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South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations
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South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 10433

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Lionel Popkin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Interests: choreography; dance studies; performance studies; diaspora studies; intercultural artmaking; archival studies; South Asian studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue explores the myriad of movement practices in the South Asian diaspora, with a particular focus on experimental arts practices in what we now call the United States. Submissions are sought from those who are interested in contemplating the ramifications of movement and time-based work stemming from the conversation between South Asian and North American influences. The issue seeks submissions that engage with the primary source of the artist’s perspective over the secondary analysis of the scholar while also acknowledging the tremendous and often useful overlap between those two modes of inquiry. The diaspora, with its particular mix of experiences, can be a site to question the equating of Indian identity with an adherence to a specific set of religious practices and beliefs. Dance has frequently equated Hindu myths, representations, and codes as a definitional part of South Asian dance discourse. This volume seeks an expansion of that equation and seeks to elicit dialogue from and with the many choreographers, movement practitioners, and thinkers who are in kinetic conversations with their cultural ancestry from South Asia as well as their current states, homes, locales, cities, and/or countries.

Prof. Lionel Popkin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • dance
  • choreography
  • time-based art
  • diaspora
  • South Asian studies
  • dance studies
  • performance studies

Published Papers (6 papers)

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16 pages, 15552 KiB  
Article
Dravidian Futurities: A Creative Process
by Meena Murugesan
Arts 2023, 12(5), 203; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050203 - 18 Sep 2023
Viewed by 1560
Abstract
In this article, author and artist Meena Murugesan analyzes their creative process and research in the making of Dravidian Futurities, a multi-channel video installation with live performance. Methodologies of auto-ethnography, visual aesthetics, embodied movement practices, Tamil historiographies, queer futurities, caste analysis, and [...] Read more.
In this article, author and artist Meena Murugesan analyzes their creative process and research in the making of Dravidian Futurities, a multi-channel video installation with live performance. Methodologies of auto-ethnography, visual aesthetics, embodied movement practices, Tamil historiographies, queer futurities, caste analysis, and poetics are applied to treat the issues at hand. Dravidian Futurities draws connections between communities of South Indian and Sri Lankan Shudra and Dalit caste backgrounds, Dravidian, and Afro-Indian peoples, depending on the historical era examined. As someone of the Shudra caste, the author draws connections between agriculture, land, and earth, as being rooted in Shudra identities, and in opposition to brahminical systems. Therefore, the movement forms of somatics, improvisation, and nature-based embodiment practices are investigated as possible embodied inroads to grapple with caste within brahminized bharatanatyam. Notions of futurity and place-making are unearthed from the depths of the Indian Ocean with a hypothetical sunken landmass called Lemuria or Kumari Kandam that might have once connected South India, Sri Lanka, and Madagascar. Dravidian Futurities also dreams into existence this speculative landmass as a possible utopia we might co-build, similar to that which Dalit mystic saint Guru Ravidas imagined five hundred years ago with Begumpura (“land without sorrow”) as a casteless, stateless utopia. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations)
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26 pages, 3342 KiB  
Article
Kafka’s Ape Meets the Natyashastra
by Shanti Pillai
Arts 2023, 12(4), 173; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040173 - 10 Aug 2023
Viewed by 2178
Abstract
To the Academy is a multi-media performance work that makes poignant and humorous commentary about education, common paradigms of diversity, and the oppressive nature of institutional labor. Created through a dialogue between myself, an Indian American with training in various forms of physical [...] Read more.
To the Academy is a multi-media performance work that makes poignant and humorous commentary about education, common paradigms of diversity, and the oppressive nature of institutional labor. Created through a dialogue between myself, an Indian American with training in various forms of physical theatre and Indian dance, and Guyanese-Canadian actor Marc Gomes, it has been performed at several universities and arts centers since 2015. In this essay, I will interrogate the ways in which we place select elements of “Indian tradition” at the service of the piece’s overarching theme of histories of European domination, asking whether making these cultural materials subservient to our political agenda constitutes a form of appropriation. I examine three components of the work: the character of the classical Indian dancer who appears in the first section of the show, the explicit references to the ancient Sanskrit treatise on performance, the Natyashastra, and the framing of both these elements within our adaptation of Franz Kafka’s story, “Report to an Academy,” about an ape who learns to impersonate humans. In so doing, I explore the ethical responsibilities artists of color have in working with intercultural aesthetics. Furthermore, I assert the inevitably ambivalent nature of activist performance, even if artists aim to resist hegemonic structures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations)
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11 pages, 2206 KiB  
Article
Rupture and Disruption: Reflections on “Making” and “Knowing” Dance
by Hari Krishnan
Arts 2023, 12(3), 122; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030122 - 12 Jun 2023
Viewed by 1667
Abstract
This essay follows a somewhat unconventional approach to writing about Indian dance in the diaspora. I say “unconventional” because it unfolds as a kind of self-reflexive narration of my own journey as a “doubly diasporic” Indian dancer, born in Singapore but having made [...] Read more.
This essay follows a somewhat unconventional approach to writing about Indian dance in the diaspora. I say “unconventional” because it unfolds as a kind of self-reflexive narration of my own journey as a “doubly diasporic” Indian dancer, born in Singapore but having made my career in North America. In essence, I map my own unconventional paths to understanding Indian dance in the diaspora, outside the tired and troublesome idea of “dance as heritage”. The aim of this critical meditation on my own work is to offer up new possibilities for moving Indian dance into progressive conceptual spaces that direct it out of the discursive field of cultural nationalism that frames the idea of “heritage”. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations)
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16 pages, 1672 KiB  
Article
Uday Shan-Kar and Me: Stories of Self-Orientalization, Hyphenization, and Diasporic Declarations
by Lionel Popkin
Arts 2023, 12(3), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12030106 - 18 May 2023
Viewed by 1087
Abstract
This article discusses how orientalism has operated and continues to operate within the North American artistic landscape of dance artists. The author starts by focusing on Uday Shankar (1900–1977), one of the major, though often overlooked, figures over the last 100 years of [...] Read more.
This article discusses how orientalism has operated and continues to operate within the North American artistic landscape of dance artists. The author starts by focusing on Uday Shankar (1900–1977), one of the major, though often overlooked, figures over the last 100 years of South Asian (and predominantly Indian) dance performance on the concert stage in the diasporic context, to consider how orientalism, the desire for authenticity, a nationalist agenda, religious fundamentalism, economic necessities, multi-cultural initiatives, and diversity desires all interact and coalesce to form an undercurrent of limited potentials about how and why South Asian dance can exist within the American performance discourse. In an auto-ethnographic move, the author then juxtaposes Shankar’s historical legacy with a new artistic project by the author (b. 1969), entitled Reorient the Orient, premiering in 2024. The writing uses archival sources such as photographs, programs, publicity materials, featured essays, newspaper previews, reviews, filmed dance footage, choreographic analysis, and personal reflections to explore how social factors and personal ambitions create awkward relationships within orientalism’s manifestations in the diasporic U.S. performance landscape. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations)
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16 pages, 8320 KiB  
Essay
In Search of Context, In Search of Home
by Sujata Goel
Arts 2023, 12(5), 194; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12050194 - 07 Sep 2023
Viewed by 993
Abstract
In this text, the author outlines her personal narrative as a dancer and choreographer over twenty years. She traces her path of migration between the USA, India and Europe in search of artistic context and belonging. Her account addresses larger issues such as [...] Read more.
In this text, the author outlines her personal narrative as a dancer and choreographer over twenty years. She traces her path of migration between the USA, India and Europe in search of artistic context and belonging. Her account addresses larger issues such as Orientalism and Eurocentrism in the global, contemporary dance sphere. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations)
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8 pages, 5254 KiB  
Essay
My Practice of Re-Patterning My Art
by Pramila Vasudevan
Arts 2023, 12(4), 165; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts12040165 - 26 Jul 2023
Viewed by 2118
Abstract
This essay shares the various ways in which my socio-political context and health background has impacted my journey as an artist and culture worker through my work with the Aniccha Arts collaborative in the Twin Cities. I would like to share how my [...] Read more.
This essay shares the various ways in which my socio-political context and health background has impacted my journey as an artist and culture worker through my work with the Aniccha Arts collaborative in the Twin Cities. I would like to share how my (un/re)learnings have materialized into different movement textures of togetherness over the years. I describe how I arrived at creating the current movement-based project, Prairie|Concrete, and the questions that I am asking as a path forward. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue South Asian Diasporic Dance Artists: Choreographic Cultural Negotiations)
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