Articulating Choreography: Understanding Dance in Indian Context through Somatic Language

Abstract

The paper is an attempt at analysing specific artists and their works vis-á-vis how Indian dance has
undergone mutationsto create a divide between ‘contemporary dance’ and ‘classical dance’. It raises
questions pertinent to looking at dance as one of the aspects of deterritoralization materialized: What
defines the contemporariness of a performance and how does a dance form develop into a coded
language and separate itself from the other kinds of performance? Does contemporary dance in
India, according to the viewers mean strange, meaningless movements? Does dance always have to
be inserted with a single meaning, which is shared by the performer and the audience or is it open
to multiple articulations on either end? Drawing from excerpts from my interviews with dancers,
dancer performances witnessed and workshops attended, I have tried to formulate an argument on
what constitutes as ‘contemporariness’ in dance and how production and reproduction of the same
dance is articulated based on the socio-cultural understanding of the language of movement.