Dancers and critics: Re-viewing tagore

Abstract

Here we have a dance which, according to its architect, was neither for public cheer nor for sale in the world market. Apparently indifferent to subjective criticism, did Rabindranath Tagore, the many-splendored genius, know how to dance as well? Then, what was its idea and idiom? What led the Renaissance man, otherwise busy in the ‘higher world of the thinking mind,’ to experiment with the moving body of women, the ‘something else’3 in performing arts? When dancing in public entailed a threat to the sexual morality of respectable women, who would dare to dance to his tunes, where and in what ways? How was it experienced, viewed and reviewed?