Classical Indian Dance in Literature and the Arts
Author: Kapila Vatsyayan
Publisher:
Published: 1977
Total Pages: 508
ISBN-13:
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Dancing in Thatha's Footsteps
Author: Srividhya Venkat
Publisher: Yali Publishing LLC
Published: 2021-06-30
Total Pages: 34
ISBN-13: 194952888X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOn Sundays, Varun has his karate lesson, and his sister Varsha heads to dance school with their grandfather. One weekend, Varun reluctantly accompanies his sister to her lesson. Bored of waiting, he peeks into the classroom, and almost immediately, he is fascinated by the rhythm and grace of bharatanatyam, a dance from India that Varsha is learning to perfect. Varun tries a few moves at home in secret because...well, boys don’t dance, do they? His grandfather is not so sure. Will Thatha be able to convince Varun to dance in his footsteps? A heartwarming picture book about a multigenerational Indian-American family discovering a shared love for bharatanatyam, an ancient classical dance that continues to fascinate dancers worldwide.
Indian Classical Dance
Author: Leela Venkataraman
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9789383098644
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCovering eight classical dance forms of India Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Manipuri, Mohiniattam, Odissi and Sattriya Leela Venkataraman seamlessly weaves together a historical perspective with the contemporary scenario. Stripped of their association with the temple and the court, classical dance traditions in India went through a series of unprecedented change in the period marking the last few years of British rule and thereafter. From becoming part of the nationalist struggle when India was trying to rediscover its lost identity, to sharing the international stage today with dance forms from all over the world, the last sixty-six years have seen many changes in perspective and presentation of Indian Classical Dance some intentional, others involuntary. While looking at these years closely and their impact on dance forms, one realises that this is a phase in an ongoing process, with each new generation of dancers and musicians adding to an already rich tapestry of tradition."
Dancing to the Flute
Author: Jim Masselos
Publisher: Art Media Resources
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"What strikes everyone on their first encounter with India and its art is the pervasiveness of music and dance everywhere at all times - India itself is a total experience in which music and dance are embedded as a dominant element within the overwhelming racial, linguistic and cultural variety. Central to religious worship, to love, to the expression of every spiritual and emotional nuance possible, music and dance permeate Indian life."--GoogleBooks.
A Guru’s Journey
Author: Sarah Morelli
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2019-12-20
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 0252051726
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn important modern exponent of Asian dance, Pandit Chitresh Das brought kathak to the United States in 1970. The North Indian classical dance has since become an important art form within the greater Indian diaspora. Yet its adoption outside of India raises questions about what happens to artistic practices when we separate them from their broader cultural contexts. A Guru's Journey provides an ethnographic study of the dance form in the San Francisco Bay Area community formed by Das. Sarah Morelli, a kathak dancer and one of Das's former students, investigates issues in teaching, learning, and performance that developed around Das during his time in the United States. In modifying kathak's form and teaching for Western students, Das negotiates questions of Indianness and non-Indianness, gender, identity, and race. Morelli lays out these issues for readers with the goal of deepening their knowledge of kathak aesthetics, technique, and theory. She also shares the intricacies of footwork, facial expression in storytelling, and other aspects of kathak while tying them to the cultural issues that inform the dance.
Dance Dialects of India
Author: Ragini Devi
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Published: 1990
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9788120806740
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book aims at creating a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Indian dance and its cultural environment in India. The book is addressed to the general reader, dancer, and connoisseur, interested in the arts and traditions of India, where regional forms of dance rituals, dance-drama, folk dance, and classical dance forms have existed for centuries as an essential part of sacred rites and festivals, and as a classical art patronised and practised by the royalty.
A Yoga of Indian Classical Dance
Author: Roxanne Kamayani Gupta
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2000-03-01
Total Pages: 625
ISBN-13: 1594775273
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe yoga and classical dance traditions of India have been inextricably entwined for millennia. The exacting hand gestures, postures and movements of Indian classical dance can only be achieved through yogic concentration. Conversely, the esthetics, symmetry, and dynamism of dance enhance the practice of yoga. These two traditions, so complementary and essential to one another, are united and explicated for the first time in A Yoga of Indian Classical Dance. Twenty-five years ago Roxanne Kamayani Gupta embarked on a journey of dance and yoga, yearning to unlock their mysteries and discover their common origins. As a twenty-year-old student from America she was miraculously and mysteriously absorbed into Indian culture, became a Hindu, and began an odyssey so unusual and unique that the reader will be enchanted by its telling. Choosing the path of the dancer, Roxanne Gupta accomplished what no Western woman had done before: being accepted and trained by Indian masters and then performing in the Indian classical traditions--from the palaces of maharajas to the arts festivals of Europe and America--while at the same time achieving a doctorate in the anthropology of religion and being initiated into a number of yogic traditions. Having mastered the classical form of Kuchipudi dance and studied with teachers of the hatha and kriya yoga traditions, she brings together these two great streams of consciousness and practice. In this tantric approach to yoga and dance, expressed through the body and through a yoga of emotions, we see the traditions embodied in a manner that embraces the totality of the human experience. The result is the dance of the yogini, the sacred feminine initiatress who dances with one foot in nature and the other in the realm of the gods. With extensive photographs of innovative yoga routines, Roxanne Kamayani Gupta distills her experience into techniques for yogic study certain to assist students of all levels to achieve a dynamic, beautiful, and graceful practice.
Choctaw Music and Dance
Author: James Henri Howard
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 1997-02-01
Total Pages: 198
ISBN-13: 9780806129136
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Choctaws are among the largest and best-known Indian tribes originally of the Southeastern United States, but over the centuries they have become one of the most acculturated to white ways, known more for what they absorbed of white culture than for their own distinctive traditions. Since the removal of the greatest part of the tribe to Oklahoma in the 1830s, Euro-American acculturation has become especially dominant. Nevertheless, among the isolated group of Choctaws that remained in Mississippi after Removal and a few individuals in Oklahoma, the old tribal dances and songs have been preserved. This book discusses all aspects of the Choctaw dances and songs performed today by dance troupes in Mississippi and Oklahoma. It describes the social organization of the troupes, the construction and use of their musical instruments, and their costumes. Extensive historical information surveys the early literature on Choctaw music and dance, the divergent experiences of the Mississippi and Oklahoma Groups, and the recent movement toward cultural revival among traditionalists in both states. The choreography for each dance that survives in the Choctaw repertory is described in detail and illustrated by photographs. The book also contains an overview of Choctaw dance music, with a classification of the song and in-depth analyses of musical elements, form, and design. The structure of dance events is reconstructed here for the first time. Musical transcriptions of thirty songs are included. The authors, using a comparative approach, have focused on the relationship between contemporary performances in Oklahoma and Mississippi. Despite regional variations in performance practice, the Choctaws have sustained considerable continuity in their dance and music in this century, successfully resisting fierce pressure to assimilate and thereby lose all remaining vestiges of their culture. This is the first book-length study of Choctaw music and dance since 1943, with much new information on the dances. It will be welcomed by ethnomusicologists, dance ethnologists, students of Native American culture, anthropologists, folklorists, and anyone interested in American Indian dance.
Dance, Music and Cultures of Decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora
Author: Tina K Ramnarine
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-06-09
Total Pages: 286
ISBN-13: 1000766535
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDance, Music and Cultures of Decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora provides fascinating examples of dance and music projects across the Indian Diaspora to highlight that decolonisation is a creative process, as well as a historical and political one. The book analyses creative processes in decolonising projects, illustrating how dance and music across the Indian Diaspora articulate socio-political aspirations in the wake of thinkers such as Gandhi and Ambedkar. It presents a wide range of examples: post-apartheid practices and experiences in a South African dance company, contestations over national identity politics in Trinidadian music competitions, essentialist and assimilationist strategies in a British dance competition, the new musical creativity of second-generation British-Tamil performers, Indian classical dance projects of reform and British multiculturalism, feminist intercultural performances in Australia, and performance re-enactments of museum exhibits that critically examine the past. Key topics under discussion include postcolonial contestations, decolonising scholarship, dialogic pedagogies and intellectual responsibility. The book critically reflects on decolonising aims around respect, equality and the colonial past’s redress as expressed through performing arts projects. Presenting richly detailed case studies that underline the need to examine creative processes in the cultures of decolonisation, Dance, Music and Cultures of Decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora will be of great interest to scholars of South Asian Studies, Diaspora Studies, Performing Arts Studies and Anthropology. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of South Asian Diaspora.
Tawaifnama
Author: Saba Dewan
Publisher: Context
Published:
Total Pages: 804
ISBN-13: 9395073594
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAbout the Book A NUANCED AND POWERFUL MICROHISTORY SET AGAINST THE SWEEP OF INDIAN HISTORY. Dharmman Bibi rode into battle during the revolt of 1857 shoulder to shoulder with her patron lover Babu Kunwar Singh. Sadabahar entranced even snakes and spirits with her music, but eventually gave her voice to Baba Court Shaheed. Her foster mothers Bullan and Kallan fought their malevolent brother and an unjust colonial law all the way to the Privy Council—and lost everything. Their great-granddaughter Teema paid for the family’s ruination with her childhood and her body. Bindo, Asghari, Phoolmani, Pyaari … there are so many stories in this family. And you—one of the best-known tawaifs of your times—remember the stories of your foremothers and your own. This is a history, a multi-generational chronicle of one family of well-known tawaifs with roots in Banaras and Bhabua. Through their stories and self-histories, Saba Dewan explores the nuances that conventional narratives have erased, papered over or wilfully rewritten. In a not-so-distant past, tawaifs played a crucial role in the social and cultural life of northern India. They were skilled singers and dancers, and also companions and lovers to men from the local elite. It is from the art practice of tawaifs that kathak evolved and the purab ang thumri singing of Banaras was born. At a time when women were denied access to the letters, tawaifs had a grounding in literature and politics, and their kothas were centres of cultural refinement. Yet, as affluent and powerful as they were, tawaifs were marked by the stigma of being women in the public gaze, accessible to all. In the colonial and nationalist discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this stigma deepened into criminalisation and the violent dismantling of a community. Tawaifnama is the story of that process of change, a nuanced and powerful microhistory set against the sweep of Indian history.
