UCLA

Contemporary dance, a field distinctly known for privileging innovation and experimentation, has had a rich century-long history in India and is one of the four major dance genres officially recognized by the Indian government, along with classical, folk, and tribal dance. At crucial historical moments, the Indian state has strategically deployed contemporary dance to advance a multicultural and modern image of the subcontinent to the world at large. Despite holding special significance in Indian political discourse, contemporary dance, compared to classical dance, remains under-theorized within Indian performance scholarship. Additionally, existing literature on contemporary Indian dance predominantly focuses on individual artists, delineating their aesthetic sensibilities, dance making techniques, and choreographies in response to social and political discourses circulating in the subcontinent since the early 1900s. My dissertation is the first study to analyze institutional actions that contributed to the formation and consolidation of contemporary Indian dance from the twentieth century to the current moment when the practice evolved into a global phenomenon. My dissertation investigates three institutions that have centrally engaged with contemporary dance in India: the Sangeet Natak Akademi (SNA), the Max Mueller Bhavan (MMB), and the Gati Dance Forum (GDF). I employ multi-sited ethnography, archival research, choreographic analysis, and discourse analysis to ascertain these cultural entities’ interventions in the field of contemporary Indian dance. I mainly investigate the following actions mobilized by these institutions to enable the genre's development: policy-making, curating and hosting seminars, conferences, festivals, artistic residencies, and educational programs, conferring awards and honors, and furnishing monetary resources for dance training, creation, performance, and research. In examining these actions, I argue that the three institutions shape the contours of contemporary Indian dance discourse and practice by continually redefining the category and its stakes in line with evolving institutional missions and contingencies. I track what ways these institutions support contemporary dance in relation to the larger cultural, political, and economic changes experienced in India in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—most notably due to India’s shift from a socialist planned-economy to a neoliberal one. My assessment of how the three institutions form the conditions of possibility for contemporary Indian dance builds on a long tradition of critical theory that has generated frameworks for a materialist analysis of cultural production. I also draw from previous scholarship that conceptualizes how the norms, standards, and mechanisms of arts institutions augment and constrain a dance or performance field. Across my three dissertation chapters, I explore the national, bilateral, and local scales of contemporary dance production in India over the last six decades, which covers the time when each institution actively mediated the field. In my first chapter, I probe how the Sangeet Natak Akademi, a performing arts organization founded by the Indian state, assimilated contemporary dance to realize the latter’s vision of promoting India's diverse cultural heritage and innovative capacity to compete globally. In my second chapter, I attend to the Max Mueller Bhavan, a network of cultural institutes established across India by the German Federal Foreign Office to facilitate diplomatic relations between the two countries. I interrogate how the MMB “developed” contemporary dance to justify and perpetuate the influence of the West in India. In my third chapter, I assess how the GDF, a performing arts non-profit constituted by contemporary Indian dancers, enabled the practice and ecosystem for experimental choreography by centering on the creative and professional needs of dance exponents. In investigating the above case studies, my dissertation offers critical new insights into the institutionalization of dance modernity in India by evaluating the politics of dance patronage.