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Dancing In The Diaspora: Remembering The Devadasis, Teresa Hubel

Teresa Hubel

Introduction:

In Canada, the classical dance bharatanatyam is both greater and less than an art form, greater because, unlike more common forms such as ballet or jazz dance, it offers its practitioners and its spectators something more than an opportunity to experience art or to be the vehicle for its expression, and less because what it offers along with its art is ethnicity. And in our multicultural society anything tagged as ethnic is caught in an intricate web of exaltation and denigration: by the very act of its celebration, which is frequently state-sponsored and state-endorsed, ethnicity is cast outside and …

From Tawa'if To Wife? Making Sense Of Bollywood's Courtesan Genre, Teresa Hubel

Teresa Hubel

Introduction: Although constituting what might be described as only a thimbleful of water in the ocean that is Hindi cinema, the courtesan or tawa'if film is a distinctive Indian genre, one that has no real equivalent in the Western film industry. With Indian and diaspora audiences generally, it has also enjoyed a broad popularity, its music and dance sequences being among the most valued in Hindi film, their specificities often lovingly remembered and reconstructed by fans. Were you, for example, to start singing "Dil Cheez Kya Hai" or "Yeh Kya Hua" especially to a group of north Indians over the …