Review of Dancing Women, The International Journal of Screendance

South Asian History and Culture, 2022

Song-and-dance sequences formed a staple attraction of mainstream Hindi cinema since the introduction of sound in films. Over the years, dance sequences retained their appeal, despite several changes in their production and reception. What contributed to this continued attraction of song-and-dance sequences in Hindi cinema? What physical and ideological processes led to the generation of specific cinematic appeal of the dance numbers? How did the dancing women of Hindi cinema-the central figures of these dance sequences-make space for themselves in the industry while simultaneously contributing to the popularity of the dance numbers? With these guiding questions, in Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, Usha Iyer charts a complex material and cultural history of the production of song-anddance sequences in popular Hindi cinema from the 1930s to the 1990s. Simultaneously a work of film and dance studies, Iyer conceptualizes the 'dancing body' as instrumental in unpacking new histories of Hindi cinema across multiple themes of gender, labour, stardom, spectatorship and cinematic techniques. Treating 'dancer-actresses' as a category of analysis, Iyer revisits the 'women's question' through female mobility-constituted through the physical movement of dance as well as social movements that dance fostered. In this rigorously researched monograph, which includes diverse sources from song-booklets to film clips to interviews, Iyer's argument is twofold. First, she argues that a material history of songand-dance sequences-that contributed to the stardom of several prominent actresses in the twentieth century-provides new ways of understanding cinematic production and spectatorial response to Hindi cinema. Going beyond the existing scholarship's emphasis on the ideological, aural and visual elements of Hindi film dance, Iyer focuses on the very materiality of producing onscreen dance as labour. Through a dance-centred analysis of Hindi dance sequences, Iyer documents the extensive bodily training that several dancing women of Hindi cinema underwent to generate specific cinematic appeal of the dance sequences. Her attention to material histories also highlights the unrecognized labour of several 'shadow figures' of Hindi cinema. Theorized as the 'choreomusicking body', these 'shadow figures' of choreographers, background dancers, musicians, directors and technicians, Iyer argues, played a central role in the production of dance numbers, besides the star actress. However, despite their contributions, their labour remained unacknowledged in both popular discourses and scholarship surrounding the history of Bombay cinema. In this vein, Iyer's work can be placed alongside Debashree Mukherjee's recent monograph Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020) which also brings forth the unrecognized labour regimes of different cine-workers in constituting the 'cine-ecology' of the Bombay film industry. Second, Iyer proposes to read 'cine-choreographies' or onscreen dance sequences corporeally. Corporeal readings incorporated detailed dance-centred analysis of gestures, movements, expressions and cinematography. While Hari Krishnan's Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam (2019) employed such readings in the context of Tamil cinema, Iyer's approach is a first in the studies on Bombay cinema. Through choreographic analysis, Iyer invites readers to go beyond the ideological inscriptions of social and moral codes and delve deeper into the actual process of physically creating dance through the interactions of 'limbs, flesh, bone and skin'. (6) Corporeal readings, Iyer argues, enable viewing the dancing women of Hindi cinema as co-choreographers-and not competitors-in their endeavour of generating particular cinematic SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, 2022

Focusing on the dancing films of the 1890s, Tom Gunning (2003, p. 85) described the serpentine dance performed by Loïe Fuller as a precursor to the 'pure joy in motion' of early cinema. Fuller's modernist style innovatively used light, motion and new technologies of illumination to create a visually spectacular dance form. Signposting the importance of motion in cinema, Michel Chion (2019) has suggested that dance is the common thread linking music and cinema as 'allied arts of motion'. One needs to add a crucial layer to these interweaving forms: that of the body in motion, a receptacle of movement in the cinematic assemblage. Usha Iyer's Dancing Women directs us with great flair to mobile choreomusicking bodies, to unpack dance as Indian cinema's 'particular sonic, visual, and kinesthetic attractions' (p. 5). Scholarly work in film studies has fallen short of any serious engagement with Hindi film dance. Discussions on 'song and dance sequences' have overwhelmingly focused on the song's relationship to narrative (Prasad, 1998; Vasudevan, 2010), its extra-textual circulation and sonic dominance through the use of the playback system (Jhingan, 2011; Majumdar, 2009; Sundar, 2016). Iyer nudges us to take a second look at song-and-dance spectacles, in the process eschewing ideological readings and representational burdens. Dancing Women is an exhaustive map of the histories and 'movement vocabularies' of dance on screen, one which mobilises theoretical debates on the labouring female body interfacing with other bodies, spaces and the apparatus of cinema. The book is an extremely important intervention that unpacks the material practices of film dance and the spectatorial pleasures that they offer through the mobilisation of the corporeally charged female body. Thus, Iyer opens her introduction through a textual analysis of 'Muqabla Humse Na Karo', a dance number from Prince (Lekh Tandon, 1969), in which Vyjayanthimala, Helen and Shammi Kapoor share the screen with each other. Within the folds of Vyjayanthimala's 'classical' dance routines, Iyer finds traces of earlier histories of female performance in the subcontinent, including the 'figurations of hybrid "oriental dances" from the 1930s' (p. 2). By focusing on films that are narratively constructed around court dancers, courtesans, vamps or stage performances, Iyer traces the genealogies of dance, drawing attention to the mobile body and the flows between training, virtuosity and codified performance in films. Iyer theorises film dance through the concept of choreomusicology to argue that as 'two sensory planes', dance and music, exist 'in a state of mutual implication or mutual possession' (p. 51). This dislodges the popular claim that star dancers on screen like

South Asian History and Culture, 2022

Song-and-dance sequences formed a staple attraction of mainstream Hindi cinema since the introduction of sound in films. Over the years, dance sequences retained their appeal, despite several changes in their production and reception. What contributed to this continued attraction of song-and-dance sequences in Hindi cinema? What physical and ideological processes led to the generation of specific cinematic appeal of the dance numbers? How did the dancing women of Hindi cinema-the central figures of these dance sequences-make space for themselves in the industry while simultaneously contributing to the popularity of the dance numbers? With these guiding questions, in Dancing Women: Choreographing Corporeal Histories of Hindi Cinema, Usha Iyer charts a complex material and cultural history of the production of song-anddance sequences in popular Hindi cinema from the 1930s to the 1990s. Simultaneously a work of film and dance studies, Iyer conceptualizes the 'dancing body' as instrumental in unpacking new histories of Hindi cinema across multiple themes of gender, labour, stardom, spectatorship and cinematic techniques. Treating 'dancer-actresses' as a category of analysis, Iyer revisits the 'women's question' through female mobility-constituted through the physical movement of dance as well as social movements that dance fostered. In this rigorously researched monograph, which includes diverse sources from song-booklets to film clips to interviews, Iyer's argument is twofold. First, she argues that a material history of songand-dance sequences-that contributed to the stardom of several prominent actresses in the twentieth century-provides new ways of understanding cinematic production and spectatorial response to Hindi cinema. Going beyond the existing scholarship's emphasis on the ideological, aural and visual elements of Hindi film dance, Iyer focuses on the very materiality of producing onscreen dance as labour. Through a dance-centred analysis of Hindi dance sequences, Iyer documents the extensive bodily training that several dancing women of Hindi cinema underwent to generate specific cinematic appeal of the dance sequences. Her attention to material histories also highlights the unrecognized labour of several 'shadow figures' of Hindi cinema. Theorized as the 'choreomusicking body', these 'shadow figures' of choreographers, background dancers, musicians, directors and technicians, Iyer argues, played a central role in the production of dance numbers, besides the star actress. However, despite their contributions, their labour remained unacknowledged in both popular discourses and scholarship surrounding the history of Bombay cinema. In this vein, Iyer's work can be placed alongside Debashree Mukherjee's recent monograph Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020) which also brings forth the unrecognized labour regimes of different cine-workers in constituting the 'cine-ecology' of the Bombay film industry. Second, Iyer proposes to read 'cine-choreographies' or onscreen dance sequences corporeally. Corporeal readings incorporated detailed dance-centred analysis of gestures, movements, expressions and cinematography. While Hari Krishnan's Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam (2019) employed such readings in the context of Tamil cinema, Iyer's approach is a first in the studies on Bombay cinema. Through choreographic analysis, Iyer invites readers to go beyond the ideological inscriptions of social and moral codes and delve deeper into the actual process of physically creating dance through the interactions of 'limbs, flesh, bone and skin'. (6) Corporeal readings, Iyer argues, enable viewing the dancing women of Hindi cinema as co-choreographers-and not competitors-in their endeavour of generating particular cinematic SOUTH ASIAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Simonti Sen ed., They Dared: Essays in Honour of Pritilata Wadder, Gungcheel, Calcutta, 2011.

Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Volume 11, Number 2, December 2020, pp. 209-223(15), 2020

In this article, I analyse screendance texts from Hindi cinema to introduce a theoretical framework called the ideology of amateurism which, I argue, made space within the narrative of the Hindi film for the ‘ideal’ Indian woman to dance publicly while simultaneously disavowing modernity. Through an analysis of selected film dance texts, I show how this turned the dancing heroine into the restorer of the moral order of the narrative. I argue that this ideology of amateurism amounted to a denial of dance labour, which was a necessary precondition for the cultural legitimation of the viewers’ desire for the screendancer in particular and a disavowal of the desire for modernity in general. Following this, I show how with the liberalization of the Indian economy and the rise of neoliberalism, and interestingly, also the replacement of the erstwhile ‘union-dancers’ on-screen Bollywood film dance texts today not only acknowledge the labour of screendance but promotional materials lay out the ‘labouring process’. This, I suggest, is symptomatic of the emergence of a new work order and the entry of a new class into this sphere. I read this in conjunction with the rise of dance as an established profession, as seen through the mushrooming of Bollywood dance schools, in order to show how the ideology of amateurism is challenged through a reconfiguration of work practices in neoliberal economies.

Dance Research Journal, 2004

Use your eyes! Move your body! Be seductive!" commanded the instructor as a popular Hindi song blared out of the speakers in a crowded Bollywood dance class at Honey Kalaria's dance school in London in November 2002. Many students, all of them of South Asian origin, mouthed the lyrics as they attempted to execute the demonstrated movements. Some even nudged each other when they noticed that the choreography had been altered from what they remembered of the film. Today, Bollywood dance has become a term used by film professionals, amateur performers, and audiences to refer to dances choreographed to Hindi film songs. The question of what Bollywood dance is, however, remains debated in both movement and text. In classes, Bollywood dance movement varies in quality and style from song to song, instructor to instructor, and choreographer to choreographer. 1 Costume choices, facial expressions, gestures (as interpretations of sung lyrics), "jhatkas and matkas" (percussive "emphasizing]. .. pelvic movement") (Kabir 2001,189), wrist whirls, and turns, all set to film music could be identified as essential ingredients of "Bollywood dance." Yet, this definition only begins to skim the surface of what constitutes Indian film dance, as Hindi films make up approximately one-third out of the more than eight hundred films produced in India every year (Nandy 1995). Popular films produced by language-specific regional cinemas include song and dances that often retain a degree of regional specificity. While it is important to recognize the similarities shared by these dance traditions, it is also necessary to acknowledge the definitional slippage underlying the collo-A Czech/Nepalese dancer and media scholar, She has trained in Bharat Natyam, Charya Sangita graduated from MIT's Comparative Nritya, and Kalaripayat and performed with Media Studies program where she focused on the Lasandhi Dance Theater, which partici-Hindi cinema. She previously received her pated at Jacob's Pillow in 2003. She is an orB .A. from Princeton University and a MSc. in ganizer of the annual Prague Bollywood Festi-Development Studies from the London School val and is about to pursue a Ph.D. at UCLA's of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Department of World Arts and Cultures.

2013

Manipur State Film Development Society, 2021

This short essay locates Manipuri dance at the intersection of performance and cinematic cultures that represented collective growth of creative communities in the twentieth century.

A sweeping look at the magnificence of the Indian women through the forms, characteristics, challenges and changes occurred and are still occurring in traditional dance, forms the theoretical and pictorial substance of this study. At one level, it is a historical compendium of classical dance, an exploration of its' moods and majesty, an ode to its sublime aesthetics and at another level, it is a stunning scholarly portrayal of a pluralistic society teeming with feminine cultural vitality.

A sweeping look at the magnificence of the Indian women through the forms, characteristics, challenges and changes occurred and are still occurring in traditional dance, forms the theoretical and pictorial substance of this study. At one level, it is a historical compendium of classical dance, an exploration of its’ moods and majesty, an ode to its sublime aesthetics and at another level, it is a stunning scholarly portrayal of a pluralistic society teeming with feminine cultural vitality.