Embodying Flexibility: The Aesthetics and Politics of British South Asian Dance

Abstract

Flexible Bodies by Anusha Kedhar intimately traces the lives and labor of dancers and choreographers who were instrumental in the development of British South Asian dance between the 1990s and 2010s. In order to narrate the story of British South Asian dance, Kedhar draws on her time as a dancer in London and her ethnographic fieldwork in Britain and India between 2004 and 2017. Kedhar utilizes ethnography, autoethnography, choreographic analysis, and political economy in her study of this genre. British South Asian dance is a concert form well-known for its aesthetic flexibility. Exponents of this form integrate elements and dynamics of classical, folk, and martial dance idioms from the Indian subcontinent with Euro-American modern and postmodern techniques, staging, and production. As part of their training, they foster South Asian forms of flexibility (deep bends, articulate hands, fast footwork) while also cultivating the flexibility associated with ballet and contemporary dance technique (pointed feet, leg extensions, mobile spine). Kedhar charts the emergence of this genre in relation to the rise of British multiculturalism since the 1990s, which necessitated that British South Asian dancers demonstrate their flexibility to perform South Asianness and Britishness. Under the paradigm of multiculturalism, the British government assumed that countering racism and racist violence of the previous decades “simply required education and greater awareness of cultural differences rather than real structural change” (p. 11). British policy makers unanimously agreed that promoting ethnic and minority arts, including dance, could enable national integration. In fact, support from the Arts Council of Great Britain over the years has played a critical role in catapulting British South Asian dance to international recognition. Kedhar also analyzes the flexible labor of British South Asian dancers in connection with “the broader economic and ideological shift towards labor flexibilization” under neoliberalism since the late 1970s (p. 2). During this