This book is about the ways in which public perception, laws, and communal and gender politics affect and determine lives and livelihoods. Anna Morcom’s framing argument corresponds closely to mine: that generalisations so popular in social and critical theory set up binaries of inclusion and exclusion and constantly need to be qualified. Generalised categories might offer handy labels to census takers, statisticians and politicians, but both inclusion and exclusion from such groups can entomb living persons or offer opportunities for self-advancement. Ideals can bind as much as they might liberate. Morcom posits that generalisations have differently disaffected the lives of various groups of performers lumped under one notion — that of dancer equals sexual availability.
The author argues that an astonishingly vast number of persons who dance for a living are clumped together in the single ‘slut’ category because their livelihoods and their ways of being cannot be easily categorised. Performative lifestyles and sex work are indiscriminately lumped together. She distinguishes ‘traditional’ dancers into the three categories of, “classical courtesans and other dancing girls”, “devadasis” and “transgender male or female impersonators”.
She argues that with the breakdown of the sheltering effect of the “longterm concubinage” system of private sponsors, even more hereditary performers are driven to sex work. Redemption is complicated. The human rights discourse empowers victims by enlarging their voices through media, press and publicity. But this approach can also manipulate what is spoken, most notoriously when ‘saviours’ argue that the ‘victims’ are incapable of knowing what is best for them. Of course, we have heard and are still hearing many variations of this; most recently from politicians responding to rapes. This is surely the author’s intention — to draw attention to an already overwritten narrative and to remind us that it is not just history, or a fascinating mythology of noble hearted
Morcom tracks what happens to women who work as bar girls as they move (or are moved) from rural to urban communities. She draws on the studies of several recent ethnographers and her own fieldwork to track changes through the 20th century, and adds personalising incidents. She includes an account of how the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly has made several attempts to ban dance in bars, information that is particularly relevant at this time, because another attempt was made to reintroduce this ban in May, and after the Supreme Court in July 2013 concurred with an earlier High Court ruling that it is unconstitutional to ban some kinds of dancing and not others, and that dancers have a right to work. Meanwhile, a parallel discourse, of classical dance, a matter of national
The difference between the Anti-Nautch campaigns of Madras in the early 19th century and the current struggle between moral policing and the law is that here it is more obvious that colonists are not the sole culprits as it is happening more than a half-century after Independence. Morcom’s theory would suggest that it is high time those who simplify the earlier history with a simplistic post-colonial blame-game revisit and nuance their pronouncements.
Happiest reading is the chapter on the Bollywood dance revolution, where Morcom recounts how middle-class India seeks out dance not only for sexual titillation but also fitness, as a yoga, and for the joy of dancing. I wonder about the numerous dance contests on TV. And how many Shiamak Davar Performing Arts Institutes and zumba classes are being offered in every district of Mumbai? Is Mumbai the dance city for the urban many? (Chennai and Delhi are for the elites). The author shows how the positive perception of dancing by a rising middle-class offers a counter-vision of dance, and in turn, makes life more bearable for those who have inherited performance as profession. Davar’s recent success with several sold-out performances of Selcouth juxtaposes the splendid and sordid aspects of the dancing body.
The author offers much food for thought in her discussions of the changing world of Kothi, of performers of feminity at wedding parties, mujras , melas , dance bars and private salon performances. Gender tunnel-vision has turned a blind eye towards the effects of hereditary professions, chance and choice, when it comes to cross-dressing. Such performers have been marginalised and committed to the ‘shadows’ by omission from mainstream discourse. How do you name what was supposed to not exist? This language is protective of some − for example, hijras have organisational structures that bring protection and links with the police. However, female impersonator performers have been increasingly harassed, and with violence, because they ‘do not exist’. Meanwhile, the classical tradition owes much to this group of performers, for dancers have received refined techniques of performing gender transformation from them.
No one who reads this book about performers in South Asia can come away with easy answers about the way in which lives are circumscribed by Indian society, law and global middle-class values. This is not a book for the fainthearted. It has been ‘work’ to read it but it is a rewarding experience for anyone who wants to theorise contemporary South Asian dance or issues related to sexuality and the visibilising effects of naming what is already in bodies. Morcom examines ways in which public perceptions are formed, and the writing of dance histories. The impact of theory on living bodies, and the ability of performers to intervene in theoretical assumptions have been subject to debate over the last few years in the area of dance studies. This book contributes to, and participates in a global view of local practices. A must-read, and now you have been prepared for it.
(Uttara Asha Coorlawala is a professor of dance at Columbia University and at the Alvin Ailey American School of Dance New York)