ABSTRACT
Postcolonial critiques of indigenizations of Shakespeare’s plays tend to foreground the Shakespearean text and read the adaptation primarily in terms of deviation from, subversion of, or adherence to the ‘original.’ Such criticism is often more attentive to content, plot, character, and narrativeelements which are more amenable to an obviously political rather than to a stylistic analysis which would require a more informed reading. This chapter examines two Indian dance appropriations of Shakespeare, Saibal Basu’s Wheel of Fire (2000) and Vikram Iyengar’s Crossings (2004-2005), which use their own internal logic to understand the tragedies that they choose to work with. The analysis tries to be sensitive to the distinctiveness of dance forms and their contexts of performance. This is the rationale for choosing two different productions, which between them use several identifi able Indian dance forms ranging over the classical and folk, the courtly and the ritualistic, the national and the regional. The aim is thus to move beyond the politics of intercultural performances, which lead to generalized, postcolonial readings and engage with the more intracultural aspects of Indian dance performances of Shakespearean plays.1
