The Dancer's Voice

Learning traditional dance and music is a rite of passage for many young people in the South Asian diaspora. Poignantly featuring her own mother’s photograph on the cover, Rumya Sree Putcha’s The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India connects the politics of cultural expression with transnational citizenship and gender using personal, ethnographic, and archival accounts. Putcha’s work chronicles her time training in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, two forms of dance that are known as “classical,” from a diasporic perspective. Her writing is an important contribution connecting Indian “classical” forms of art and their transnational practitioners. Putcha also demonstrates the ways that cultural political mobilization can occur across national boundaries and impact populations through gender and citizenship.

In the first section, Putcha explains the heart of her text: “My argument rests on the premise that the public persona of the Indian dancer symbolically represents and reinforces how citizenship for women operates as a public act” (3). She explains how the expectations of femininity on stage impacted her life as a dancer and woman. Putcha uses her lessons in dance both in India and the United States, along with archival information, to trace different “dancer’s voices,” and in doing so, shows how they are all related. She describes the complexities of playing multiple gender roles on stage and their impact on day-to-day life. For example, in one ethnographic account, Putcha’s male dance teacher mocks a fellow classmate based on gendered expectations of how women should hold their bodies. Simultaneously, he is concerned about preserving his own masculinity when dancing on stage. In a conversation with Putcha, he solicits her opinion about his athleticism and grace, momentarily challenging the strict student-teacher dynamics seen in dance classes (106).

Putcha describes in more detail the participation of dancers in the South Indian film industry as indicative of gender and caste dynamics. Here, the author draws on many artistic careers including that of her dance teacher, Rathna Kumar. Despite the significant link between Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi dance forms with film in her pedagogical experience, Putcha was taught to distance “classical” expression from film (74-75). Explaining the complicated relationship between dance and film in India, Putcha demonstrates how the two function in tandem to foster the appearance of ideal gender norms and femininity, even for transnational practitioners of “classical” dance. Later in the text, Putcha touches on the greater implications of casteism in the diaspora, offering that fairness/whiteness and Hindu mythologies contribute to “[blurring] the distinction between race and caste” (108). I would be interested to read more on the relationship between race and caste on the topic of colorism in diasporic performance.

Putcha’s book describes the female dancer as a personification of the Indian nation, especially for diasporic practitioners. “The South Indian dancer has been sourced to represent India,” she writes, adding that “her gendered dancing body exposes the soft power of a Hindu nation-state and imaginations of a Hindu past, present, and future” (92-93). Putcha uses the practice of dance to describe the relationship between citizenship, religious nationalism, and femininity for South Indian American women. In a memorable passage, she also tenderly recounts a moment from her own wedding, where the pressure to stay still and unmoving despite discomfort from her outfit are derived from her dance practice (89). While she points out the global presence of Indian classical dance, in these moments she also depicts the Hindu national sentiment as deeply intertwined with the daily existence of the South Asian woman.

Putcha’s writing moves from ethnography to autoethnography, supplementing her archives of Indian dance and film history. In these transitions, the reader understands the broader impact of Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi on South Asian American women, particularly in how the practice of dance can impact the perception of aesthetics and self. In this way, Putcha’s writing makes a crucial connection between ethnographic research and the practice of dance in the diaspora. This enduring contribution connects multiple generations of practitioners and gestures ahead to how young dancers can approach the global presence of South Indian dance by sensitively considering caste, class, gender expectations, sexuality, and citizenship.

Preethi Ramaprasad is a doctoral candidate at University of California, Riverside.

Preethi Ramaprasad

Date Of Review:

April 30, 2024