dear all:
please join our Research Seminar:
Wednesday March 1: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Drama Studio, Gaskell Building 048, Brunel University, Cleveland Rd.
Anusha Kedhar (University of Colorado)
“Breaking Point: Flexibility, Risk, Pain, andPrecarity in the Work of Shobana
Jeyasingh”
Due to its seemingly banal, normalized, and sometimes even celebrated existence
in the dance industry, pain and injury is an under theorized area in dance
studies scholarship. In this paper, Dr Kadhar analyzes pain and injury not
from a physiological or psychological perspective but as an embodied condition
of neoliberal multiculturalism. Focusing on the labor of South Asian dancers in
the work of Shobana Jeyasingh, she shows how pain and injury are induced not
just through neoliberal working conditions in the studio but also through
multicultural expectations for assimilation and legibility outside of it.
Dancers’ bodies, however, are not merely inscribed by racial and economic
ideologies. South Asian dancers use choreographic tools and other bodily
tactics to gain creative control over their bodily labor and continue to
circulate within a competitive British dance economy in ways that are safe and
pleasurable.
Drawing on anthropologist Talal Asad’s notion of “pain as action,” Kedhar shows
how British South Asian dancers intentionally and strategically respond to
labor demands for risk and flexibility through small, seemingly insignificant
corporeal choices, including endurance, refusal, re-direction, and care. She
argues that paying attention to the body in pain reveals dancers’ ability to
both submit to and struggle against the pressures of neoliberal
multiculturalism. In this way, British South Asian dancers offer an important
case study for understanding bodily labor and re-thinking conventional notions
of agency under neoliberalism.
Bio
Anusha Kedhar is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Colorado College, and
currently a Visiting Scholar at Brunel University. Her current book project
examines British South Asian dancers in the late 20th and early 21st century
and the creative ways in which these dancers negotiate precarious racial,
economic, and national identity positions through flexible bodily tactics. Her
scholarly writing has been published by Dance Research Journal, The Feminist
Wire, and The New York Times. Kedhar is also an established artist and
choreographer, and has worked with various contemporary South Asian
choreographers in the US and Europe, including Subathra Subramaniam (London),
Mayuri Boonham (London), Mavin Khoo (London/Malta), Johanna Devi (Berlin),
Cynthia Ling Lee (Los Angeles), and Meena Murugesan (Los Angeles).
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Research Seminar Theme: Precarity and the Politics of Art: Performative and
Critical Empowerment after Democracy
This Research Seminar Series aims to probe troubling interpretations of the
increasing impact of unrestrained capitalism in the Western hemisphere and its
impact on all social-economic, cultural, creative, and educational sectors in
the developed world. How sustainable is democracy in the face of political
unrest caused by precarity, migration, refugees and the resulting labour and
welfare issues?
Performance Research Seminar Coordinator: Johannes Birringer
Contact: +44 (0)1895 267 343
All Research Seminars are co-produced with dance-tech live TV and streamed
online as well as archived.: DAPLab.TV: http://dance-tech.tv/videos/daplabtv/
Check our whole series at:
http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/ResearchSeminarSeries.html
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