Projects of Reform: Indian Classical Dance and Frictions of Generation and Genre

Abstract: The twentieth-century “reconstruction” of Indian classical dance forms can be regarded as part of a larger nationalist push to assert a sense of enduring cultural lineage in the wake of colonization. In this paper, I examine the different ways in which the reformist logic central to this project is reproduced outside its immediate historical and social context in the work of contemporary dancers in the UK. As I demonstrate, the British multicultural context becomes an extension of the colonial encounter as the generational frictions that exist between dancers and their predecessors speak to the tensions between temporal categories that shaped, and were shaped by, coloniality.Résumé : La « reconstruction », au XXe siècle, des formes classiques de danse en Inde peut être considérée comme relevant d ’ un élan nationaliste plus large visant à affirmer le sentiment que la lignée culturelle a perduré après la colonisation. Dans cet article, j ’ examine les différentes façons par lesquelles la logique réformiste au coeur de ce projet se reproduit à l ’ extérieur de son contexte historique et social immédiat, dans le travail de danseurs contemporains au Royaume-Uni. Ainsi que je le démontre, le contexte multiculturel britannique devient l ’ extension de la rencontre coloniale, tandis que les frictions générationnelles qui se produisent entre les danseurs et leurs prédécesseurs évoquent les tensions entre les catégories temporelles qui ont façonné le colonialisme, et ont été façonnées par lui

Dancing diaspora, performing nation: Indian classical dance in multicultural London

This thesis examines the performance of Indian classical dance in the contemporary 'diaspora space' (Brah 1996) represented by the city of London. My aim is to analyse whether and how performances of "national" art, assumed to represent an equally "national" culture, change when performed in transnational contexts. Drawing upon theories of postcolonialism, multiculturalism and diaspora, I begin my study with an historical analysis of the reconstructed origins of the dance in the intertwined discourses of British colonialism and Indian nationalism. Using this analysis to ground my ethnography of the present-day practice of the dance, I unearth its relation to discourses of contemporary multiculturalism and South Asian diasporic identity. I then demonstrate specific ways in which the relationship between colonial and postcolonial artistic production on the one hand and contemporary performances of national and multicultural identity on the other are visible in the current practices and approaches of diasporic and multicultural Indian classical dancers. My thesis advances the scholarship that has demonstrated the link between the construction of Indian classical dance and the Indian nationalist movement by highlighting particular ways in which historical narrative, national and religious identities, gendered ideals and racialised categories are constituted through, and help produce in turn, contemporary Indian classical dance practices in the diaspora. Locating my study in the UK while still accounting for the Indian nationalist aspects of the dance, my contribution to the scholarly literature is to analyse its performance in relation to both Indian and British national identity. My research demonstrates that Indian classical dance is co-produced by both British and Indian national discourses and their respective cultural and political imperatives, even as the dance contributes to the formation of British, Indian and South Asian diasporic politico-cultural identities.This thesis is not currently available in OR