Abstract
The impetus behind writing this book was triggered by an interest in uncovering the multifaceted layers of Uday Shankar’s experiments with dance and choreography at a time when pre-independence India was figuring out its relationship with modernity. In this introductory chapter, I have analysed my own role as a pilgrim visiting the archives in faraway countries to connect to his transcultural danced history that I see as my dance(d) root/route. Framing Uday Shankar as a dancer, choreographer, and a dreamer I have analysed his status as an intruder in the Indian dance history and the migrant ‘other’ in the modern dance ecology of the West. The chapter looks at available literature on Uday Shankar to locate him within the discourse on the intermingling dance history of the East and the West. In this chapter, I use my subjective position as an erstwhile prominent student, troupe member, and an administrator of Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, Kolkata to engage in a historiography of his dance, his attempts at institution-building, and his desire to leave behind a legacy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Usually meaning a foreign land, the word was/is used in India specifically with reference to Europe or Britain.
- 2.
‘Wish for adjacency’ is a term used by Srinivasan in her personal interview (dated 27 August 2021) to explain the wish and hope in many colonised people of colour to be seen alongside the white colonisers.
- 3.
Rabindranath Tagore’s contribution to the institutionalised teaching and experimentation with a variety of dance forms along with his initiative in modern education, brough a consciousness of multiple forms of dance practice co-existing in India and other south and south East Asian countries. His experimentations with balletic representation of his texts in the form of what he named as ‘dance drama’ stand out a historical predecessor to the later work done by Uday Shankar with creative dance. Tagore is recognised as the Nobel Laureate from Bengal, known worldwide as the poet, writer, painter, and music composer who shaped Modernism in early twentieth-century India.
- 4.
Abanindranath Tagore established the ‘Indian Society of Oriental Art’ and also founded the Bengal school of art. He is seen as one of the first modern Indian painters.
- 5.
There are eight classical dances in India. The country’s cultural policies helped to create a space of advantage for some genres of dance—where tradition, history, and cultural heritage added legitimacy to the ‘Classical’ dances as inherited from pre-colonial antiquity. A well-established model has since then been created for other such constructed forms to aspire to get recognition as a classical dance. And since the early 1950s, this list has grown with time. All it has taken for the new inclusions in the current list of eight classical dances is for a form to run through the examination and scrutiny of a government appointed team of experts and to confirm the essential characteristics for it to become classical.
- 6.
The recent readings that I have used to hone my understanding of the words/theoretical paradigms around the negotiations of Shankar across geographical and cultural boundaries, i.e. the use of the words ‘transcultural’ and ‘translocational’—create a subject-specific domain for this book, while being strongly referential to their own their histories of prior use.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Mohan Khokar’s personal archives and his connections with the USICC, Almora, have provided the material for many researches on Shankar. His book, His Dance, His Life remains one of the best documentations of Uday Shankar’s works.
- 10.
Narendra Sharma’s insights in his interview printed in the Seagull Theatre Quarterly are different from that of many others such as Mohan Khokar as they come from two simultaneous positions that Sharma occupies in his reflections. He is at once in the past and the present, in his position as an admiring student, as well as in the time much after those days of studentship are over when he is speaking as an experienced dance-teacher-choreographer.
- 11.
Amala Shankar, in her many conversations with us would refer to the structure of classes, the creative energy of the space, and the performance tours, constructing a picture of the dance company that spent the winter touring. Ravi Shankar’s writings published often in his different interviews and his recently published Biography by Craske (2020).
- 12.
Zohra Sehgal, in her autobiography, and her recorded audio interview with Kapila Vatsyayan, talked about the syllabus that she helped prepare for the school, with the help of her experience during her training at Mary Wigman’s dance school at Dresden.
- 13.
Boshi Sen’s letters and reports give us an insight into the enthusiasm with which the process of teaching started at the USICC in the beginning of its short but significant life. His biography by Girish N. Mehra (2007) as well as his letters also portrays his disappointment later as Uday Shankar seemed to lose interest in the academy and he could see its imminent shut down.
- 14.
USIC Centre News, the fortnightly newsletters of USICC, available at the Dartington Hall Archive, UK, have been important for my research. They were edited by Rajendra Shankar and published by Vishnudas Shirali.
- 15.
This is a significant remark on the way Shankar’s modern experiments were always pulled back by his need to portray his allegiance to the classical trainings that were handed down through the traditional system of learning dance under a master–teacher’s tutelage that is known as Guru–Shishya Parampara.
References
Abrahams, Ruth K. 2007. “Uday Shankar: The Early Years, 1900–1938.” Dance Chronicle 30 (3): 363–426.
Bharucha, Rustom. 1999. “Politics of Culturalisms in an Age of Globalisation: Discrimination, Discontent and Dialogue.” Economic and Political Weekly, 20–26 Februray: 477–89.
Chakravarti, Uma. 1996. “Wifehood, Widowhood and Adultery: Female Sexuality, Surveillance and the State in 18th Century Maharashtra.” In Social Reform, Sexuality and the State, edited by Patricial Uberoi, 3–22. Delhi: Sage.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1937. “Uday Shankar’s Indian Dancing.” Magazine Art, 30 October: 611–13.
Craske, Oliver. 2020. Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar. London: Faber & Faber.
Erdman, Joan L. 1987. “Performance as Translation: Uday Shankar in the West.” The Drama Review: TDR 31 (1) (Spring): 64–88.
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2011. Choreographing Empathy: Kinesthesia in Performance. New York: Routledge.
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2019. Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion. New York: Oxford University Press
Ghosh, Bishakha. 2019. Shankarnama: Smritichitre Amala Shankar (Bengali. Kolkata: Ananda Publishers.
Khokar, Mohan. 1983. His Dance, His Life: A Portrait of Uday Shankar. New Delhi: Himalayan Books.
Meduri, Avanti. 1996. “Nation, Woman, Representation: The Sutured History of the Devadasi and Her Dance.” Unpublished Dissertation. New York University.
Mehra, Girish N. 2007. Nearer Heaven Than Earth. Delhi: Rupa & Co.
Purkayastha, Prarthana. 2014. Indian Modern Dance, Feminism, and Nationalism. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rajadhyaksha, Ashish. 2009. Indian Cinema in the Time of Celluloid: From Bollywood to the Emergency. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Robins, Kavin. 2008. “The Challenge of Transcultural Diversities.” Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internationals (Boundaries: Transience and Intercultural Dynamics) No. 82/83: 245–52.
Sarkar Munsi, Urmimala. 2008. “Boundaries and Beyond: Problems of Nomenclature in Indian Dance.” In Dance: Transcending Borders, edited by Urmimala Sarkar Munsi, 78–98. Delhi: Tulika Books.
Sarkar Munsi, Urmimala. 2011. “Imag(in)ing The Nation: Uday Shankar's Kalpana.” In Traversing Tradition: Celebrating Dance in India, edited by Urmimala Sarkar Munsi and Stephanie Burridge, 124–50. Delhi: Routledge.
Sarkar, Sumit. 2015. Modern Times: India 1880s–1950s, Environment, Economy, Culture. Ranikhet: Permanent Black.
Segal, Zohra. 2010. Close-Up: Memories of a Life on Stage and Screen. New Delhi: Women Unlimited (An Associate of Kali for Women).
Segal, Zohra, and Joan Landy Erdman. 1997. Stages: The Art and Adventures of Zohra Segal. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Shankar (Nandi), Amala. (1934) 2007. Sat Sagarer Pare [Bengali]. Kolkata: A Mukherjee & Co. PVT LTD.
Soneji, Davesh. 2012. Unfinished Gestures—Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India (South Asia Across the Disciplines). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Srinivasan, Amrit. 1985. “Reform and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance.” Economic and Political Weekly 20 (44): 1869–76.
Srinivasan, Priya. 2007. “The Bodies Beneath the Smoke or What's Behind the Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Dance History.” Discourses in Dance 4 (1): 7–47.
Vatsyayan, Kapila. 1974, 2nd Reprint 1997. Indian Classical Dance. Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.
Vatsyayan, Kapila. 1995. “The Future of Dance Scholarship in India.” Dance Chronicle 18 (3): 485–90.
Vatsyayan, Kapila. 2003. “Modern Dance: The Contribution of Uday SHankar and His Associates.” In New Directions in Indian Dance, edited by Sunil Kothari, 20–31. Mumbai: Marg Publications.
Weber, Carl. 1991. “AC/TC: Currents of Theatrical Exchange.” In Interculturalism & Performance, edited by Bonnie Marranca and Gautam Dasgupta, 27–37. New York: PAJ Publications.
Archival and Online Sources
Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. https://www.bpl.org/.
British Library, London, UK.
Dance Archive Box Berlin, Akademie Der Kunst. Berlin, Germany. https://www.adk.de/en/programme/index.htm?we_objectID=60174.
Dartington Hall Records. Dartington Hall Trust Archives files [Devon Heritage Centre, Great Moor House, Bittern Road, Sowton, Exeter, Devon, EX2 7NL]. https://www.dartington.org/?s=archives.
———. LKE/IN/19: Title—LKE India 19: Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, 1932–1973.
———. DWE/A/8: Title—Dance 2, Shankar and other Indian Dancers.
———. DS/UK/843: Title—India Culture Trust; 1937–.
———. DS/UK/836: Title—Admin History Uday Shankar India Culture Centre; 1938–.
———. MC/Chekhov/S4/39: Series 4.General Files: A. Uday Shankar Play bills.
———. USIC Centre Newsletters 1939–1944 (Fortnightly), Ranidhara, Almora, U.P. Editors: Rajendra Shankar and Vishnudas Shirali. (Source: Dartington Archives, Devon Cultural Centre, UK).
German Dance Archives Cologne, Germany. http://www.tanzarchive.de/en/members/german-dance-archives-cologne/.
Jacob’s Pillow Archives (Western Massachusetts), Boston. USA. https://www.jacobspillow.org/archives/.
Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung at the University of Cologne, Germany. http://www.universitaetssammlungen.de/sammlung/291.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sarkar Munsi, U. (2022). Introduction: Uday Shankar and Indian Dance History. In: Uday Shankar and His Transcultural Experimentations. Transnational Theatre Histories. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93224-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93224-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-93223-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-93224-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)