Becoming a body
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12985351 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Urmimala Sarkar Munsi (Jawaharlal Nehru University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 124-139 |
| Publication date | 2022-05-19 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | South Asian History and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1947-2498 • E-ISSN: 1947-2501 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/19472498.2022.2077804 |
| OpenAlex | W4280653039 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
All dancing bodies are created and/or crafted; they are bodies that speak; and bodies that prepare to occupy public realms. These bodies are prepared and trained, either intentionally or unintentionally. There could be a differentiation of dancers on the basis of whether (s)he is a dancer by choice, by necessity, or by imposition. But whatever is the path for anyone to become a dancer, he or she first becomes a body during the time of the initiation process and then a dancer. This paper contextualizes these basic facts within the specific empirical examples of (1) dancers trained in a specific Indian dance form, largely considered a hobby or a leisure activity and (2) professional dancers, who have chosen or been forced to dance to earn a living. It also brings, in contrast, untrained women’s bodies that have created a history of choreographed protest events through acts of community dissent in public presence, as witnessed in the recent women’s protests all over India. Through a range of different relations with the concepts of labour, effort, deviance, dedication, precarity and resistance, the paper asserts that all bodies in public spaces are under scrutiny and none of the above categories escape that surveillance
Aesthetics · Art · Dance · Dissent · Hobby · Liminality · Political science · Politics · Precarity · Scrutiny · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · Law · South Asian Cinema and Culture · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|