Embodiment, reflexivity and practice-as-research in Indian dance: A case study

Abstract

This chapter responds to one of the central questions of the 2013 Dance Matters II (“What Remains: Remembrances, Representations and Responses as Dance Artifacts”) conference around the renegotiation and critique of existing categories of performance research. It begins with a broad examination of recent shifts in dance research globally, from traditional historical and analytical modes of enquiry to more reflexive and embodied forms of praxis, exemplified by an increasing number of practice-as-research modes of interrogating the role and function of the dancing body. I examine how the latter modes offer new possibilities for the dancing body’s relationship with both the past and the present, and explore how these enable the body itself to become a site of critique and reflection. I privilege in this chapter my own experiences of being both a performer of and an audience for Indian dance, in India and in Britain.