in the United States, Bharatanatyam transmission and performance in this country is somewhat different from India. While India has more sabhas , performance organizations that pro- vide spaces for dancers to perform, the United States offers avenues for artists to self-produce shows through grants and fellowship programs. India has a niche population of concert attendees for Indian dance, but sell- ing tickets in the United States varies based on the population of Indian arts students and connoisseurs. When I arrived in San Francisco, the local Bharatanatyam community opened up a new world for me, shifting my practice and perspective in the process. Sitting across from each other at the famous Nick’s Tacos, my friends and I began to ask, how can we imagine Bharatanatyam as having space for discussion and debate on
performance sessions online. I was worried about how the pandemic would shift the impact of live shows, but have been pleasantly surprised to see friends hanging onto Zoom calls until the very end. We have taken mas- ter classes, practiced technique, and watched online concerts together. As COVID-19 cases rose in India, we raised funds for organizations that we knew on the ground. I have shared new work online, bouncing ideas off colleagues on Whatsapp before turning to my infamous ring-light- tripod-and-smart-phone arrangement. This community has kept me sane for the past 14 months, and it has also grown. While there is a sufficient amount of care that I take with social media, I find comfort in my friends’ worlds, watching and sharing their work on my page, as we try to build our own critical dance worlds.
Festival alongside Sri Thina and Shruti Abhishek. We called it When Eyes Speak in reference to the ways Indian dance engages the eyes to communicate narrative and emo- tional content. Our goal was to high- light the vastness of Indian chore- ography in its myriad forms, from Odissi to contemporary, for San Francisco audiences. Then, in May 2018, Shruti, Nadhi Thekkek, and I created Varnam Salons, facilitated intimate gatherings for dancers to share their work-in-progress ver- sions of challenging compositions in the Bharatanatyam repertoire. With these spaces, we aim to eradicate the barriers between audience and per- former in Indian dance, barriers that are strictly maintained on formal pro- scenium stages. We prioritize panel discussions, where the events run into lobby-talk and excited happy hours
Labor has always been intrinsic to BHARATANATYAM PRACTICE , but what makes these COLLABORATIONS meaningful is the acknowledgement of L ABOR BY WAY OF ARTIST, SCHOLARLY , and AUDIENCE. SUPPORT.
politics, class, caste, gender, and sexu- ality? In critiquing one another during open rehearsals, we started to discuss the efforts, costs, and travel involved with Bharatanatyam and asked, how can we question these structures and support one another? Meaningful col- laboration helped me to understand that Indian dance functions not just as performative practice but also as a form of labor. These questions have now imbued my creative process, encouraging me to reflect on what I want to be dancing about right now, and how my work can respond to our fraught political world. In late 2017, inspired by the SF Black Choreographers Festival, and at the urging of Joe Landini, I curated the first Indian Choreography
Collaboration has offered a sub- versive response to frustrating events ranging from COVID-19 to state- sanctioned violence. It has opened doors for me to see Bharatanatyam not from the perspective of individ- ual career development, but rather the collective development of an artis- tic community. While I long to be on the stage again, I treasure these moments that have allowed me to see Bharatanatyam like an old friend in a new light for the very first time. PREETHI RAMAPRASAD is a Bharatanatyam practitioner and a Ph.D. student in Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. 1 I am greatly impacted by and draw on Priya Srinivasan’s text, Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor (2011).
filled with chatter. Most importantly, we acknowledge the daily labor of artists, with compensation and tech- nical support. Instead of stealth- ily wiping the sweat off to preserve layers of make-up for the stage, the salons feature dancers flushed with energy after sharing a challenging sec- tion of choreography with our inti- mate audience. Labor has always been intrinsic to Bharatanatyam prac- tice, but what makes these collabo- rations meaningful is the acknowl- edgement of labor by way of artist, scholarly, and audience support. In the middle of the global pan- demic, many events moved to online platforms. With precise “tech rehears- als,” my collaborators and I held meeting after meeting to set up
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