Flash mob dance: Embodied cosmopolitanism in the age of digital communication networking / Mrinali Sarabhai, nationalism, and cosmopolitan aesthetic

Speakers

Georgiana Gore, University Blaise Pascal, France:

Transcending the divides of race, class, and nation and blurring the boundaries between the political and the commercial, flash mob dancing may be conceived as a truly cosmopolitan postcolonial dance genre in that it takes place in urban sites across the world. Through the collective performance of apparently spontaneous choreography, it emerges in public places as unplanned spectacle, creating its own stage through disrupting the quotidian. In this paper, I shall explore, through mainly online ethnography, how flash mob dancing constitutes a form of embodied cosmopolitanism since performance enables participants to be involved in a singular event and simultaneously to connect to the global through online broadcasting on You Tube and identification with an international genre. Through a detailed analysis of the dynamics of flash mob dancing, which transforms the crowd into spectators and the humdrum into an event, I shall address the idea that there may be a transcultural aesthetics of the event, not determined by the constraints of Western hegemonic canons.

Andrée Grau, University of Roehampton, UK:

Mrinalini Sarabhai, née Swaminathan, (1918- ) came from a highly educated, multi-lingual, well travelled, and wealthy background. Members of her family engaged in politics and were freedom fighters. She studied with Rabindranath Tagore and was deeply influenced by his cosmopolitanism. In 1942 she married Vikram Sarabhai and joined one of the wealthiest and influential families at the time in India. Whilst the marriage crossed geographical and linguistic boundaries, it was endogamous in terms of social, political, and intellectual class. Her dance education was eclectic: she trained with canonical gurus but she thought many traditional dancers were rather coarse and slightly vulgar, not having the grace, beauty, and taste she was looking for. Others saw her as an innovator and India celebrated her for her "creative" dance, yet felt she engaged with a "pure" classical tradition, while choreographing works dealing with social injustices. Being wealthy she was able to control her creative work, have her own theatre, dancers and musicians, and tour the world with her company largely in her own terms, rather than following governmental agendas. She was accepted on an equal footing with the greatest western artists, dancing on revered dance stages in Europe, usually to great acclaim. The paper will engage with Sarabhai's "elite" cosmopolitan aesthetics examining the pre- and post-independence works she created at a time dance was being questioned in India and the "classical" heritage was contested territory. It will examine in what ways her work fitted the nationalist agenda and when she departed from it.

Organisers

Department of Social Sciences, French Institute of Pondicherry.

Venue

Parampara room, French Institute of Pondicherry, 11, Saint Louis Street, Pondicherry - 605 001.