Arts, Vol. 12, Pages 122: Rupture and Disruption: Reflections on “Making” and “Knowing” Dance

Arts, Vol. 12, Pages 122: Rupture and Disruption: Reflections on “Making” and “Knowing” Dance

Arts doi: 10.3390/arts12030122

Authors: Hari Krishnan

This essay follows a somewhat unconventional approach to writing about themes that have emerged from this symposium. I say “unconventional” because it unfolds as a kind of self-reflexive narration of my own journey as a “doubly diasporic” Indian dancer, born in Singapore but having made my career in North America. In essence, I use a modified auto-ethnographic style to map my own unconventional paths to understanding Indian dance in the diaspora, outside the tired and troublesome idea of “dance as heritage”. The aim of this critical meditation on my own work is to offer up new possibilities for moving Indian dance into progressive conceptual spaces that direct it out of the discursive field of Indian cultural nationalism that frames the idea of “Indian heritage”.