The erotic power of the dancer: labour of the erotic and the bodies of the sensory in the Arkestra of North India

Abstract

This article analyses the erotic power of the dancer in relation to the performance of arkestra girls in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. From the discursive lens of body, agency and identity, I move to the visceral presence of a dancer who foregrounds the labour of the erotic and the bodies of sensory in a live performance. I argue that the existing binary between dance and sex work not only conceals the labour question but also hides the power of the erotic. I see dance and sex as co-producing forces in the formation of the phenomenal body on stage. I call the ‘transformative’ force the erotic power of the dancer – the power of the erotic to transform the body and give it an exceptional ‘new’ dimension. The liveness of such performance rests on the sensory circulation of the body and its polyphonic vibes. Against the theories of affect that heavily rely on the individual body of a performer, I situate the erotic body as an exchange, as a commodity but also as having a potential for radical intervention.

Keywords:

• Women dancers
• arkestra
• erotic
• sensation
• corporeality
• labour and liveness

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, under the Impactful Policy Research in Social Science (IMPRESS) project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Hina was working as professional dancer in an arksestra group in Mau district of Uttar Pradesh. According to media reports, she was shot on her face when she momentarily stopped dancing for some technical glitches. There are many such cases which show the vulnerability of arkestra dancers. See the report for details, https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/woman-shot-in-face-in-uttar-pradeshs-chitrakoot-when-she-stopped-dancing-at-wedding-2144269.

2. Glocalization can be defined as the simultaneous globalizing and localizing process in contemporary social, political and economic systems. Many times, dominant global tendencies come in contact with dominant local tendencies to form new sets of hegemonies.

3. Vardhan, ‘When Orchestra became Arkestra’.

4. Prakash, ‘Performing Bidesiya in Bihar’.

5. Kumar, ‘Bhojpuri Consolidations in the Hindi’.

6. Ibid. 189.

7. Dugola is a popular singer duels performance in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in which two or more singers participate in musical competitions. Jagarna is another popular site in which dancers and singers perform devotional songs. Samajik natak (social drama) is organized on the occasions of festivals and other events in the form of modern theatre in rural Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

8. In our interactions, some of the kotha performers associated themselves with tawaifs and baiji culture, and felt the term randi/ prostitute is used to degrade their profession.

9. Sharma, Bidesia in Bombai.

10. Kumar, ‘Provincializing Bollywood’, 87–88.

11. Dalwai, Bans & Bar Girls.

12. Khanna, The Visceral Logics of Decolonization, 5.

13. Parker, ‘Bodies and Pleasures’, 58.

14. Dupatee Ramgoonai (born 1958) is a Trinidadian Chutney soca and tassa musician famous for bringing women’s desire and sexuality in her performance. Some of her famous released songs are ‘Roll Us the Tassa’, ‘Hotter than a Chulha’, ‘Wuk Up D Ladki’ and others. Rihanna (born 1988) is a Barbadian singer and actress famous for her provocative albums.

15. Fleetwood, ‘The Case of Rihanna’, 419.

16. Kotha is a house where baiji or courtesans performed and stayed. In common perception, it is also a brothel. Personal Interview, Shyama Devi Kotha in Barh, 18 November 2020.

17. See Dalwai, Bans & Bar Girls.

18. See Morcom, Courtesans, Bar Girls and Dancing Boys, and Singh, Raising the Curtains.

19. See Chatterjee, ‘The Veshya the Ganika and the Tawaif’.

20. Kothis are transgenders in south Asian societies who being male prefer to take a feminine role in same sex relationship. They also work as performers in many parts of India and maintain a complex relationship between erotic work and art work.

21. See Morcom, Courtesans, Bar Girls and Dancing Boys.

22. Shrinagara can be described as forms of love in various expression. It connotes erotic sentiment and considered one of the eight rasas in the classical Indian aesthetics.

23. Soneji, Unfinished Gestures, 10.

24. Khurana, ‘Dirty Dancing’.

25. For example, during the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic when clients stopped coming to the kotha, some of the arkestra girls went to perform in Jagarna and other religious ceremonies.

26. Lakkimsetti, ‘Home and Beautiful Things’, 464.

27. Kong, ’What it feels like for a whore’.

28. Hochschild, The Managed Heart, and Chapkis, Live Sex Acts.

29. Chapkis, Live Sex Acts, 73.

30. Maia, Transnational Desires, 79.

31. In the context of bidesia performances of Bihar, I have discussed how segregation in a caste society also becomes an aesthetic category. See Prakash, Cultural Labour.

32. Han, The Transparency Society, 31.

33. It has to be acknowledged that the new formation on arkestra dance is also taking place which can be considered as what Han would term as the ‘pornographic theatre’ where ‘a mass of affects is loaded directly on to the stage’, Han, 65. Several times, many arkestra girls are put together on the stage like the bodies of masses.

34. Maciszewski, ‘Gendered stories, gendered styles’, 88.

35. Hansen, ‘Stri Bhumika’, 2294.

36. Some bar dancers joined the arkestra party in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh after the ban was imposed on bar dance in Mumbai in 2005. Many of them again went back to Mumbai to join the bar when the ban was lifted.

37. See Lakkimsetti and Dalwai.

38. Lakkimsetti, ‘Home and Beautiful Things’, 463.

39. Raza, ‘Dancing with the Wolves’.

40. Shah, ‘Labour of Love’.

41. Sarkar Munsi, ‘Precarious Citizen’, 158.

42. Sarkar Munsi, ‘Precarious Citizen’.

43. Angelou, Phenomenal Woman,7.

44. See note 39.

45. Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual, 4.

46. Fischer-Lichte, 5.

47. Fischer-Lichte, The Semiotic of Theatre, 63.

48. Ibid.

49. Mokkil, ‘Visual Practices’, 160.

50. Niranjana, Mobilizing India, 121.

51. Barthes quoted in Niranjana, 122.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Vardhan, ‘When Orchestra becomes Arkestra’.

55. Holland, Ochoa and Tompkins, ‘On the Visceral’, 177.

56. Machon, (Syn) aesthetics.

57. Prakash, Cultural Labour, 188.

58. Cytowic, Synaesthesia, 177.

59. Pilcher, Erotic Performance and Spectatorship, 2016.

60. LaBelle, Lexicon of the Mouth, 106.

61. Maia, Transnational Desire, 79.

62. Mokkil, ‘Visual Practices’.

63. Mokkil, 163.