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The story of the emerging professionalization of classical Indian dance forms in Britain is wrought with contradictions. Though becoming increasingly popular within mainstream culture, the forms lack the clear routes to vocational training so essential for creating a dance career in the traditional sense. Towards a British Natyam uses this lens to analyze the cultural, social, and political frameworks that make a profession possible within the arts. Innovatively drawing on the work of decolonial theorists and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Gorringe illuminates the transformative potential of a classical Indian dance profession to decenter white supremacist modes of knowledge formation and recenter pluriversality.
“The book’s insights will be invaluable to dancers struggling to establish their dance form’s legitimacy, so that they are not constantly apologising for their dance being different from the Euro-American contemporary dance, the default mode in the UK. Armed with these concepts and arguments they could make a more confident approach to venues, promoters and funders.” • Pulse
Magdalen Gorringe is a dancer, arts manager, writer, and independent researcher. She grew up in India, where she trained in bharatanatyam, before going on to acquire a B.A. in Theology and Religious Studies from Cambridge University and a MPhil in Classical Indian Religions from Oxford University. She subsequently spent over twenty-five years working as a bharatanatyam dancer in Britain, employed variously as a performer, teacher, workshop leader, and producer. A recipient of a Vice-Chancellor's scholarship from the University of Roehampton, she gained her doctorate in 2021 with a thesis on classical Indian dance forms in Britain.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Flourishing or Fragile? The Contradictory Context of Classical Indian Dance Forms in Britain
Chapter 1. Context: The BBC Young Dancer and the Professionalisation of South Asian Dance in Britain: A Snapshot of the Sector and Its Place within British Dance
Chapter 2. Professionalism :Of Work, Love and Money: Living to Dance – or Dancing to Live? What It Means to Be a ‘Professional’ Classical Indian Dance Artist in Britain
Chapter 3. Learning: Migration, Identity, and Making Professional Dancers
Chapter 4. Livelihood, Learning, Embodiment: ‘Technical Habitus’, Classical Indian Dance Forms and the Limits of the ‘Versatile Dancer’
Chapter 5. Legitimacy: Professionalising Classical Indian Dance in Britain and Entering the ‘National Cultural Canon’
Conclusion: Part of the ‘British DNA’?
Appendix I: List of Judges and Mentors for the BBC Young Dancer
Appendix II: Table of South Asian Dance Tuition in British HE Institutions
Appendix III: Table of Members of the South Asian Dance Alliance
Appendix IV: Project Interlocutors
Bibliography