CENTRE FOR WOMEN’S STUDIES, JNU
Invites you to a Seminar on
Dance and body package in Bollywood: Buy one, get one free
by
Dr. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi
(Associate Professor, School of Arts & Aesthetics, JNU)
Abstract: The world of global Bollywood relentlessly uses mediated images of hyper-gendered female dancing bodies in the films produced by it. These moving images are used for popular entertainment in the films, for selling products, and to promote lifestyle choices in a market where both beauty and labour are bought and sold as commodities. Dispossession of the women dancers become inevitable as they merely hold in trust and hoard their assets (in this case body, skills, sexuality) in hope of getting visibility and recognition. The hyper-sexualized magic of Bollywood dance has come to be well-known through the display and use of skills. Female bodies come as price- labelled commodities and for buyers (producers/directors) beauty and dance come as a package where buying beauty means automatically expecting to get the skill of dance for free or vice versa. The popularity of the dances of Bollywood has successfully moved beyond the local, and has created its own global market – competing with or beating the classical dances like Bharatanatyam, Odissi and so on in popularity. The choreographers in these dances make use of tropes of the 'orient' and the 'Indian' as well as the so called 'Western' dances in creating 'whatever sells' – which has been called a ‘Glocal’ dance, by dance studies scholars. This product is popular not only in terms of the market it has, but also because of the counter-aesthetics it has come to be known for. This research works on the idea of the Bollywood dance and dancing bodies as commodities and replaces terms like ‘aesthetic’ with ‘marketability’, and ‘audience’ with ‘buyers’ for its analysis of the genre of Bollywood dance. It projects Bollywood as a space where bodies are always replicated, losing all significations of individualism, exactly like commercially produced and marketed products in a neo-liberal society driven by consumption.
Date: 12th September 2017, Tuesday,
Time: 3.00 PM to 5.00 PM
Venue: Committee Room No.324, Third Floor, SSS-I
All are Welcome!