ABSTRACT
A London-based Kathak dancer and his students recently presented a feature performance celebrating episodes from the life of the Hindu god Krishna. Like many Indian classical dancers in the UK, he too was interested in presenting ‘traditional’ dance alongside ‘contemporary’ choreographies, situating both within the parameters of a ‘classical’ vocabulary. Whilst the classical/contemporary dichotomy (a variant of the tradition/modernity binary) continues to challenge dancers of all forms of Indian classical dance in the UK, with each distinguishing between the two in their own personalised manner, this performer sought to ‘demonstrate the contemporary potential of this dance form’ (programme notes) through the form itself – that is to say, without stepping out of the dance’s prescribed aesthetics or creating a recognisably different movement vocabulary.
