Classical Indian Dance and the Dancer: Engaging with Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

The chapter will use the personal narrative of a professional Bharata Natyam dancer in contemporary India to outline some issues of conflict that have overwhelmed the dance space and the dancer. Practising Bharata Natyam in India today means negotiating its history and navigating identities of religion, region, class and sexuality. The attempt is to highlight how the dance and the dancer continually negotiate the space between tradition and modernity. The conflict of maintaining the purity of form, yet allowing for creativity becomes a constant endeavour and tussle. In this chapter, we will attempt to trace the course of initiation into the classical arts, from the self-taught gyrations of Bollywood items to the serious rigours of a classical Indian dance form. The conflicts during dance training and the metamorphosis of a “modern” young girl to the “tradition-”bound dancer reveal the resistance in this context. Constructing the self as a dancer is not just a physical transformation, but a way of life. The chapter will also briefly trace the historical journey of Bharata Natyam. There has been local, national and global impact on the dance form, creating discourse on whether the newer forms are classical or should be deemed neoclassical. Since Independence, the post-colonial governments have used dance as part of a nation building agenda, projecting a packaged vision of tradition, culture and identity.