Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Dancing Bodies of Devotion : Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam, Paperback / softback Book

Dancing Bodies of Devotion : Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam Paperback / softback

Part of the Studies in Body and Religion series

Paperback / softback

Description

Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through both incorporating choreography on Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of participants.

Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage.

Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of Bharata Natyam innovatively demonstrate how the rasa of devotion (bhakti rasa), surprisingly absent from classic dance-related texts, serves as the pivotal framework for expanding on their own interreligious thematic and interpretive possibilities.

In contemporary Bharata Natyam, bhakti rasa is not just about enhancing religious experience; instead, these dancers choreographically adapt various religious identities and ideas in order to emphasize pluralistic cultural and ethical dimensions in their work.

Through the dancing body, multiple religious and secular interpretations fluidly co-exist.

Information

Other Formats

Save 9%

£40.00

£36.25

 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information

Also in the Studies in Body and Religion series  |  View all