ResearchWorks: Why Dance? Why Not. Perspectives from South Asia

This presentation reflects on the place of dance in agency, allyship and community, and if dance can prompt answers about inclusion, occlusion and exclusion within society. In a critical engagement with social, political, affective dimensions of dance cultures in the colonial and contemporary region of Manipur in South Asia, the functions of various forms of dancing serving the peoples, community, region and the state will be investigated. The researcher will focus on embodied, contested, negotiated and other enduring dimensions of movement and dance-making and history of dance in a region teetering on the precipice of precarity. Through a range of methodologies: interviews, participation, ethnographic, historiographic and archival research, and studying durational and sustainable repertoires, the presentation will chart dilemmas, challenges and hopes involved in creation as well as well cue into co-creative processes of casting indigenous epistemologies and dance-making

Speaker:

Dr. Debanjali Biswas is an early career researcher in social anthropology and theatre, performance and dance studies, and has extensively trained in Manipuri, with a performing career of over two decades as a dance practitioner and a performance maker. Over the years Biswas’s research has been funded by the British Academy, Theatre and Performance Research Association, Showtown, Women’s History Network, the Smithsonian Institution, Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the Felix Scholarship Trust. Besides classical Manipuri performances as a soloist and ensemble artist, Biswas’s choreographies have been supported by the Tower Hamlets Council in partnership with Queen Mary University of London, South Asian Arts-UK, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Gati Dance Forum, Temple of Fine Arts, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, and International Young Choreographers’ Project - Kaohsiung. At present she works at the Bodleian Libraries.

Guildhall School’s ResearchWorks is a programme of events centred around the School’s research activity, bringing together staff, students and guests of international standing. We run regular events throughout the term intended to share the innovative research findings of the School and its guests with students, staff and the public.