Dance as Cultural/Performance Text

This study interrogates Purulia Chhau as a cultural/performance text through the frameworks of cultural labor and theater semiotics. Drawing on Bramha Prakash’s sanskrutik sram, it argues that the laboring body generates value, forging ties to place, memory, and identity. Mythic portrayals of Chhau’s semiotic network—masks, costumes, body language, music, and audience reception—construct authority and meaning while negotiating authenticity, commodification, and representation in global circuits. Arguing for a nuanced, embedded approach to folk performance, this study honors Chhau’s epistemological depth and the cultural labor through which it endures—ritualized, affective, and continually reinvented in dialogue with contemporary pressures

Dance · Decoding methods · Diversity and Impact of Dance · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

• Embodied ethnopedagogy in dance creation

  Open Access•Hilda Jasri, Juju Masunah et al.•Asian Anthropology•2026

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