Modern Moves: The Bengal Chapter (1930-2000)-A lecture by Aishika Chakraborty

Presenting
Modern Moves: The Bengal Chapter (1930-2000)
A lecture by Aishika Chakraborty
as part of Basement 21@Goethe-Institut
(a continual series of contemporary art events)
A joint project of the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Chennai & Basement 21

A series of events, presenting contemporary practices of live arts in India, comprising performances, lecture-demonstrations, workshops and more, leading to the annual contemporary dance festival – March Dance, jointly presented by Goethe-Institut Chennai and Basement 21 since 2017.
The second event (September 2, 2022, 6:00pm) in this series is Modern Moves: The Bengal Chapter (1930-2000) – a lecture on the history of modern and contemporary dance in India by researcher Aishika Chakraborty.

To register / for any other queries, please write to mail.basement21@gmail.com / info-chennai@goethe.de / send an SMS at 7595997568.    

Summary of the talk:
Modern Moves: The Bengal Chapter maps the history of contemporary dance movement in Bengal with its myriad shades of coloniality and post-coloniality. How did the late nineteenth century renaissance-bred Modern unfold into the postcolonial Contemporary that further emerged as the diasporic, the liminal, and the in-between? From the dynamic landscape of post-partition Bengal, how did the idiom migrate across borders bearing transnational and transcultural imprints? With an emphasis on the changing trajectories of three stylistic breakthroughs—the eclectic ‘free-style’ of Rabindranath Tagore, the magnificent ‘Oriental’ of Uday Shankar and political theatrics of IPTA—all significantly locating, emanating or spreading in and from colonial Bengal, did they also challenge the relationship of power, tradition and cultural hegemony encoded in the overarching frame of nationalism?
In search of another riposte the discourse will privilege the voices and agencies of Manjusri Chaki-Sircar and Ranjabati Sircar, the pioneers of the new dance movement or Navanritya that became one of the foremost feminist interventions in Indian dance-graph. Taking dance as a critical starting point of analysis, Dr. Aishika Chakraborthy explores possibilities of multidisciplinary engagements and dialogue between practice and research, history (time) and geography (space) and dance and dancers.

About the speaker:
Aishika Chakraborty is Professor, School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her research spans from the social history of the Hindu widows of colonial Bengal to contemporary Indian dance where she maps the many journeys of women dancers from colonial to postcolonial Bengal. Her publications and monographs include Ranjabati: A Dancer and her World, The Moving Space: Women in Dance, Kolkatar Cabaret: Bangali, Younata ebang Miss Shefali and others. Her forthcoming book is Widows of Colonial Bengal: Gender, Morality and Cultural Representations (2022). She has also published her papers in international journals, edited volumes and daily newspapers. At present she is working on exotic-erotic dancers of India at the intersection of sexual and cultural labour, migration and human trafficking. 
A former student of Dr. Manjusri Chaki-Sircar and Ranjabati Sircar, Aishika widely participated at major national and international dance festivals. She has also collaborated with Dancers’ Guild in choreographing their experimental productions like Jajnaseni (2008), Chitrangada (2012) and Agama Antara Parabare (based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, 2022). https://www.aishikachakraborty.org/

All are welcome as per Pandemic Protocols*.

• A thermal scanning will be done at the Entry.
• Mask must be worn by all non-performers all the time.

We look forward to your cooperation to ensure safety for everyone.