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In Leotards Under Her Sari: An Indian Contemporary Dancer in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2014

Aishika Chakraborty
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 2014 , Fall 2014 , pp. 39 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Aishika Chakraborty 2013 

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