Prosthetic rasa: dance on wheels and challenged kinesthetics

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses Bharatanatyam on Wheels by Ability Unlimited Foundation, Delhi. It interrogates the possibilities and challenges that disability performance presents to codifications in the form and grammar of Bharatanatyam, a ‘classical’ dance form of India. The Indian classical scriptures of performance define a dancer as the ‘perfect-bodied one’. While closely analysing the taxonomy in the classical texts and the critical analyses of the performance, the paper shall explore the link between disability performance and canonical aesthetics. How is the classical dance form transformed when it is embodied by prosthetic bodies? Can it be still be termed ‘classical’?

KEYWORDS:

• Ability–disability
• classical–non-classical
• identity
• Bharatanatyam and dance aesthetics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Akhila Vimal C. is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her main research interests are disfiguration and the staging of relationalities of disability, and gender and caste in Indian performance and textual practices.

Notes

1. The fundamental notion of Indian philosophy is relayed on the notions of Karma. Karma means your deeds. They decide what your life will be like in future and later births.

2. Sangeet Natak Akademi or The National Academy for Performing Arts established (1952) and run by the Government of India.

3. Nāṭyaśāstra is a Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts. The text is ascribed to Bharata Muni, dated between second century BC and second century AD.

4. Shobham prajananayedidi nritham parvarthitam. NS, 4.261 (Ghosh 1950)

5. Abhinaya Darpana by Nandikeśvaran is a fifth century AD text. Bharatanatyam uses the Abhinaya Darpana as the source text of Abhinaya, which is an expression that refers to costume, body movements, facial expression and verbal element of the performance.