ABSTRACT
In this entry, dance in various Northeast Indian contexts is probed as a complex cultural, political, and affective field. Largely, dance in India cannot be analysed completely without attention to social organisations, relations of power, and geopolitical history. General principles of researching dance may also include pedagogies and hierarchies, movement principles, ideals of the body, and underlying aesthetics of choreographic practices. Dance also makes possible interrogating performative aspects of including and excluding ethnicity, class, and community; therefore, dance is a mode through which representation is enacted and negotiated. The entry begins with an overview of dance of diverse social and ethnic groups of the region while engaging with notions of agency, subjectivity, and identity in the performance of traditional dances.
