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Social Science Popular Culture

Bharatanatyam

A Reader

by (author) Davesh Soneji

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Initial publish date
Mar 2010
Category
Popular Culture
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780198065395
    Publish Date
    Mar 2010
    List Price
    $78.50
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780198083771
    Publish Date
    Aug 2012
    List Price
    $15.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

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Description

Bharatanatyam is one of the world's fastest-growing dance forms. It engenders complex, transnational social histories, varied aesthetic practices, and is one of the most dynamic living cultural practices of modern South Asia. In Bharatanatyam: A Reader, Davesh Soneji brings together some of the most important writings related to Bharatanatyam in English, highlighting the heterogeneous, sometime contradictory, voices in Bharatanatyam as it has evolved over the last two centuries. The primary sources range from writings by colonial anthropologists, legendary dancers such as T. Balasaraswati, to those by contemporary artists such as Chandralekha. The sharp and theoretically insightful secondary sources draw from the fields of history, dance studies, anthropology, women's studies, religious studies, and ethnomusicology. The volume includes the earliest essay published on the subject in 1806 while also giving space to the voices of some contemporary dance-scholars, providing a window on the historical provenance, aesthetic and political debates, and personal journeys that have shaped this vital and ever-shifting art. The compilation of essays on the subject foregrounding historical and aesthetic issues comes with a comprehensive Introduction by Davesh Soneji providing a broad contextual mapping of the sources.

About the author

Contributor Notes

Davesh Soneji is Assistant Professor of South Indian Religions at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.