Urmimala Sarkar Munsi | Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi,India (original) (raw)

Papers by Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

Foreword SAMIK BANDOPADHYAY - Ghulam Nabi Azad Introduction I: THE STORY OF THE ACTRESS Actresses... more Foreword SAMIK BANDOPADHYAY - Ghulam Nabi Azad Introduction I: THE STORY OF THE ACTRESS Actresses of the Colonial Space: English Actresses in India Locating a New Space and Identity: Coming of the Indian Actresses Locating a New Space and Identity: Coming of the Indian Actresses Actresses in the Jatra Space II: OF THE WOMAN DANCER Natyasastra: Emerging (Gender) Codes and the Woman Dancer The Body and the Woman Dancer: What She is, or What She is Expected to be Emergence of the Contemporary Woman Dancer: Contribution of Tagore, Shankar and IPTA Tale of the Professional Woman Dancer in Folk Traditions in India: Commodification of Dance and the Traditional Dancing Women Conclusion: In Conversation with Samik Bandyopadhyay Bibliography Index

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd eBooks, Mar 4, 2014

Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers in Search of an Identity

Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh: Caught Up in the Culture of South Asia - Ed. Manujendra Kundu, 2024

In the book edited by Manujendra Kundu: Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh: Caught Up i... more In the book edited by Manujendra Kundu: Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh: Caught Up in the Culture of South Asia (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Edited Publication: Content -
Introduction 'Home': The Repository of Polar Play-acting and Challenges of Circularity to Women's Acting out, Manujendra Kundu
1. Footprints of the Outliers: Female Performers in Colonial Eastern Bengal, Syed Jamil Ahmed
2. The 'Fallen Women' of Culture: An Overview of Bengali Performers from the Dark Chambers of Bengal (1795-1930s), Devajit Bandyopadhyay
3. Feminine Experiences in the Bengali Stage-From patita to bhadramahila, and to Today's New patita, Sumanta Banerjee
4. Actresses in a Period of Transition (1947-1952): Connecting Actress Stories with Their Histories, Bishnupriya Dutt
5. Women in Search of a Play: Theatricality and Gender, From the IPTA to the Naxalbari Movement, Mallarika Sinha Roy
6. Entangled in Performance: Women in Group and Commercial/Professional Theatre in Kolkata (1940s-2000s), Kuntal Mukhopadhyay & Manujendra Kundu
7. Labour, Infrastructure, Division of Labour and the Position of the New Generation Women Performers in Kolkata, Arijita Mukhopadhyay
8. Survival, Agency and the Politics of Compromise: The Contemporary Stage and Screen Actresses in Kolkata, Madhubanti De
9. Can Female Performers be Heard?: Her Stories in Theatre of Bangladesh (1950s-2010s), Samina Luthfa
10. Desire, Decadence and A "Dirty" Dancer: A Conversation with Miss Shefali, Aishika Chakraborty
11. 'Extending' Uday Shankar's Dance Pedagogy?: Articulation of Agency in Amala Shankar's Work, Urmimala Sarkar Munsi
12. Life of Jatra Actresses: Stories of Unending Struggle (1950s-2010s), Prabhatkumar Das
13. The Enigmatic World of Sadhansanginis, Sudhir Chakravarti
14. Bonds of Labour: Nachni Women as the Dancer in the Margin, Urmimala Sarkar Munsi
15. Poverty to Sustenance: The Respectable/Shameful Journey of Women Performers of Sundarban, Poulomi Das

South Asian History and Culture

In India, discourses around the dancing body have long been trapped within the historical studies... more In India, discourses around the dancing body have long been trapped within the historical studies in and around dancers and their dance practices. During the last few decades, however, significant scholarly inroads were made into the domain of dance by shaking up the stereotypes, assertions and labels, shaped and moulded by patriarchy, class, caste and power. In the current times, the body discourse has given many of us tools to focus on socio-culturally excluded and dispossessed performers, whose presence and representation have historically been marginalised in the developing discourses on dance. It is, therefore, time to energise research that can generate new ideas of looking at existing binaries around the dancing body and challenging them as well. This essay is an attempt to bring together emerging issues and discourses around dance and the body that have become central through the cultural politics of the Indian nation-state in the post-independence years. Contemporary discourses around identity politics, survival strategies, neo-liberal dispossessions and the problematic constructions of the commodification of the erotic body vis a vis sexual labour, pleasure, desire and agency of dancers in diverse performing contexts, have helped us frame the focus around labour, leisure and livelihood concerning the concrete everyday existence of the body in dance.

Dance On: Dancing Through Life (Eds. Stephanie Burridge and Charlotte Nielsen, Routledge: London and New York), 2023

The paper begins with a discussion on the structure and functions of the guru-shishya parampara, ... more The paper begins with a discussion on the structure and functions of the guru-shishya parampara, (a system of knowledge transfer from master teachers to the apprentice /student popularly associated with the categories of dance and music that are known as classical or neo-classical. In the first part, the focus is on the knowledge system in the Indian context as a commodity that has to be managed differently at different stages of life. The second part discusses an alternative teaching system in modern dance in India with the help of the case study of Amala Shankar.

Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations and Arguments. Edited by Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha, 2021

Abstract of Chapter 14. pp 281 - 297. in Book: Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, I... more Abstract of Chapter 14. pp 281 - 297.
in
Book: Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments. Eds. Paula Richman & Rustom Bharucha.

Between 1981 and 2006, I played the role of Ram in Seeta Swayambara, an hour- long, popular, dance- drama directed by Shrimati Amala Shankar and staged by Uday Shankar India Culture Centre. To confront my experience of “performing” and “being” Ram, I fall back on two types of memories: those of a dancer and those of a scholar reflecting
on the experience with critical hindsight— a task that necessitates rethinking the experience as structured by my present subjectivity.

South Asian History and Culture, Vol 14 Issue 2, 2023

South Asian Dance Intersections, Vol 1 Issue 1. "Dance and the Political / Dance and the Pandemic", 2022

South Asian Dance Studies has emerged as an international site for critical debates about various... more South Asian Dance Studies has emerged as an
international site for critical debates about various
intersections of identity, power, media, and globalization.
This multidisciplinary academic space is also a site
for the intersections of theory and praxis/practice,
criticality, and creativity. Yet, this arrival of South Asian
Dance Studies is happening in a world daunted by
political polarization and authoritarianism, inequalities
deepened due to the pandemic, wars, refugee and
environmental crises, a severe economic and political
breakdown in Sri Lanka, and the changing political
atmosphere in India—filled with instability, violence and
divisive identity politics.
Writing about dance and its history, or even its
relevance, needs new methodological frameworks that,
at once, give us the ability to speak from within as well
as outside. This changing scenario requires the placing
of dance within the framework of intersectionality as
a survival strategy against the totalitarian reframing of
ideas of culture, history, gender, class, caste, human
rights and the politics of assertive and often violent
marginalizations. Although not directly connected to
any of these issues, the three essays below are situated
within these discursive spaces that we are calling
crossroads.....................................

Spl. Volume on "The Dancing Body" in Routledge Journal South Asian History and Culture, Volume 14. No. 2., 2022

ABSTRACT All dancing bodies are created and/or crafted; they are bodies that speak; and bodies th... more ABSTRACT
All dancing bodies are created and/or crafted; they are bodies that
speak; and bodies that prepare to occupy public realms. These bodies
are prepared and trained, either intentionally or unintentionally. There
could be a differentiation of dancers on the basis of whether (s)he is
a dancer by choice, by necessity, or by imposition. But whatever is the
path for anyone to become a dancer, he or she first becomes a body
during the time of the initiation process and then a dancer. This paper
contextualizes these basic facts within the specific empirical examples of
(1) dancers trained in a specific Indian dance form, largely considered
a hobby or a leisure activity and (2) professional dancers, who have
chosen or been forced to dance to earn a living. It also brings, in contrast,
untrained women’s bodies that have created a history of choreographed
protest events through acts of community dissent in public presence, as
witnessed in the recent women’s protests all over India. Through a range
of different relations with the concepts of labour, effort, deviance, dedication,
precarity and resistance, the paper asserts that all bodies in
public spaces are under scrutiny and none of the above categories
escape that surveillance.

Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture

Nachni" women from the eastern part of India, are popularly known in parts of Bengal, Bihar and J... more Nachni" women from the eastern part of India, are popularly known in parts of Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand as marginal performers who earn their living through a performing partnership with the Rasik (the male partner) while remaining in a fragile, yet domestic quasi-conjugal alliance with him. In research and popular writings, these women have been seen as the exploited, marginalised, and socially maligned practitioners. In the current research the signification of the social/cultural presence of the Nachni woman is sought in her performance and the communications that she creates through with her accompanists, audience and the larger society. This paper focuses on the social and the performative spaces that the Nachni inhabits, and the duality of the reception of her social self vis a vis her body. This duality of reception also brings to the fore, the need to theorise commoditisation of the woman's body where the body, so long as it is seen as a product, and therefore a consumable, is not a threat, unlike the threatening polluting capability of a social presence of the owner of that very same body.

Lateral (5.2.)2016 -Issue: Leveraging Justice, 2016

As part of our Gendered Citizenship project, we partnered or collaborated with several NGOs and t... more As part of our Gendered Citizenship project, we partnered or collaborated with several NGOs and theatre companies whose work is on the front lines of supporting survivors of poverty, violence, statelessness, and homelessness. We have listed these organizations and their websites in our "Further Resources" list at the end of this section. Here we share the "best practices" of two NGOs that work with survivors: one young and community-based (ARM of Care), growing quickly from a grass roots start; the other (Kolkata Sanved) engaged for twenty years to develop a substantial international reputation.

" Lateral". Issue — Leveraging Justice, 2016

When I was rescued by the police and put in a shelter home, I felt angry. I did not know any othe... more When I was rescued by the police and put in a shelter home, I felt angry. I did not know any other work. Before, I just had to lend my body and the work got done. I got paid, without having done anything (Poolish jokhon amake uddhar kore Shelter home e dilo, khoob raag hoechhilo. […]

South Asian History and Culture

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd eBooks, Mar 4, 2014

Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers in Search of an Identity

Women Performers in Bengal and Bangladesh: Caught Up in the Culture of South Asia - Ed. Manujendra Kundu, 2024

South Asian History and Culture

Dance On: Dancing Through Life (Eds. Stephanie Burridge and Charlotte Nielsen, Routledge: London and New York), 2023

Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations and Arguments. Edited by Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha, 2021

South Asian History and Culture, Vol 14 Issue 2, 2023

South Asian Dance Intersections, Vol 1 Issue 1. "Dance and the Political / Dance and the Pandemic", 2022

Spl. Volume on "The Dancing Body" in Routledge Journal South Asian History and Culture, Volume 14. No. 2., 2022

Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture

Lateral (5.2.)2016 -Issue: Leveraging Justice, 2016

" Lateral". Issue — Leveraging Justice, 2016

South Asian History and Culture

Podcasts: 1. “Nachni Tradition in West Bengal and Jharkhand: Performative presence vs social abs... more Podcasts:
1. “Nachni Tradition in West Bengal and Jharkhand: Performative presence vs social absence of the Nachni Performers", 01/02/2017
2. “Amala Shankar: Documenting a Dance Legacy”, 04/06/2018

Ei Shomoy , 2017

Interview in Bengali

Representing the output of the research project "Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledg... more Representing the output of the research project "Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge," this second and final volume in the series Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care brings together diverse voices, methods, and formats in the discussion and practice of performance conservation.

Conservators, artists, curators and scholars explore the ontology of performance art through its creation and institutionalization into an astonishing range of methods and approaches for keeping performance alive and well, whether inside museum collections or through folk traditions. Anchored in the disciplines of contemporary art conservation, art history, and performance studies, the contributions range far beyond these to include perspectives from anthropology, musicology, dance, law, heritage studies, and other fields. While its focus is on performance as understood in the context of contemporary art, the book’s notion of performance is much wider, including other media such as music, theater, and dance as well as an open-ended concept of performance as a vital force across culture(s).

While providing cutting-edge research on an emerging and important topic, this volume remains accessible to all interested readers, allowing it to serve as a singularly valuable resource for museum professionals, scholars, students, and practitioners. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003467809/performance-hanna-h%C3%B6lling-jules-pelta-feldman-emilie-magnin

Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India, 2024

This book provides a critical understanding of dance studies in India, bringing together various ... more This book provides a critical understanding of dance studies in India, bringing together various embodied practices identified loosely as dance. It suggests an alternative reading of the history of patronage, policies, and institutionalized understanding of categories such as classical, folk, modern, popular, and Bollywood that hierarchizes some dances as 'more' dance than others. It is of great interest to scholars looking at performing arts such as dance as a tool for identity assertions. It offers diverse possibilities of understanding dance through its inherent sociopolitical possibilities as a participatory or presentational tool for communication. The multidisciplinary approach brings together perspectives from critical dance studies, anthropology, history, and gender studies to connect embodied archives of different communities to create an intersectional methodology of studying dance in India as a powerful but marginal expressive art practice. Accessible at multiple levels, thecontent is relevant for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as researchers across dance, dance education, theatre, and performance studies.
Authors and Affiliations
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

About the author
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi is a social anthropologist specialized in dance studies and a dancer/choreographer. She is A PROFESSOR AND THE CURRENT DEAN, TEACHING critical dance studies and research methodology in performance studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. She is the president of World Dance Alliance Asia Pacific. Her latest books are Uday Shankar and his Transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Modernity, published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2022, and Alice Boner Across Arts and Geographies: Shaping the Dance Art of Uday Shankar, published by the Alice Boner Institute, Varanasi in 2021. She has co-edited the MARG 75th year Readings on Dance in 2022. Her ongoing research on survival strategies for women survivors of sexual violence has yielded many writings, among which the recent most is "Towards a Pedagogic Analysis of Dance and Movement Therapy" in The Routledge Companion to AppliedPerformance, 2021. Her essay "Being Rama: Playing a God in the Changing Times" (published in Paula Richman and Rustom Bharucha edited Performing the Ramayana Tradition: Enactments, Interpretations, and Arguments, 2021) came out of her involvement in the Global Humanities Institute and Melon Foundation funded project "Crisis of Democracy" in 2018-2019.

READINGS ON DANCE FROM 75 YEARS OF MARG - The MARG Foundation, MUMBAI, India., 2022

This Volume of MARG has been co-edited by Anita Elizabeth Cherian and Urmimala Sarkar Munsi. The... more This Volume of MARG has been co-edited by Anita Elizabeth Cherian and Urmimala Sarkar Munsi. The cover and the content page are uploaded here.

"From its earliest issues, MARG reveals a deep concern with dance or South Asian
movement practices. It seems at times that this concern was not necessarily with dance per se but with dance as an element or a constituent part of the spectrum of cultural practices extant in the subcontinent" (p. 10). Selecting writings from the last 75 years of MARG, the volume has been created with five interwoven sections: Heredity and Heritage; Regional Identities; Classical Dances; Guru-Shishya Parampara; and Contemporary Dance.

Alice Boner Across Arts and Geographies: Shaping the dance-art of Uday Shankar, 2021

Alice Boner and Uday Shankar, two luminaries in their own rights, created a significant phase in ... more Alice Boner and Uday Shankar, two luminaries in their own rights, created a significant phase in the history of Indian dance by collaborating and sharing in what may be seen as an unique transcultural and inter-artistic project that left important material and immaterial remnants across the globe. Boner has been called the cultural ambassador of India by the people in India. She received the Padma Bhushan from the President of India in 1974 for her contribution to Indian art and an honorary doctorate by the University of Zurich in 1969 for her contribution to Art history. Uday Shankar received the first Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Creative Dance and Choreography in 1960 and was made a Fellow of the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1962. He also received India’s highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in the year 1971.
The importance of consciously weaving together visual images that would create an engaging design beyond the narrative of the presentation is what Shankar seemed to have drawn from both from his own training at the Royal college of Arts and then from being a fellow traveler with Alice Boner while discovering India’s rich artistic past.

Uday Shankar and his transcultural Experimentations: Dancing Moderninty, 2022

In this research on the transcultural dance experimentations of Uday Shankar, audience reception ... more In this research on the transcultural dance experimentations of Uday Shankar, audience reception plays an important part. Looking
at Shankar’s reception at home and in the world has strengthened my
conviction about the requirement of a rewriting of dance histories. The
press coverage as well as critical reviews of Shankar from India and abroad have been important in reading the perception of an artist, who struggled hard to traverse both the worlds with equal ease.
Sieving through the archived reviews one finds that Shankar was accustomed to the highest accolades by critics from different parts of the world as well as frequent dismissals by many from India. Mohan Khokar mentions that in the southern part of India, the place where the first organised endeavour of classicisation became successful in the form of recognition for orthodox dance styles (created out of already existing performance traditions and community knowledge) such as Bharatanatyam and Kathakali as classical dance forms of India, Shankar was severely criticised. He quotes G.K. Sheshagiri from one of his published reviews of Shankar’s dance as ‘a typical example of the present day decadence in one of our arts due mainly to the deterioration in our taste’ (Khokar 1983: 79). He also mentions a dictionary of musicians and dancers published from Tanjore that gave Uday Shankar a 10-word entry: ‘Unorthodox. Performs Lasya type only. Unfit physically to perform Tandewa’ (Khokar 1983: 79).
Words such as ‘unorthodox’ were used as evaluative markers, while ‘unfit physically’ was an outright dismissal. For Shankar the Indian critics’ principle critique was aimed at his daring to dance without any training. He was also never quite forgiven for his unauthorised and daring entry (as a trespasser or intruder) into the world of the sacred and coveted ‘Indian’ dance. (Introduction, 2022: 33).............

The tradition of troupe members participating in the process of making masks, head-dresses, ornam... more The tradition of troupe members participating in the process of making masks, head-dresses, ornaments and costumes, which started with Uday Shankar and was carried forward by IPTA and even later. Little Ballet Troupe members are seen in this photo engaged in making masks and costumes 7.4 The ballet 'Labour and Machinery' as seen in the film Kalpana 7.5 A scene from Tandava Nritya with Uday and Amala Shankar at the centre 7.6 Uday and Amala Shankar with students from author's class at Uday Shankar India Culture Centre, Kolkata 8.1 A Jogamma at Saundatti 8.2 Jyotsna Debi, a Nachni performer during her performance, Purulia 8.3 The Jogamma's ritual burden-the basket she has to carry around while begging for alms 8.4 Jogammas leading a procession to the Yellamma Temple in Saundatti 8.5 Painting of Sindhubala, a legendary Nachni 8.6 The family lives with the memory of several national and state awards Sindhubala received 8.7 Maibi women dancing during the ritual of Lai Haraoba 8.8 Maibi women dancing along side the 'Phamnaiba' or the clan heads during a ritual ceremony in Moirang, Manipur 8.9 With the legal ban on Devadasi system in Karnataka, these posters banning the act of dedicating Devadasis are all over the temple area