Dancing with the Nation

Dancing with the Nation
Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages : 233
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781501334429
ISBN-13 : 1501334425
Rating : 4/5 (425 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Dancing with the Nation by : Ruth Vanita

Download or read book Dancing with the Nation written by Ruth Vanita and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian cinema is the only body of world cinema that depicts courtesans as important characters. In early films courtesan characters transmitted Indian classical dance, music and aesthetics to large audiences. They represent the nation's past, tracing their heritage to the fourth-century Kamasutra and to nineteenth-century courtly cultures, but they are also the first group of modern women in Hindi films. They are working professionals living on their own or in matrilineal families. Like male protagonists, they travel widely and develop networks of friends and chosen kin. They have relations with men outside marriage and become single mothers. Courtesan films are heroine-oriented and almost every major female actor has played this role. Challenging received wisdom, Vanita demonstrates that a larger number of courtesans in Bombay cinema are Hindu and indeterminate than are Muslim, and that films depict their culture as hybrid Hindu-Muslim, not Islamicate. Courtesans speak in the ambiguous voice of the modern nation, inviting spectators to seize pleasure here and now but also to search for the meaning of life. Vanita's groundbreaking study of courtesans and courtesan imagery in 235 films brings fresh evidence to show that the courtesan figure shapes the modern Indian erotic, political and religious imagination.


Dancing with the Nation Related Books

Dancing with the Nation
Language: en
Pages: 233
Authors: Ruth Vanita
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-02-22 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Indian cinema is the only body of world cinema that depicts courtesans as important characters. In early films courtesan characters transmitted Indian classical
Dancing with Dynamite
Language: en
Pages: 160
Authors: Benjamin Dangl
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-11-09 - Publisher: AK Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Grassroots social movements played a major role electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America. Subsequent relations between these states and "the s
America Dancing
Language: en
Pages: 413
Authors: Megan Pugh
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-01-01 - Publisher: Yale University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The history of American dance reflects the nation's tangled culture. Dancers from wildly different backgrounds watched, imitated, and stole from one another. A
Dancing from Past to Present
Language: en
Pages: 262
Authors: Theresa Jill Buckland
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-03-19 - Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, i
Dancing in Shadows
Language: en
Pages: 360
Authors: Benny Widyono
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This fascinating book recounts the remarkable tale of a career UN official caught in the turmoil of international and domestic politics swirling around Cambodia