A conversation focusing on dancing and resisting from the margins of the field, moving inwards. We will unpack frictions, power-dynamics, failures, experiences and talk about our wellness and new approaches as we root and dream from the margins.
Classical dance and music are seen as the “Indian nation's" intangible culture. While there has been some discussion around the problematic histories of cultural nationalism and appropriation that most of these art forms share within echo chambers of academia, the mainstream world of the performing arts functions in a mostly insular way, shutting out any critique and dissent, even in the present. This talk will take a radical, critical approach to understanding the power structures of caste, class, and gender-based hierarchy both in the history and the present of celebrated “classical” art forms such as bharatanatyam.
Register in advance for this webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_11y0lYHpRMy27RESiKeEhw
Nrithya Pillai is a dancer, dance composer, singer, writer, speaker, and dance instructor who proudly claims her hereditary dance lineage. Following the legacy of her maternal grandfather Swamimalai Rajarathnam Pillai, she consciously preserves and reanimates the rich repertoire and the teaching and choreographic practices of her celebrated ancestors, who include V. Meenakshisundaram Pillai, T.K Swaminatha Pillai and Padmashri Vazhuvoor B. Ramiah Pillai. Carving out her own space as a performer with impeccable training and vast creativity, Nrithya represents a new kind of artistic and intellectual engagement with the troubled history of Bharathanatyam. She vigorously challenges the power relationships and ideologies that made the form unavailable to women of her community, and advocates fiercely for the restoration of credit for Bharathanatyam technique, repertoire, and philosophy to the hereditary community of practitioners. Nrithya’s voice, raised against casteism in the contemporary dance world, is unique in the field today, and her message against historical misrepresentation is relevant and powerful.
Nrithya Pillai: The Anti-Caste Dancer-Activist Progressively Reviving Bharatanatyam. By Priyanka Singh, March 25, 2021, https://feminisminindia.com/2021/03/25/nrithya-pillai-interview-bharatanatyam-isai-vellalar/
Chitra Vairavan is an artist, seeker, contemporary dancer/choreographer and educator of Tamil/South Indian-American, non-Brahmin descent, based in Mni Sota Makoce. Vairavan is immersed in both Thamizh/Tamil culture and progressive brown politics in the U.S. Her embodied practice and experimental process is rooted in deep listening, spatial observation, freedoms, poetry, vulnerability and ancestral memory. She chooses to gesture towards and embody within the practice of liberation and decolonization in creative and collaborative choices. www.chitravairavan.com
Vairavan is currently in residence at Rosy Simas Danse' Studio 331, and is grateful for their support in organizing this conversation.