A productive distance from the nation: Uday Shankar and the defining of Indian modern dance

Abstract

Uday Shankar, a dancer who spent a great deal of his life outside India, improvised new forms of dance and music that he designated as representing Indian culture. Launching his career in Europe and the United States, Shankar adopted his ideas to the availability of local resources including musicians, instruments and set and lighting design. Shankar's innovations in set design, music, choreography and even film directing establish him as a modernist in the 1930s–1940s. Shankar's role in creating new forms of music, especially while he was abroad, led to a particular conflict in his relationship to previously defined categories of national identity. This conflict resulted from Shankar's attempt to define Indian culture in a manner that fell outside officially sanctioned terms of ‘Indian tradition’ and ‘Indian culture’ – as understood in India, as well as abroad.