12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall

This talk explores the politics, uses, and power of sringara (eroticism) in the performance of bharata natyam padams and javalis (sung love poems). Debates around the appropriateness and relevance of sringara have surfaced and re-surfaced since at least the early 20^th century. Why has sringara been politicized? What makes it so dangerous? To whom or what does it pose a threat? What is the source of these deep-seated anxieties about female sexuality? And what is at stake for women who perform sringara today? In this talk, I argue that sringara is considered dangerous for two reasons: first, it threatens to unearth the sexualized body of the devadasi whose erasure was necessary for upper caste women to take over as knowledge bearers of the form and, second, it threatens to unlock the erotic as a source of female power and dismantle the patriarchy on which Indian national and cultural identity is built. As a bharata natyam scholar-practitioner, I draw on a critical dance studies and auto-ethnographic approach to suggest that an attention to the bodily labor of the dancer makes visible the real root of critiques of the erotic (the unfinished erasure of the devadasi) and the real danger of the erotic (as a site for women’s creative power). I propose that it is the iterative structure of performing padams and javalis that is both the source of this threat and the site of sringara’s radical potential. 

Anusha Kedhar is an Assistant Professor of Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. Her research interests include dance and global political economy; yoga in India and the Indian diaspora; and the performance of eroticism and sexuality in Indian dance. Her current book project, Flexible Bodies: British South Asian Dancers in the Age of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press), examines South Asian dance and dancers in Britain at the nexus of neoliberalism and postcoloniality. Kedhar's scholarly writing has been published in Dance Research Journal, The Feminist Wire, and The New York Times. She is a Fulbright Scholar (India) and the recipient of the Selma Jeanne Cohen award by the Society of Dance History Scholars for excellence in dance scholarship. Kedhar is also an established bharata natyam dancer and choreographer, and has performed and collaborated with various South Asian dance artists in the US, UK, and Europe, including Ramya Harishanakar (US), Subathra Subramaniam (UK), Mayuri Boonham (UK), Johanna Devi (Germany), Cynthia Ling Lee (US), and Meena Murugesan (US). Her choreography has been presented in London, Malta, Los Angeles, Colorado, and New York.