Choreographing a Rebuttal: Thinking through Praxis in South Asian Dance Pedagogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT As an artist/academic, I discuss my pedagogical interventions in teaching Odissi through studio, theory, and praxis courses to populations across university students and professional artists. Through interdisciplinary research, I work at the confluence of historical and contemporary forces. Casteist, fundamentalist, racist, sexist, ablist, and hierarchical modes of teaching and learning plague Odissi as part of the field popularly known as “Indian classical dance.” The appellation of “classical” is itself a byproduct of complex social and cultural forces across Hindu majoritarianism, historical nostalgia, and anti-colonial nationalist resistance. While dance scholars have unpacked this historical complexity to some extent, I apply contemporary trends in performance and pedagogy that have received little scholarly engagement. I ground my work in an ethos of community building creating through lines across the diasporic Indian community and academia. This way of working presents questions of access and ownership as it bumps up against historical entanglements.