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Decolonising Indian classical dance? Projects of reform, classical to contemporary

ABSTRACT Now contained under the rubric ‘classical’, several dance practices in India underwent significant ‘reconstruction’ in the heyday of twentieth-century anti-colonial politics reliant upon the nationalist claim of a cohesive cultural identity. Such restoration of prestige to a supposedly denigrated cultural practice offered a positive ‘artistic’ counterpoint to alleviate nationalist anxieties regarding the purity of the nation and the uniqueness of its identity. Within a few decades of this nationalist reconstruction, Indian classical dance forms were regarded as emblematic of Indian culture and tradition. This article builds on important critiques of the nationalist reconstruction of Indian classical dance in India to examine how this project is enacted in the transnational present. It argues that both diasporic and non-diasporic (British) dancers uphold the foundational assumptions of the reconstructive Indian nationalist movement even as they are located within, and identify with, a very different national and political context, namely multicultural Britain.