ABSTRACT
The search for aesthetic modernity in India is integral to the history of dance and its embodiment. This chapter uses the vantage point of bhav (affect or sympathy as described in Sanskrit aesthetics) to address questions of humanism, cosmopolitanism and identity as they relate to Indian dance. It uses Rabindranritya and dance reality shows to elicit the dynamic and contradictory narratives of dance in India. Although antithetical to each other, these two styles of dance are windows into two historical moments where eclecticism, westernization and cultural borrowing gave rise to new ways of being Indian.
