ABSTRACT
In India, the question of modernity has been subverted time and again. In the re-visiting of dance history, an important task is to first record the multi-layered attempts at modernity by parallel individual or community/group agencies and thereafter set off a discourse on a new historiography of colonial and post-colonial encounters in dance in India. Nationalism remains an important context even in the age of globalization and market economy in India, as cultural policies continue to be framed and implemented on the basis of histories and processes formulated in the immediate post-Independence era. The chapter explores these notions with examples and discussion.
