In a time of colonial subjugation, subaltern, illicit and courtesan dancers in India radically disturbed racist, casteist and patriarchal regimes of thought. The criminalized 'nautch' dancer, vilified by both British colonialism and Indian nationalism, appears in this book across multiple locations, materials and timelines: from colonial human exhibits in London to open-air concerts in Kolkata, from heritage Bengali bazaar art to cheap matchbox labels and frayed scrapbooks, and from the late nineteenth century to our world today. Combining historiography and archival research, close reading of dancing bodies in visual culture, analysis of gestures absent and present, and performative writing, Prarthana Purkayastha brings to light rare materials on nautch women, real and fictional outlawed dancers, courtesans and sex-workers from India. Simultaneously, she decolonises existing ontologies of dance and performance as disappearance and advocates for the restless remains of nautch in animating urgent debates on race, caste, gender and sexuality today.
By:
Prarthana Purkayastha
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Weight: 479g
ISBN: 9781009396868
ISBN 10: 1009396862
Series: Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre
Pages: 226
Publication Date: 13 November 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
1. Nautch in Colonial human exhibits, and the (Im)possibility of dance reenactments; 2. Insurgent gestures: bibis in nineteenth-century Bengali art; 3. Sundaris and Jans in the age of mechanical reprodarshan; 4. Joyous courtesan worlds: Amod (Pleasure), Alladi (Indulgence) and Indubala's scrapbook; Afterlives of nautch; Bibliography; Index.
Prarthana Purkayastha is a Reader in the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway University of London. She is the author of Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism (2014), which won the 2015 de la Torre Bueno Prize and the 2015 Outstanding Publication Award from the Dance Studies Association. She is co-editor (with Anurima Banerji) of the Oxford Handbook of Indian Dance.
