{"id":219,"date":"2017-11-20T15:52:21","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T20:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=219"},"modified":"2018-04-09T10:00:32","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T15:00:32","slug":"dattani-mahesh-dance-like-a-man-a-stage-play-in-two-acts-penguin-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/courtesansofindia\/?p=219","title":{"rendered":"Dattani, Mahesh. Dance Like a Man: A Stage Play in Two Acts. Penguin, 2006."},"content":{"rendered":"

Jairaj Parekh and his wife Ratna, aging Bharatnatyam dancers, live together in the home of Jairaj\u2019s father, Amritlal. Having retired from an unfulfilling career, Jairaj and Ratna project their hopes for higher achievement onto their daughter, Lata, also a dancer. Generational conflicts abound: Lata attempts to balance her parents\u2019 ambitions with her desire to marry her boyfriend, Viswas; meanwhile, Jairaj and Ratna struggle to work through their longstanding conflict with Amritlal, once a nationalist activist and now a conservative reactionary, who views dancing as the work of prostitutes and whose rigid views of manhood are constantly challenged by his artistic, expressive son. A movie based on the play was released in 2014.<\/a><\/p>\n

While devadasis are not protagonists in this play, they are nevertheless thematically central: pre-Indian independence, Bharatanatyam was largely performed by devadasis, but the devadasi practice was shamed and outlawed during the Indian nationalist movement as an effort to appeal to colonial conceptions of gender and civility.<\/a> \u00a0(Indeed, Amritlal forbids Jairaj from learning dance from a local Devadasi.) This careful exclusion and suppression of female public performers and their associated traits informs much of Amritlal\u2019s character, and by extension, much of the play\u2019s conflict.<\/p>\n

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Consider the following questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n