards by which dances should be performed (as well as by whom they should be performed and on what occasions). At the same time, dance and dancers influence (and are influenced by) different cultures as a result of transcultural interactions. Priya Srinivasan’s Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor is a particularly valuable source wherein its author critically examines a variety of Indian dance forms, especially Bharatanatyam, tracing the history of dance as well as the lived experience of dancers across time, class, gender, and culture. With the help of this text, selected journal articles, and interviews with Bharatanatyam dancers in India and the US, I explore larger issues of gender, identity, culture, race, region, nation, and power dynamics inherent in the practice of Bharatanatyam, focusing on how these practices influence and, in turn, are influenced by transnational and translocal connections.
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KABIR, ANANYA JAHANARA. "Rapsodia Ibero-Indiana: Transoceanic creolization and the mando of Goa." Modern Asian Studies 55, no. 5 (January 11, 2021): 1581–636. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x20000311.
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AbstractThe mando is a secular song-and-dance genre of Goa whose archival attestations began in the 1860s. It is still danced today, in staged rather than social settings. Its lyrics are in Konkani, their musical accompaniment combine European and local instruments, and its dancing follows the principles of the nineteenth-century European group dances known as quadrilles, which proliferated in extra-European settings to yield various creolized forms. Using theories of creolization, archival and field research in Goa, and an understanding of quadrille dancing as a social and memorial act, this article presents the mando as a peninsular, Indic, creolized quadrille. It thus offers the first systematic examination of the mando as a nineteenth-century social dance created through processes of creolization that linked the cultural worlds of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans—a manifestation of what early twentieth-century Goan composer Carlos Eugénio Ferreira called a ‘rapsodia Ibero-Indiana’ (‘Ibero-Indian rhapsody’). I investigate the mando's kinetic, performative, musical, and linguistic aspects, its emergence from a creolization of mentalités that commenced with the advent of Christianity in Goa, its relationship to other dances in Goa and across the Indian and Atlantic Ocean worlds, as well as the memory of inter-imperial cultural encounters it performs. I thereby argue for a new understanding of Goa through the processes of transoceanic creolization and their reverberation in the postcolonial present. While demonstrating the heuristic benefit of theories of creolization to the study of peninsular Indic culture, I bring those theories to peninsular India to develop further their standard applications.
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Vaidyanathan, Rama, and Kaladharan Viswanath. "In conversation." Indian Theatre Journal 4, no. 1 (August 1, 2020): 107–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/itj_00009_7.
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Rama Vaidyanathan is a leading exponent of Bharatanatyam, a popular classical dance form of South India. Trained under the renowned Guru Saroja Vaidyanathan and the legendary dancer Yamini Krishnamurthy, Rama Vaidyanathan is undoubtedly one of the most profound performers of her generation in the world of dance in India. Kaladharan Viswanath is a leading writer and dance critic and their conversation reveals some deeper insights into the philosophy and practice of Rama Vaidyanathan’s dance and its intersection with music.
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Anami, Basavaraj S., and Venkatesh Arjunasa Bhandage. "A Comparative Study of Certain Classifiers for Bharatanatyam Mudra Images' Classification using Hu-Moments." International Journal of Art, Culture and Design Technologies 8, no. 2 (July 2019): 58–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijacdt.2019070104.
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India is rich in culture and heritage where various traditional dances are practiced. Bharatanatyam is an Indian classical dance, which is composed of various body postures and hand gestures. This ancient art of dance has to be studied under guidance of dance teachers. In present days there is a scarcity of Bharatanatyam dance teachers. There is a need to adopt technology to popularize this dance form. This article presents a 3-stage methodology for the classification of Bharatanatyam mudras. In the first stage, acquired images of Bharatanatyam mudras are preprocessed to obtain contours of mudras using canny edge detector. In the second stage, Hu-moments are extracted as features. In the third stage, rule-based classifiers, artificial neural networks, and k-nearest neighbor classifiers are used for the classification of unknown mudras. The comparative study of classification accuracies of classifiers is provided at the end. The work finds application in e-learning of ‘Bharatanatyam' dance in particular and dances in general and automation of commentary during concerts.
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Kumar, K. V. V., and P. V. V. Kishore. "Indian Classical Dance Mudra Classification Using HOG Features and SVM Classifier." International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE) 7, no. 5 (October 1, 2017): 2537. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v7i5.pp2537-2546.
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Digital understanding of Indian classical dance is least studied work, though it has been a part of Indian Culture from around 200BC. This work explores the possibilities of recognizing classical dance mudras in various dance forms in India. The images of hand mudras of various classical dances are collected form the internet and a database is created for this job. Histogram of oriented (HOG) features of hand mudras input the classifier. Support vector machine (SVM) classifies the HOG features into mudras as text messages. The mudra recognition frequency (MRF) is calculated for each mudra using graphical user interface (GUI) developed from the model. Popular feature vectors such as SIFT, SURF, LBP and HAAR are tested against HOG for precision and swiftness. This work helps new learners and dance enthusiastic people to learn and understand dance forms and related information on their mobile devices.
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Obeng, Pashington. "Siddi Street Theatre and Dance in North Karnataka, South India." African Diaspora 4, no. 1 (2011): 1–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187254611x566080.
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Abstract The Karnataka African Indians (Siddis, Habshis and Cafrees), drawing on both Indian performing arts and their African heritage, use dance and street theatre for political action, entertainment, social critique and self-expression. This paper focuses on Siddi dance and theatre in Uttara Kannada (North Karnataka), South India. Karnataka Siddis number about twenty thousand (Prasad, 2005). Using dramatic aesthetics, performers portray farming, hunting, child labour, violence against women and domestic work motifs to articulate Siddi grundnorms (foundational norms). I address how some Siddi dances and street theatre parallel and yet may differ from other performing arts in South India. Further, the paper complicates the current discourse on how diasporic African communities use the performing arts. My paper goes beyond the Atlantic Diaspora model. It examines ways in which Siddis of South Asia use their dance and theatre to express multiple domains of cultural art forms alongside the everyday use of such performances including a counter-hegemonic stance.
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Putcha, Rumya S. "Between History and Historiography: The Origins of Classical Kuchipudi Dance." Dance Research Journal 45, no. 3 (December 2013): 91–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0149767713000260.
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This article examines the intertwined discourses and debates of classicism, linguistic regionalism, caste, and gender in the case of South Indian dance. By focusing on the dance form, Kuchipudi, from Andhra Pradesh, the first administrative region in India formed on the basis of language, this study exposes the important connections between identity politics and the creation of cultural icons, such as classical dance. This study deconstructs the paradox of Kuchipudi's classicization, as it has become historicized as a symbol of masculine, Brahminical, Telugu culture, on the one hand, and the projects of Indian modernity, which center on the iconicization of the female dancer, on the other.Through archival, discursive, and ethnographic analysis, this article examines how the construction of classicism in Kuchipudi dance creates and supports hegemonic versions of Telugu history. This focus extends previous studies of Indian classical dance by sustaining questions about the reification of the Kuchipudi dancing body, the implications that this has regarding the fate of hereditary courtesan dancers, and the discursive strategies that allow Brahmin male history and female dance practice to coalesce.
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Putcha, Rumya S. "The Modern Courtesan: Gender, Religion and Dance in Transnational India." Feminist Review 126, no. 1 (October 22, 2020): 54–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0141778920944530.
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This article exposes the role of expressive culture in the rise and spread of late twentieth-century Hindu identity politics. I examine how Hindu nationalism is fuelled by an affective attachment to the Indian classical dancer. I analyse the affective logics that have crystallised around the now iconic Indian classical dancer and have situated her gendered and athletic body as a transnational, globally circulating emblem of an authentic Hindu and Indian national identity. This embodied identity is represented by the historical South Indian temple dancer and has, in the postcolonial era, been rebranded as the nationalist classical dancer—an archetype I refer to as the modern courtesan. I connect the modern courtesan to transnational forms of identity politics, heteropatriarchal marriage economies, as well as pathologies of gender violence. In so doing, I examine how the affective politics of ‘Hinduism’ have functionally weaponised the Indian dancing body. I argue that the nationalist and now transnationalist production of the classical dancer-courtesan exposes misogyny and casteism and thus requires a critical feminist dismantling. This article combines ethnographic fieldwork in classical dance studios in India and the United States with film and popular media analysis to contribute to critical transnational feminist studies, as well as South Asian gender, performance and media studies.
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McCann, Gillian. "Performing Gender, Class and Nation: Rukmini Devi Arundale and the Impact of Kalakshetra." South Asia Research 39, no. 3_suppl (September 23, 2019): 61S—79S. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0262728019872612.
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Rukmini Devi Arundale, herself a choreographer and dancer, is considered one of the key figures in re-creating Bharatanatyam. Through her utopian arts colony, Kalakshetra, started during the movement towards Indian independence, she taught what she deemed to be a classical, religious and aesthetically pleasing form of dance. Her rejection of what she termed vulgarity and commercialism in dance reflects her Theosophical worldviews and her class position in a rapidly changing South India. The article examines the ways in which her understanding of Bharatanatyam developed in the context of contested forms of nationalism as a gender regime that contributed to creating proper middle-class, Hindu and Indian subjects. It also examines the impacts of this form of cultural heritage relating to gender, culture and nationalism in today’s globalised South Asian dance scenario.
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Rahman, Munjulika. "Price of Gold and Light: Power and Politics in Hey Ananta Punya." Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings 2011 (2011): 29–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s014976771100026x.
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Hey Ananta Punya, a dance-drama adapted and choreographed by the Bangladeshi choreographer Warda Rihab was performed in Kolkata, India, in December 2009. Rihab plays the main character Srimoti, a dancer at the court of King Ajatashatru. Srimoti embraces Buddhism but is not allowed to practice since Ajatashatru decrees Hinduism to be the state religion. In the narrative, Hinduism, the predominant religion of India, represses Buddhism, which is a minority religion in the subcontinent. Even though on the surface the dance-drama deals with Hinduism and Buddhism, the performance is complicated by the knowledge that the choreographer and most of the performers are Bangladeshi Muslims. In the context of Hindu-Muslim conflicts and India's political and economic hegemony in South Asia, the performance can be considered as a critique of India's policies. In considering the choreographer's background and the dance-drama's narrative, aesthetics, and location of performance, I analyze the various structures of power that a Bangladeshi female choreographer operates within during her training and performance in India. Hey Ananta Punya is significant because it points to the complex web of issues involving politics, history, and religion that have been a part of dance in Bangladesh for the past few decades because of India's influence in the field, particularly through Indian-government scholarships for advanced dance training. In the paper, I use Michel Foucault's theory of power as systems of interrelated networks and knowledge as a system of power to show how dance as a form of embodied knowledge can function as a tool in shaping, disseminating, and expressing ideology.
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Diamond, Catherine. "Being Carmen: Cutting Pathways towards Female Androgyny in Japan and India." New Theatre Quarterly 34, no. 4 (October 8, 2018): 307–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x18000398.
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In this article Catherine Diamond examines the flows of transcultural hybridity occurring in dance between Spanish flamencos, Japanese exponents of flamenco, and Indian dancers interacting with flamenco within their classical dance forms. Japan and India represent two distinct Asian reactions to the phenomenon of global flamenco: the Japanese have adopted it wholesale and compete with the Spanish on their own ground; the Indians claim that as the Roma (gypsy) people originated in India, the country is also the home of flamenco. Despite their differing attitudes, flamenco dance offers women in both cultures a pathway toward participating in an internal androgyny, a wider spectrum of gender representation than either the Asian traditional dance or contemporary Asian society normally allows. Catherine Diamond is a professor of theatre and environmental literature. She is Director of the Kinnari Ecological Theatre Project in Southeast Asia, and the director/choreographer of Red Shoes Dance Theatre in Taiwan.
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Chakravarty, Esha, Indrani Chakravarty, Ipsito Chakravarty, and Prasenjit Bhattacharjee. "Effects of Dance Therapy on Balance and Risk of Falls in Older Persons." Innovation in Aging 4, Supplement_1 (December 1, 2020): 234–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igaa057.756.
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Abstract Loss of balance and risk of falls is a major problem in older persons. Literature shows increasing use of yoga practices and dance therapy across Indian oldage homes and day care centres to improve balance and reduce risk of falls in older persons. Aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of dance therapy with focus on therapeutic movements derived from Indian classical dances on balance and risk of falls in older adults of Day Care Centres in Calcutta Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Govt. of India. Total of 24 older adults across 2 day care centres participated in the study attending dance therapy sessions for 3 months. All of them self reported problems of balance and repeated falls alongwith difficulties in performing Activities of Daily Living. Twenty one of them were females and 3 males. The mean age of the participants was 75.5 years. Limits of Stabililty (LOS) was used to measure balance and pre tests and post tests were performed. Results showed that the Limits of Stability were significantly higher (17.5%) in older persons after participating in the dance therapy sessions. This study supports that dance therapy using movements derived from Indian classical dance forms can support older persons to function with reduced risk of falls, improved balance, safely carry out mobility tasks and perform better Activities of Daily Living . Further studies can show how dance therapy can facilitate healthy ageing and influence State policies on healthy ageing.
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Sinha, Tanusri. "REFLECTION OF MUSIC & DANCE IN ANCIENT INDIAN INSCRIPTION." International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 9, no. 4 (May 6, 2021): 375–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v9.i4.2021.3875.
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The word ‘inscription’ is derived from the Latin word ‘Inscripto’ which means something that is inscribed or engraved. It was engraved on clay (terracotta), stone pillars, copper plates, walls of temples, caves, and on the surface of much other metal and also even palm leaves. Very often we’ve seen it on coins and seals. It consists of important texts or symbols that reveal crucial information and evidence of ancient kings and their empires. Music is the soul of Indian culture. Indian music has an affluent tradition with its root in Vedic time. It is said that Indian music owes its origin to the Sāma Veda. The Vedic hymns were chanted with a particular pitch and accent which are used in religious work. Dance in India also has a rich and vital tradition since the beginning of our civilization. Dances of Indi were to give symbolic expressions which are also enlightened to religious ideas. Ancient Inscriptions, Engraving of Inscription, Music, Dance, Epigraphical Evidence.
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Chakraborty, Aishika. "In Leotards Under Her Sari: An Indian Contemporary Dancer in America." Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings 2014 (2014): 39–51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cor.2014.6.
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Traversing through disparate cultural and geographic frontiers, my paper maps the journey of a Bengali dancer, Manjusri Chaki-Sircar, who travels from India to America via Africa before putting her “roots” finally down in India, exploring the migration of body movements across the world. Spelling a new body politics, her dance inscribes the signature of her-self in moving space(s); weaving varied patterns of life experiences; telling tales of displacements, exodus, and resettlements; and fashioning a glocal perspective of movement in a “global political moment.”Situating Manjusri within a counter-centric discourse, my paper underscores the counter-hegemonic agency of her feminist choreographies that opened up “an other” genre of bodily idiom, turning the flattering feminine performance into a site for cultural politics. From the dynamic landscape of post-partitioned Bengal, I will trace how the idiom evolved, migrated, and altered, changing, by the end of the century, the face of Indian contemporary dance.
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Harmalkar, Shashwati. "GRADUAL CHANGE IN LIGHTS, STAGE MANAGEMENT AND COSTUMES IN KATHAK DANCE." International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 3, no. 1SE (January 31, 2015): 1–2. http://dx.doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v3.i1se.2015.3395.
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Kathak dance is a prominent classical dance of northern India. Indian dances have seen enormous changes in the past few years, but the fact that remains is not only has there been a change in the movements and “abhinay prakar” or expressions but also light and stage management and the costumes.Kathak performing artists or the “kathakkas” as they were called were actually story tellers and were earlier the messengers of the king. Gradually this art of storytelling changed its track to become India’s most performed classical dance.In 10th century this dance became a way of tribute to the almighty and was popularly performed by the devdasis in various temples. Though they were not openly performed for the devotees at first but only for the idols of the deity. Since the dance was performed in privacy, there was no need of stage and light. It was assumed that the dance was performed to depict ones bhakti or devotion towards the god and for the god’s entertainment hence costume and jewellery were given special weightage. Blunt colours like red or green in fully covered lehenga; choli and dupatta were selected with loads of gold jewellery of all kinds.
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DeMets, Charles. "Arabia's slow dance with India." Nature Geoscience 1, no. 1 (January 2008): 10–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo.2007.56.
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Judson, Judith. "Scripting Dance in Contemporary India." Journal of Dance Education 17, no. 1 (January 2, 2017): 38–39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2016.1204200.
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Joncheere, Ayla. "Kalbeliya Dance from Rajasthan: Invented Gypsy Form or Traditional Snake Charmers’ Folk Dance?" Dance Research Journal 49, no. 1 (April 2017): 37–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0149767717000055.
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Since being listed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2010, Kalbeliya dance from Rajasthan is now generally conceptualized as an ancient tradition from India. However, this same dance practice, also known as a form of “Indian Gypsy” or “snake charmers’” folk dance, appears to have originated as recently as the 1980s. This article gives an account of the swift development of Kalbeliya dance from its first appearance on stage in 1981 to the present. Ethnographic research with Kalbeliya dancers’ families has elucidated how this inventive dance practice was formed to fit into national and transnational narratives with the aim of commercializing it globally and of generating a new, lucrative livelihood for these Kalbeliya families. As a new cultural product of Rajasthani fusion, the dance finds itself at the crossroads of commercial tourism and political folklorism and is grounded in neo-orientalist discourses (romanticism and exoticism).
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Chakravarty, Devpriya. "Popular Musics of India: An Ethnomusicological Review." Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies 6, no. 3 (December 18, 2019): 111. http://dx.doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/267.
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This article brings into discussion the presence of a contemporary popular music culture amongst globalised, urban, Indian youth which is perpetuated by Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festivals. This paper begins with the argument as to how there is no one monolithic popular music scene in India by presenting a historical analysis of a timeline for popular musics of India, a scene that has received scanty scholarly attention.
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Putcha, Rumya S. "The Mythical Courtesan." Meridians 20, no. 1 (April 1, 2021): 127–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/15366936-8913140.
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Abstract This article interrogates how and why courtesan identities are simultaneously embraced and disavowed by Brahman dancers. Using a combination of ethnographic and critical feminist methods, which allow the author to toggle between the past and the present, between India and the United States, and between film analysis and the dance studio, the author examines the cultural politics of the romanticized and historical Indian dancer—the mythical courtesan. The author argues that the mythical courtesan was called into existence through film cultures in the early twentieth century to provide a counterpoint against which a modern and national Brahmanical womanhood could be articulated. The author brings together a constellation of events that participated in the construction of Indian womanhood, especially the rise of sound film against the backdrop of growing anticolonial and nationalist sentiments in early twentieth-century South India. The author focuses on films that featured an early twentieth-century dancer-singer-actress, Sundaramma. In following her career through Telugu film and connecting it to broader conversations about Indian womanhood in the 1930s and 1940s, the author traces the contours of an affective triangle between three mutually constituting emotional points: pleasure, shame, and disgust.
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Chakravorty, Pallabi. "Dancing into Modernity: Multiple Narratives of India's Kathak Dance." Dance Research Journal 38, no. 1-2 (2006): 115–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0149767700007415.
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Modernity, once a prerogative of the West, is now ubiquitous, experienced diversely by people all over the world. The changing notions of modernity are historically linked to the development of the public sphere. This article broadly attempts to map the discourse of modernity to the evolution of Kathak, a premier classical dance from India. The article has two threads running through it. One is the development of the public sphere in India as it relates to anti-colonial nationalism, the formation of the modern nation-state, and globalization. The other focuses on transformations in Kathak as they relate to changing patronage, ideology, and postcolonial history. I emphasize the latter to mark the transitions in Kathak as emblematic of Indian national identity and national ideology to a new era of cultural contestation. This emergent public domain of culture is coined as “public modernity” by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai in contemporary India. It is linked to economic reforms, or “liberalization,” leading to globalization and a resurgence of communal politics. Both of these make culture, tradition, and identity central to the contestation of power among the diverse social formations in India.
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Vargas-Cetina, Gabriela. "India and the Translocal Modern Dance Scene, 1890s–1950s." Review of International American Studies 13, no. 2 (December 31, 2020): 39–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.31261/rias.9805.
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At the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, lead dancers from different countries became famous and toured internationally. These dancers—and the companies they created—transformed various dance forms into performances fit for the larger world of art music, ballet, and opera circuits. They adapted ballet to the variety-show formats and its audiences. Drawing on shared philosophical ideas—such as those manifest in the works of the Transcendentalists or in the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner—and from movement techniques, such as ballet codes, the Delsarte method, and, later on, Eurythmics (in fashion at the time), these lead dancers created new dance formats, choreographies, and styles, from which many of today’s classical, folk, and ballet schools emerged. In this essay, I look at how Rabindranath Tagore, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Uday Shankar, Leila Roy Sokhey and Rumini Devi Arundale contributed to this translocal dance scene. Indian dance and spirituality, as well as famous Indian dancers, were an integral part of what at the time was known as the international modern dance scene. This transnational scene eventually coalesced into several separate schools, including what today is known as classical and modern Indian dance styles.
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Vargas-Cetina, Gabriela. "India and the Translocal Modern Dance Scene, 1890s–1950s." Review of International American Studies 13, no. 2 (December 31, 2020): 39–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.31261/rias.9805.
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At the end of the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth, lead dancers from different countries became famous and toured internationally. These dancers—and the companies they created—transformed various dance forms into performances fit for the larger world of art music, ballet, and opera circuits. They adapted ballet to the variety-show formats and its audiences. Drawing on shared philosophical ideas—such as those manifest in the works of the Transcendentalists or in the writings of Nietzsche and Wagner—and from movement techniques, such as ballet codes, the Delsarte method, and, later on, Eurythmics (in fashion at the time), these lead dancers created new dance formats, choreographies, and styles, from which many of today’s classical, folk, and ballet schools emerged. In this essay, I look at how Rabindranath Tagore, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Uday Shankar, Leila Roy Sokhey and Rumini Devi Arundale contributed to this translocal dance scene. Indian dance and spirituality, as well as famous Indian dancers, were an integral part of what at the time was known as the international modern dance scene. This transnational scene eventually coalesced into several separate schools, including what today is known as classical and modern Indian dance styles.
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Kumar, Lavanya P., and Shruti J. Shenoy. "Survey of Musculoskeletal Injuries among Female Bharatanatyam Dancers in the Udupi District of India." Medical Problems of Performing Artists 36, no. 3 (September 1, 2021): 199–206. http://dx.doi.org/10.21091/mppa.2021.3022.
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BACKGROUND: Bharatanatyam is an Indian classical dance form that is practiced globally. There is limited information about the prevalence of injuries in Bharatanatyam dancers. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the prevalence of musculoskeletal injuries and specifics of dance training in female Bharatanatyam dancers in the Udupi district of India. METHODS: We developed and tested a survey for Bharatanatyam dancers regarding injury history in the prior year, including location, time loss, cause, and need for medical help. We also obtained demographic and training information. RESULTS: 101 dancers completed the survey. 10.8% of dancers reported musculoskeletal injuries because of participation in dance. They sustained 0.65 injuries/1,000 hours of dancing. The most frequently injured areas were ankle (27.2%) and knee (27.2%) followed by lower back (13.6%) and hip (9%). Despite being injured, 36.4% of the dancers continued to dance. 54.5% of the injured dancers sought the help of a medical professional for their dance-related injuries. The most common surface for dance was concrete followed by other hard surfaces such as marble and tile. CONCLUSION: Female Bharatanatyam dancers are prone to injuries of the lower extremity and back. Most dancers in our study practice the Pandanalluru style on hard surfaces. There is a need to investigate the impact of training factors on the injury occurrence.
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Purkayastha, Prarthana. "Subversive bodies: Feminism and New Dance in India." Studies in South Asian Film & Media 4, no. 2 (October 1, 2012): 189–99. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/safm.4.2.189_1.
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This article explores how the Indian navanritya or ‘New Dance’ body, as crafted by choreographers Manjusri Chaki Sircar and Ranjabati Sircar, provided an alternative to the hegemonic representation of femininity in Indian classical dance. The Sircars’ feminist ideology-driven rebuttal of institutional and patriarchal dance pedagogy and praxis produced local critiques of cultural nationalism in and through the dancing body. This article discusses how these new bodies, shaped by a simultaneous eschewal and espousal of Indian cultural legacy, produce a complex picture of negotiation, one in which dialectical relationships between culture and the bodies that are situated within it are seen to emerge.
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Chakravorty, Pallabi. "Hegemony, dance and nation: The construction of the classical dance in India." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 21, no. 2 (December 1998): 107–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00856409808723345.
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Winer, Lise. "Indic Lexicon in the English/Creole of Trinidad." New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 79, no. 1-2 (January 1, 2008): 7–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/13822373-90002499.
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Examines the contemporary lexical component of the English/Creole of Trinidad (TEC) that is derived from languages of India. Author focuses on the TEC as spoken among Indo-Trinidadians, but also pays attention to Indic words used in the TEC of Afro-Trinidadians and other groups. Author sketches the history of Indian immigration into Trinidad, explaining how most came from the Bihar province in northern India and spoke Bhojpuri, rather than (closely related) Hindi, and how in the 20th c. Indian languages were replaced by English with education. She further focuses on retained Indic words incorporated in current-day TEC, and found 1844 of such words in usage. She discusses words misassigned locally as Indian-derived, but actually from other (European or African) languages. Then, she describes most of the Indo-TEC lexicon, categorizing items by their semantic-cultural domain, with major domains for Indian-derived words: religious practice, music, dance and stickfighting, food preparation, agriculture, kinship, and behaviour or appearance. Further, the author discusses to what degree Indic words have been mainstreamed within the non-Indian population of Trinidad, sometimes via standard English, sometimes directly assimilated into TEC, and made salient through the press or street food selling.
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Winer, Lise. "Indic Lexicon in the English/Creole of Trinidad." New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 79, no. 1-2 (January 1, 2005): 7–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22134360-90002499.
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Examines the contemporary lexical component of the English/Creole of Trinidad (TEC) that is derived from languages of India. Author focuses on the TEC as spoken among Indo-Trinidadians, but also pays attention to Indic words used in the TEC of Afro-Trinidadians and other groups. Author sketches the history of Indian immigration into Trinidad, explaining how most came from the Bihar province in northern India and spoke Bhojpuri, rather than (closely related) Hindi, and how in the 20th c. Indian languages were replaced by English with education. She further focuses on retained Indic words incorporated in current-day TEC, and found 1844 of such words in usage. She discusses words misassigned locally as Indian-derived, but actually from other (European or African) languages. Then, she describes most of the Indo-TEC lexicon, categorizing items by their semantic-cultural domain, with major domains for Indian-derived words: religious practice, music, dance and stickfighting, food preparation, agriculture, kinship, and behaviour or appearance. Further, the author discusses to what degree Indic words have been mainstreamed within the non-Indian population of Trinidad, sometimes via standard English, sometimes directly assimilated into TEC, and made salient through the press or street food selling.
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Bagchi, Tista. "The Signing System of Mudra in Traditional Indian Dance." Paragrana 19, no. 1 (November 2010): 259–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1524/para.2010.0017.
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AbstractBody language involving manual gestures of a highly stylized nature is used in traditional Indian dance forms. Termed Mudras, such gestures are related to but distinct from Mudras in Buddhist and/or Tantric iconography and in Carnatic music of Southern India. The Mudra signs in dance occur in families or classes, which often cut across the basic dichotomy between combined-hand and separate-hand gestures, and which reflect linguistic and sociolinguistic classes of words and signs, such as question expressions and hierarchically differentiated pronouns, used in the domain of language. However, the Mudra signing system is also combined with facial mime or acting illustrative of different feelings such as romantic love, mirth, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness, to yield a richly communicative and dynamic aesthetic in Indian dance forms.
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Ananya. "Dance Research in India: A Brief Report." Dance Research Journal 28, no. 1 (1996): 118. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1478122.
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Ohtani, Kimiko. ""Bharata Nāṭyam", Rebirth of Dance in India." Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 33, no. 1/4 (1991): 301. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/902452.
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Antze, Rosemary Jeanes. "Dance of India: Culture, Philosophy and Performance." Dance Research Journal 17, no. 2 (1985): 98–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0149767700015503.
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Vatsyayan, Kapila. "The future of dance scholarship in India." Dance Chronicle 18, no. 3 (January 1995): 485–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01472529508569220.
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Parthasarathy, Arpitha. "The Spiritual Form of Ancient Art and Culture - Bharatanatyam (Visual Art) Depicted Using Unique Techniques on Scratchboard (Fine Art) Medium." Journal of Arts and Humanities 6, no. 3 (March 15, 2017): 33. http://dx.doi.org/10.18533/journal.v6i3.1143.
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<p>The most ancient form of dance that is prevailing todays is a form of classical Indian dance, Bharatanatyam. In Sanskrit (and Devanagri), bharatanatyam means "Indian dance", is believed to have divine origin and is of the most ancient form of classical dance. Bharatanatyam is a two thousand-year-old dance form, originally practiced in the temples of ancient India. The art today remains purely devotional even today and this performing art is yet to gain awareness and interest in the western world. This dance form has various implications in improving the higher order thinking in children and provides health benefits in adults apart from cultural preservation. The current study uses scratchboard as a medium to display the artistic movements and emotions. Scratchboard, a fine art is one means by which the visual art is expressed in this current study using sharp tools, namely X-acto 11 scalpel and tattoo needles. This unique medium made up of a masonite hardboard coated with soft clay and Indian ink has been used to not only show the details of the ancient dance form and expression but also to comprehend and transcribe both visual art and fine art. It is for the first time that scratchboard medium has been the innovatively used to show various textures of flower, glistening gold jewels, hand woven silk and the divine expression in the same art ‘devotion’. The current study was carried out in-order to perpetuate, conserve and disseminate these classic forms of visual art and fine art.</p>
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Sharma, Sonal. "NEW EXPERIMENTS IN CLASSICAL DANCES." International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 3, no. 1SE (January 31, 2015): 1–2. http://dx.doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v3.i1se.2015.3480.
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Culture is the identity of any country, region, region, village city. India is a country steeped in cultural prosperity. Culture has many elements. Among those elements, dance and music are the most powerful elements. India is the only country where the scriptures were composed for dance music. In the scriptures rules were made for music and dance drama etc. The dance music which came under these classical rules got the name of classical dance and music.There are seven classical dance styles in India. If we look at the history of each, then we will see that many changes were made in the ancient and present form of each to make the dance more visible. These new experiments were done in her dance distinctions, in her performance, in her music, in her costumes.
संस्कृति किसी भी देश प्रदेश, अंचल, गाँव शहर की पहचान होती है। भारत सांस्कृतिक समृद्धि से ओतप्रोत एक देश है। संस्कृति के निर्माता कई तत्व होते हंै। उन तत्वों में नृत्य व संगीत सबसे सशक्त तत्व होते हैं। भारत एकमात्र ऐसा देश है जहाॅं पर नृत्य संगीत के लिए शास्त्रों की रचना की गई। शास्त्रों में संगीत व नृत्य नाट्य आदि के लिए नियम बनाए गए । इन शास्त्रीय नियमों के अन्तर्गत आने वाले नृत्य संगीत को शास्त्रीय नृत्य व संगीत की संज्ञा प्राप्त हुई।भारत में सात शास्त्रीय नृत्य शैलियाँ हैं। अगर प्रत्येक के इतिहास पर दृष्टि डाली जाए तो हमें दृष्टिगोचर होगा कि प्रत्येक के प्राचीन एवं वर्तमान स्वरूप में कई परिवर्तन हुए नृत्य को और दर्शनीय बनाने के लिए कई नवीन प्रयोग किए गए। यह नवीन प्रयोग उसके नर्तन भेदों में, उसके प्रदर्शन क्रम में, उसके संगीत में, उसकी वेशभूषा में किए गए।
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Keshaviah, Aparna. "Decoding the Modern Practice of Bharatanatyam." Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings 40, S1 (2008): 140–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s2049125500000625.
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As the classical Indian dance form Bharatanatyam globalizes, it suffers under the gravitas of “unbroken tradition.” To numerically characterize tradition in contemporary India, surveys were administered to 212 practitioners on execution, values, knowledge, and pedagogy. Statistical analysis revealed extensive diversity, lack of a consistent core, and fundamental drivers of variation.
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Zarrilli, Phillip B. "Psychophysical Approaches and Practices in India: Embodying Processes and States of ‘Being–Doing’." New Theatre Quarterly 27, no. 3 (August 2011): 244–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x11000455.
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This essay articulates a South Asian understanding of embodied psychophysical practices and processes with a specific focus on Kerala, India. In addition to consulting relevant Indian texts and contemporary scholarly accounts, it is based upon extensive ethnographic research and practice conducted with actors, dancers, yoga practitioners, and martial artists in Kerala between 1976 and 2003. During 2003 the author conducted extensive interviews with kutiyattam and kathakali actors about how they understand, talk about, and teach acting within their lineages. Phillip Zarrilli is Artistic Director of The Llanarth Group, and is internationally known for training actors in psychophysical processes using Asian martial arts and yoga. He lived in Kerala, India, for seven years between 1976 and 1989 while training in kalarippayattu and kathakali dance-drama. His books include Psychophysical Acting: an Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski, Kathakali Dance-Drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play, and When the Body Becomes All Eyes. He is Professor of Performance Practice at Exeter University.
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Katrak, Ketu H. "Interrogating the “Nation” in Contemporary Indian Dance in India and the Diaspora." South Asian Review 42, no. 2 (February 18, 2021): 169–91. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02759527.2021.1878988.
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Kohl, Patrick L., Neethu Thulasi, Benjamin Rutschmann, Ebi A. George, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, and Axel Brockmann. "Adaptive evolution of honeybee dance dialects." Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 287, no. 1922 (March 4, 2020): 20200190. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.0190.
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Efficient communication is highly important for the evolutionary success of social animals. Honeybees (genus Apis ) are unique in that they communicate the spatial information of resources using a symbolic ‘language’, the waggle dance. Different honeybee species differ in foraging ecology but it remains unknown whether this shaped variation in the dance. We studied distance dialects—interspecific differences in how waggle duration relates to flight distance—and tested the hypothesis that these evolved to maximize communication precision over the bees' foraging ranges. We performed feeder experiments with Apis cerana , A. florea and A. dorsata in India and found that A. cerana had the steepest dialect, i.e. a rapid increase in waggle duration with increasing feeder distance, A. florea had an intermediate, and A. dorsata had the lowest dialect. By decoding dances for natural food sites, we inferred that the foraging range was smallest in A. cerana , intermediate in A. florea and largest in A. dorsata . The inverse correlation between foraging range and dialect was corroborated when comparing six (sub)species across the geographical range of the genus including previously published data. We conclude that dance dialects constitute adaptations resulting from a trade-off between the spatial range and the spatial accuracy of communication.
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Nor, Mohd Anis Md. "Kapila Vatsyayan and Dance Scholarship: India and beyond." Dance Research Journal 32, no. 1 (2000): 95. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1478282.
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Wolf, Richard K., Satvikam Kalasadanam Troupe, Purisani Troupe, Kondapura Troupe, Maison des Cultures du Monde, Françoise Gründ, and Francoise Grund. "Southern India. Dance Dramas: Kathakali, Teru Koothu, Yakshagana." Yearbook for Traditional Music 34 (2002): 215. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3649210.
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Zarrilli, Phillip B., and David E. R. George. "India: Three Ritual Dance-Dramas (Raslila, Kathakali, Nagamandala)." Asian Theatre Journal 6, no. 1 (1989): 95. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1124296.
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Stolberg, Tonie L. "Communicating Science through the Language of Dance: A Journey of Education and Reflection." Leonardo 39, no. 5 (October 2006): 426–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/leon.2006.39.5.426.
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Bharatanatyam, the classical dance style of South India, is adept at conveying complex, multilayered narratives. This paper documents and reflects upon the interactions between the author, a scientist and educator, and a professional dance company as they strive to develop and produce a dance-drama about the carbon cycle. The author examines the process by which scientific ideas are shared with the artists and the way a scientific narrative becomes one with an artistic meaning. The paper also examines areas for possible future science-dance collaborations and explores the necessary features for a collaborative science-dance pedagogy.
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Chakravorty, Pallabi. "Moved to Dance: Remix,Rasa, and a New India." Visual Anthropology 22, no. 2-3 (March 20, 2009): 211–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949460902748113.
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Varley, Julia. "Sanjukta Panigrahi: Dancer for the Gods." New Theatre Quarterly 14, no. 55 (August 1998): 249–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x00012197.
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The great classical Indian dancer and co-founder of the International School of Theatre Anthropology, Sanjukta Panigrahi, died in June 1997. An outstanding exponent – and virtually the rediscoverer – of Odissi dance, Sanjukta Panigrahi was born in Orissa into a Brahmin family, and defied the prejudice of her caste as the first girl to pursue Odissi dance as a career. With the support of her family, she began studying at the age of five under the guru Kelucharan Mahapatra, with whom she worked for many years, and also trained in Bharata Natyam for six years with the master Rukmini Devi. Julia Varley, an Odin Teatret actress since 1977, knew and worked with Sanjukta for twenty years, and in the following article offers her memories and reconstruction of the experiences of apprenticeship, performance, technique, cultural exchange, teaching, and family and work relationships, both in India and within the multicultural context of ISTA. Sanjukta's own descriptions of her life and work, drawn from a wide variety of sources, are interspersed throughout the article, in an attempt to keep alive this remarkable actress/dancer's way of thinking and being, coloured by her particular female strength. Julia Varley was born in London in 1954, spent her childhood in Milan, joined Odin in 1976, and has been a participant in the ISTA sessions since their conception in 1980.
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Simoncelli, Adriana. "Dance in Indian culture: A cosmic manifestation of divine creation and a path to liberation." Dziennikarstwo i Media 15 (June 29, 2021): 15–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.19195/2082-8322.15.2.
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Dance is a human cultural activity aimed at non-verbal emotional communication, mentioned for the first time in the circle of European culture by Homer in the Iliad (8th/7th century BC). In Indian culture — the most extensive one of four contemporary civilizations of antiquity (next to Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Chinese), whose cradle is the Indus Valley Civilization — the first material evidence of the presence of dance is dated between 2300–1750 BC. It is a bronze statuette of a dancing girl, making us aware of the fact that this type of activity has accompanied people since the dawn of time, regardless of their origin and cultural affiliation. India and its oldest religion, Hinduism, have made this art highly prized because of its original, pure spiritual character.
The first treatise entirely devoted to dance, entitled Natyashastra (Treatise on Performing Arts), was written according to tradition between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD, although many premises indicate that its beginnings date back to the 5th century BC, and the final version — to around 5th century AD. Its author was Bharata Muni, an ancient sage, theatrologist and musicologist who allegedly received knowledge of arts from the god Brahma himself to create a symbolic representation of the world which, by showing good and evil, would persuade both the viewers and the performers to act ethically. From Natyashastra it appears that dance was created by the gods for their worship. In its most original form, dance grew out of the sacrificial ritual, hence the knowledge of it was secret, highly codified and communicated in strict confidentiality. The patron of the dance and its divine performer par excellence is the god Shiva in the aspect of Nataraja (Lord of the Dance), who in one image combines god as the creator, protector and destroyer of the universe, while simultaneously containing the Indian concept of an endless time cycle. Accurate recreation of the mythical dance initiated by Shiva guarantees that the faithful achieve salvation by overcoming sin, ignorance, and laziness represented by the demon Apasmara, on whom the god treads in a dancing trance.
For the Indian Hindu culture dance has a highly important ritualistic and mystical meaning, hence it is also present along with music and singing, which is a melodic recitation of sacred verses, in all literature, from the Vedas (sacred books of Hinduism), through encyclopedic Puranas, to epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana. Dance is indispensable to the theater as well as visual and audiovisual arts, brings relief to those in mourning and sorrow, leads to liberation from samsara (the wheel of incarnations), and is a reflection of divinity in its purest, most dynamic manifestation: movement. Thanks to dance being a rejection of oneself, entering a mystical trance, one can connect with the Absolute here on Earth and experience divinity.