From the infamous Indus-era bronze dubbed Dancing Girl, to Bollywood films depicting Mughal courtesans, to ill-fated efforts to outlaw urban “dance bars”, the figure of the danseuse is ever present over four millennia of Indian history. Revered as a goddess and reviled as a seductress, the Indian female dancer reflects her nation’s preoccupations with sexuality and gendered expectations.
This presentation offers a critical and creative rethinking of female dancers in Indian art as more than passive receptacles of male desire or predictable ciphers of femininity. Nearly one hundred years after the Indus bronze was found by male colonialists, it is time to reconsider both her infantilizing moniker of “dancing girl” and the predictable destinies to which she and others Indian dancers have been doomed.
General Public: $20, Student: $5, Members: FREE
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