Abstract
Drawing on the seminal work of feminist and queer theorist Judith Butler, this article compares the practice of gender impersonation in the South Indian dance form of Kuchipudi with American drag performance. While impersonation in Kuchipudi and American drag performance arise from radically distinct gendered, cultural, and religious contexts, the juxtaposition of these two seemingly disparate spheres generates a useful framework for comparison that illuminates new ways of interpreting gender and caste in contemporary South India. Focusing on the Kuchipudi dancer Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma and the drag ball performer Venus Xtravaganza, this article analyzes the gender and caste norms of Kuchipudi dance in Telugu-speaking South India while outlining the limitations of Butler’s theory of gender performativity.
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Notes
Butler elaborates on this connection to Derrida in the Preface (1999) of the 2008 edition of Gender Trouble (2008: xv).
In this section Butler engages with hooks’s (1992) critique of Paris Is Burning.
The concept of “reading” is a practice of the drag ball itself and is referred to as “the art of insult” by senior drag ball performer Dorian Corey in Livingston’s film (1991).
The dominant-caste males from the Kuchipudi village self-identify as Vaidikī, a sect of Telugu-speaking Smārta brahmins whose occupational practices traditionally focus on Vedic rituals and study.
While it is difficult to ascertain the exact circumstances of early performance practices of Kuchipudi prior to the nineteenth century due to a dearth of sources, it is evident that as a result of female exclusion Kuchipudi brahmin males have been donning a woman’s guise, or strī-vēṣam, in order to portray characters such as Satyabhāmā in Bhāmākalāpam and Uṣā in the yakṣagāna Uṣā-pariṇayam from the late nineteenth century onwards. In comparison with the brahmin males from the village of Kuchipudi, their female brahmin counterparts (wives, daughters, mothers) often occupy domestic roles and rarely participate as performers in the arts, aside from a few notable exceptions. See Kamath (2019a: Chapter 5) for a detailed discussion of Kuchipudi brahmin women.
See Halberstam 1998: 232.
Due to the separation of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in 2014, I utilize the broader term “Telugu South India” rather than indicating a specific state location. The Kuchipudi village is currently located in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in an area that is identified as “coastal Andhra.”
Telugu poet-scholar Arudra questions the historicity of Tana Shah’s land grant in the title of his 1994 essay, “Lingering Questions and Some Fashionable Fallacies.” In an earlier essay published in 1989, “Background and Evolution of Kuchipudi Dance,” Arudra casts doubt on the location of the Kuchipudi village by positing three possible locations for the village. His research reveals the contentious history of Kuchipudi and counters contemporary practitioner accounts.
As Arudra indicates, the list of these “hereditary” Kuchipudi families seems to have been codified in this 1763 property document (1994: 31), although it is Tana Shah’s earlier land grant of 1678 that remains of primary importance in the living memory of the inhabitants of the Kuchipudi village.
The invocation of the Nāṭyaśāstra is part of a postcolonial grounding of Kuchipudi within the boundaries of “classical Indian dance.” For a discussion of the classicization of Kuchipudi dance, see Putcha 2013 and Kamath 2023. See Soneji (2012), Putcha (2015, 2022), and Thakore (2022) for a discussion of the intersections of Kuchipudi and Kalavantulu (courtesan) dance. Allen (1997) and Soneji (2010) provide a broader context for the revival of Indian dance—in particular, the style of Bharatanatyam in South India.
This section draws on a detailed discussion of Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma in Kamath 2019a, chapters 1–2.
Jayant Kastuar’s remarks are found in Nritya Nidhi Utsav, “Treasures of Indian Dance” (2005).
Modali Nagabhushana Sarma, interview by author, Hyderabad, October 29, 2009.
Satyanarayana Sarma also repeated these stories in the documentary film I Am Satyabhama (2012).
Lecture demonstration by Vedantam Satyanarayana Sarma, Kuchipudi Nrityotsava (1995).
See Pose, Season 2, Episode 4, which first aired on July 9, 2019.
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Kamath, H.M. Vedantam vs. Venus: Drag, Impersonation, and the Limitations of Gender Trouble. Hindu Studies (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-024-09363-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-024-09363-8