ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an example of one way in which Indian classical dance, regarded as representative of Indian culture, can be perceived to indicate the subordination of women by those 'outside' its immediate community in the UK. It then focuses on the ways in which Indian classical dance is premised upon gendered divisions in its particular construction of femininity and patriarchal privilege from 'within' the sphere of dance itself by analysing contemporary constructions and performances of gender and tracing these to the Indian nationalist project in which the reconstruction of Bharatanatyam, Odissi and Kathak must be contextualized. However, as becomes clear from a careful analysis of the gendered relations of power reproduced within the context of Indian classical dance in colonial, nationalist and multicultural locations, the patriarchal constructions that are sustained in this dance practice are inseparable from the politics of modernity and Westernisation that have shaped t.
