In the way that colour-blindness fails anti-racism, Contemporary Dancers’ inability to pinpoint what it means to be a Contemporary Dancer deprives them of the possibility to examine their hegemony. They flail, already bored with the request to define their identity. As an outsider who’s now spent many years in Contemporary Dance studios, I can offer a non-exhaustive list of what it seems to mean to be a Contemporary Dancer…
Read MoreIndian Dance: Articulations/Tensions/Negotiations with Mandeep Raikhy
Watch a durational online session with Shivaangee Agrawal and Mandeep Raikhy discussing the embodiment of Indian dance in our current world. Based on their artistic practices and concerns, they invite diverse perspectives from guests across India and the UK
Read MoreThe Labour of Complaining: a murky, paradoxical and gaslighty experience
In our post-blacklivesmatter 2021 arts landscape in the UK, you could be forgiven for thinking that many institutions have changed, that marginalised identities are being given more space, that anti-racism is becoming centre-stage. And yet, when I try to voice a whiteness-related concern with an institution, most often they reply with a link to their webpage on anti-racism and diversity. Whose job has actually got easier?
Read MoreVisibly Unpalatable
I am a practitioner of a dance form that not many white people have heard of, let alone are able to pronounce, so half the conversations I have are reduced to me trying to explain what I do. These conversations inaccurately render Bharatanatyam a minority practice, and I a minority artist, trying endlessly to relate what I do to an elusive notion of ‘mainstream dance’.
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