Club and Courtyard: Study on the Intersection of Bollywood Item Numbers and 'Hijra'Dance Tradition

Abstract

This article attempts to find a common space between Bollywood item numbers and hijra (transgender) dance performances exploring gender, sexuality and the idea that significance of body is especially problematic for these dancers. Constantly vulnerable to be presented as a disembodied ideal, these dancing bodies reveal a counter movement towards an understanding of dance as a bodily grounded art form. The article also traces the role of ritual and Dionysian ecstasy in their dance forms and different treatments in terms of display. It is the connection between the dancing body, desire, creativity and consciousness that occupies their center of rhythmic poetics. The dancer is preoccupied with dance as a fusion between eroticism and ritual. Transforming into a concrete and active natural, the dancer attains agency and subjectivity.