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Toward Defining Contemporary Indian Dance: A Global Form

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Ketu H. Katrak
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings , Volume 40 , supplement S1: Dance Studies and Global Feminisms , 2008 , pp. 129 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2008

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References

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