Full Description
This volume brings a critical lens to dance and culture within North East India. Through case studies, first-hand accounts, and interviews, it explores unique folk dances of Indigenous communities of North East India that reflect diverse journeys, lifestyles, and connections within their ethnic groups, marking almost every ritual and festival. Dance for people of North East India, as elsewhere, is also a way of declaring, establishing, celebrating, and asserting humans' relationship with nature.
The book draws attention to the origins and special circumstances of dances from North East India. It discusses a range of important folk-dance forms alongside classical dance forms in North East India, with a focus on Sattriya dance. The chapters examine how these dance forms play an important role in the region's socio-cultural, economic, and political life, intertwining religion and the arts through music, dance, and drama. Further, they also explore how folk dance cultures in North East India have never been relegated to the background, never considered secondary, aesthetically, or otherwise, but have become expressions of political and cultural identity.
An evocative work, this volume will be of interest to students and researchers of pedagogy, choreography, community dance practice, theatre and performance studies, social and cultural studies, aesthetics, interdisciplinary arts, and more. It will be an invaluable resource for artists and practitioners working in dance schools and communities.
Contents
Introduction 1. Glimpses of the dance world of North-East India 2. Sattriya dance: A narrative of its journey through the ages 3. Moving objects and thinking body: A dancer's narrative 4. Discovering Sannidhi/a confluence: A dance exchange between Assam and Aotearoa, New Zealand 5. Kherai's dance world: Promoting solidarity and tradition 6. The dance and the dancers: Tradition and innovation within the indigenous performances of the ritual dance of the Hudum Deo 7. Identity revivalism through folk dances amongst the tribal communities of Assam 8. Bihu performance of the Morans of Assam 9. Social media and the politics of dance 10. Gender and dance: "Gazing" at the Doudini and the female Sattriya and Bihuwoti dancers 11. Reflections on dance education workshops in Assam: Towards critical and creative thinking 12. Echoing the rhythm: Voices of school dance teachers 13. Dancers' voices 14. Dance through the performers' lens 15. Studio dance teachers' journeys 16. The performers of folk dances
