UC Riverside

Odissi, one of the eight official “classical” dances of India originates in the east Indian state of Odisha. It was created in the mid-20th century when it underwent a ‘reconstruction’ where pre-existing ritualist and movement practices were codified to form a dance style that was “classical” and suitable for the stage. My research on Odissi investigates its classical status in relation to the contemporary choreographies of the dance form which incorporate previously erased, appropriated, and marginalized aesthetics from folk, tribal and ritual, practices (such as the performance practices of Shabda Nritya, Chhau, the mahari musical repertoire) into Odissi. Alongside, this dissertation traces a history of the marginalized performances of Shabda Nritya, Chhau, the mahari musical practices focusing on the oral narratives, gestural repertoires, and movement repertoires of these artist communities. It is through tracing the history of these marginalized practices and examining their incorporation in ‘classical’ dance, that I trouble the category of ‘classical’, attempting to put forward a radical decolonial thinking with regards to Indian dance practices. My project suggests that a radical relationality between ‘classical’ and non-classical forms is key while thinking about decoloniality. This relationality does not simply mean including other practices rather, it stresses on the concept of interdependence: an acknowledgement of plurality (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) among different performance traditions. Hence, I perceive the decolonial as ‘a radical relationality based on interdependence’ (Banerji, 2018). Drawing on these arguments, I define interdependence in the context of Indian performance practices as a radical relationship between the different forms of performances and performers devoid of hierarchy, fetishization, and erasure of marginalized voices and practices. In addition to this, my project in demonstrating interdependence illustrates the aesthetic qualities of the marginalized dance forms. I argue that the choreographies of Sharmila Biswas, and Aloka Kanungo two Kolkata-based Odissi dancers, exemplify interdependence as a decolonial approach. Aloka Kanungo and Sharmila Biswas began incorporating different folk, and ritualist performance practices of Odisha into the established repertoire of Odisii since the 1990’s. Their Odissi choreographies incorporating Chhau, Shabda, Danda, Bandha, and Mahari forms bring plural cultural idioms into play, and illustrate a collaboration between the ‘classical’ and marginalized ‘folk’ dancer. This inturn challenges the hierarchy of the classical dancer and recasts the image of the marginalized dancers from fetishized, exotified, and often erased artists to virtuosic artists. Simultaneously, in tracing the history of these folk and ritualist forms of performance, this oral history-based research delineates the folk and ritualist forms’ interconnections with martial, court, agrarian, theatrical, musical, and ritualist cultures of Odisha. It reveals their contemporary structure resultant from multiple cultural encounters. Biswas and Kanungo’s choreographies and coupled with the oral narratives of marginalized artists amalgamate to delineate that the purely ideological terms of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ are inadequate given these performance forms, evincing cultural pluralities, are formed at the nexus of intracultural, intercultural, and transnational encounters. They call for a shift away from well-defined categories of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’ to an understanding that given the plurality and complexity of artistic practices, absolute categories of art are impossible in the case of India. Simultaneously, the choreographies and the oral narratives demonstrate the complex ways in which hierarchy of the ‘classical’ functions in India. I ask, what do the oral narratives of the marginalized artists reveal about the histories of these dance forms? What relationship do these histories have with the official recorded histories? How do these histories challenge the postcolonial official categories of ‘classical’ and ‘folk’? What is the role of ritualist, folk, performance practices in the formation of classical dance today? How are these practices both made visible and erased; appropriated and mobilized in Odissi? Do the histories of the marginalized performances and their incorporation in classical dance disrupt or trouble the idea of ‘classical’? Bringing together dance studies, postcolonial theory, feminist theory, critical ethnography, literary studies, critical historiography, and decoloniality this project aids in offering a nuanced view of dance practices in India by highlighting the interdependence among classical, folk, and ritualist performances which thereby paves a way to identify and challenge the hierarchy of the vexed category of ‘classical’.