UCLA

“Dragging the Classics: On the Pursuit of (Trans)Gender Liberation through Indian Classical Dance” explores how transgender and non-binary South Asian Americans find gender liberation and euphoria through drag performances of Indian classical dance. In this thesis, I chart the appropriation and sanitization of Indian classical dance forms from their original practitioners and the linking of Indian classical dance to Indian and Hindu national consciousness over the past hundred years. I also examine how transgender South Asians who perform Indian classical dance in queer South Asian event spaces in the diaspora disorient rigid traditional structures and values enforced through Indian classical dance. By analyzing non-binary South Asian Americans’ drag performances of Indian classical dance through the lenses of affect, nostalgia, and diaspora, this thesis articulates how such performers create liberatory utopias through their cultural and gendered performances where they and their audiences can celebrate their queerness and South Asianness together.