Indian Classical Dance and the Making of Postcolonial National Identities by Sitara Thobani

Author:Sitara Thobani [Thobani, Sitara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781315387338
Google: pCglDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 31523309
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

The colour of professionalism

The various points of contrast drawn between India/Indians and the West/Westerners I encountered relied rather unsurprisingly on – and thereby sustained once more – that persistent and stereotypical binary of the West as technical and the East as emotional. This opposition was apparent in the previous comment where the professional South Asian dancer suggested she would ask ‘someone who was not Indian’ (white, based on the context of the conversation) to substitute for her in teaching a workshop as ‘those are the people that I know do it best’. This dichotomy was also reflected in the remarks of a Kathak teacher – particularly respected for being amongst the earliest pioneers of Indian classical dance in the UK and having trained several well-reputed dancers – during a performance in London:

In technique, Western students are quicker than I and other Indians ever were. The problem is in teaching abhinaya [narrative or acting dances]. Westerners are too reserved, you can’t even teach them to smile properly. In India, people push each other over to get on the train and within ten minutes they’re sharing food; in the UK, everyone sits with an iPod or book on the tube, no on looks up, they are so closed.

The suggestion here is that while Westerners may work hard, they cannot do good abhinaya for they are too closed emotionally and think rather than feel. Despite the ambiguity in this teacher’s statements – for it is never clarified where diasporic dancers may be located on this spectrum – the sentiments he shared were echoed by others who similarly celebrated the industrious tendencies of Western/white dancers. For example, a professional dancer based in London reflected in an interview that:

It’s strange that as a [Northern European] dancer I’ve been able to make a living out of Indian classical dance. I think it’s partly to do with the fact that dancers with an Indian background see it as a mediated dance. They see it as something to link their background, cultural heritage and they don’t see it as an art form, they don’t take it as seriously. Whereas dancers from other backgrounds, they see it as an art form and they take it seriously. And also they have to do more research, you can’t assume that it’s in my blood or I just know it because I grew up with it. You have to look for the answers, you have to do much more research.

Aside from this dancer’s reference to blood and the innate proclivity to Indian classical dance this is meant to represent, the suggestion that dancers of Indian backgrounds see the form as ‘mediated’ due to the strength of its supposed cultural moorings operates on popular assumptions. Moreover, this assertion contributes to the idea that diasporic dancers may not have to work as hard as their white/Western counterparts for the greater cultural gap the latter are thought to have to bridge.

Later describing a group of non-Indian dancers with whom she worked, this dancer concluded that

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