Longing to Dance: Stories of Kuchipudi Brahmin Womenглава из книги
Аннотация: Longing to Dance Stories of Kuchipudi Brahmin WomenThe Hyderabad-based Kuchipudi dance teacher Balatripurasundari learned to dance in secret.As the youngest daughter of internationally acclaimed Kuchipudi dance guru Vempati Chinna Satyam, Baliakka (as she is commonly called) was never encouraged by her father to dance.In fact, she was overtly discouraged from dancing on the basis that it might diminish her marriage prospects in the future and cause unnecessary hardships.Nonetheless, Baliakka learned by watching her father train hundreds of girls in his Madras-based dance institution, the Kuchipudi Art Academy (KAA).Likening herself to Ekalavya, the outcast student of Drona from the epic Mahābhārata, who learned archery in secret, Baliakka would sneak into the back of her father's dance classroom, practice facial expressions in front of the bathroom mirror, and fashion Kuchipudi gestures (mudras) underneath her blanket at night.Baliakka longed to dance like the other girls at her father's dance school, but her desire never won her father's approval because, according to Kuchipudi sāmpradāyam (tradition), brahmin girls from the Kuchipudi village cannot and do not dance.This chapter focuses on the narratives of brahmin women belonging to hereditary Kuchipudi village families who have been overtly excluded from the embodied labor of performance.Unlike the brahmin men of the Kuchipudi village who are all associated with dance in some capacity, Kuchipudi brahmin women have no such performative roles to play.Kuchipudi brahmin women's bodies are deemed unsuitable for the labor of Indian dance and are, therefore, proscribed from the "sweat, blood, tears, slipping or stained saris, callused feet, missteps, or familiar gestures" that dance entails (Srinivasan 2012, 8).Kuchipudi brahmin women are neither the bearers of sāmpradāyam in the manner of their fathers, brothers, and
Год издания: 2019
Издательство: University of California Press
Источник: University of California Press eBooks
Ключевые слова: South Asian Studies and Conflicts, Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
Открытый доступ: hybrid
Страницы: 134–158