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SELLING POINTS
¢ An insightful book on bar dancers, coutesans, devadasis and transgender performers.
¢ Filled with personal stories and in-depth study of Indian illicit dance cultures.
¢ ˜This is a remarkable book, of great originality, rigour, and importance in the study of modern Indian popular culture. Combining extensive fieldwork, archival research, and astute interpretation, Morcom presents a rich exploration of the contradictory effects of modernity, nationalism, and bourgeois values on a diverse range of Indian dance traditions, old and new.` ” Peter Manuel, Professor, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
¢ ˜Anna Morcom`s extraordinarily compelling book represents one of the most significant interventions in the study of dance in contemporary South Asia. Masterfully bridging discourses on class, gender, globalisation, economics, morality, and aesthetics, it effectively foregrounds the forms of inequality and power at work in the production, consumption, and politicisation of dance in today`s India.` ” Davesh Soneji, author of Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India ¢ ˜A hugely valuable addition to the literature on the performing arts in India, focusing as it does on communities of highly marginalised dancers who have received scant academic attention. Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance deals with a wide-ranging set of dance sectors including female hereditary performers, bar dancers, transgender erotic performers and kothi dancers, interpreting the author`s rich ethnographic detail ` ”Prabha Kotiswaran, author of Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor
¢ ˜This fascinating investigation of the hidden hereditary communities of female and transgender dancers in contemporary India compels us to rethink our assumptions about Indian public culture, sexualities, and entertainment. Anna Morcom reveals the ways in which postcolonial nation-building in the name of progress and modernity has excluded a range of non-elite subjectivities and marginalised their role as carriers of embodied culture.` ” Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor, King`s College London, and author of Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley
of Kashmir
¢ `Until very recently the world of hereditary professional women performers of dance and music in South Asia, was largely hidden and inaccessible. This is the first book-length study of such professional women performers from throughout India, past and present. Anna Morcom provides a bold and incisive study that is first-rate in its scholarship, sophisticated and comprehensive. ” Daniel M. Neuman, Professor Mohindar Brar Sambhi Chair of Indian Music University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)ABOUT THE BOOK
Until the 1930s no woman could perform in public and retain respectability in India. Professional female performers were courtesans and dancing girls who lived beyond the confines of marriage, but were often powerful figures in social and cultural life. Women`s roles were often also taken by boys and men, some of whom were simply female impersonators, others transgender. Since the late nineteenth century the status, livelihood and identity of these performers have all diminished, with the result that many of them have become involved in sexual transactions and sexualized performances. Meanwhile, upper-class, upper-caste women have taken control of the classical performing arts and also entered the film industry, while a Bollywood dance and fitness craze has recently swept middle class India. In her historical and on-the-ground study, Anna Morcom investigates the emergence of illicit worlds of dance in the shadow of India`s official performing arts. She explores over a century of marginalization of courtesans, dancing girls, bar girls and transgender performers, and describes their lives as they struggle with stigmatization, derision and loss of livelihood. ISBN 9789350097922
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