Speaking of Dance : The Indian Critique

Author:

Mandakranta Bose

Publisher:

DK Print World Ltd

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Publisher

DK Print World Ltd

Publication Year 2001
ISBN-13

9788124601723

ISBN-10 8124601720
Binding

Hardcover

Language (English)
Weight (grms) 650
Indian classical dance is a ‘high art’. In ancient India, it was even venerated as a ‘sacred’ act. Ever since Bharata wrote his seminal Natyashastra (c. 200 ce), it has been one of the central elements of scholarly discourse, generating a whole host of learned treatises. Mandakranta Bose here takes a close look at this vast Sanskritic textual corpus attempting not only to reconstruct India's two-millennia-long dance tradition, but also to dispel the historical and aesthetic misconceptions woven around it. With a fresh, critical appraisal of the key concepts surfacing from the Natyashastra of Bharata Muni and some of the other landmark treatises, like Abhinayadarpana, Sangitaratnakara, and Nartananirnaya, the book tries to highlight how these time-honoured writings have contributed to the evolution of classical dancing in India. And, yet more significantly perhaps, the author ventures into a comparatively uncharted terrain seeking to explore the status of performing arts (including dance) in early Jaina tradition. Focussing on the position of dancing in the contemporary cultural life of India, Mandakranta Bose shows how classical dance in India today has achieved a creative blend of tradition and modernity, leading to a vigorous revival of a great heritage, a part of the larger effort towards ‘nationalist rediscovery’. Supporting the text with visual material to correlate the theory and practice of dancing in India, the book offers perceptions that will appeal to everyone involved with performing arts.

Mandakranta Bose

Mandakranta Bose is Emeritus Professor and Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and also of the Royal Society of Canada, Dr Bose holds a BA and MA in Sanskrit from Calcutta University, a second MA in Comparative Literature from the University of British Columbia, and the MLitt and DPhil degrees in Oriental Studies from Oxford. Her research over the past fifty plus years covers four main areas: Sanskrit treatises on the performing arts, the Ramayana, Hindu dharmasastras and religious culture, and gender representation in the arts and literatures of India.
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