In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

A bharata natyam dancer, clad in a tailored silk sari and bedecked in jewelry, sinks gracefully onto one leg. She smiles as her arm arcs gently and her articulate fingers lead her hand from a high diagonal in toward her torso. Her legs fold out into a rotated, bent-knee position, and her feet beat out a sharp rhythm. With her torso floating gracefully above her dynamic feet, she traces intricate hand shapes that ornament the angular positions of her limbs. She dances in a courtyard, before a temple, a setting that suggests that her solid, graceful movements are as enduring as the pillars and carvings of the temple compound. She is the very emblem of classicism, traditionalism, and the endurance of ancient values in present-day India.1 Bharata Natyam and the Production of the Past Bharata natyam relies upon the choreographic practices of the past.2 The dancer’s movement vocabulary, for instance, derives from sadir, the 123 6 Dancing through History and Ethnography Indian Classical Dance and the Performance of the Past  ’ dance practice of devadasis, courtesans, and ritual officiants who were associated with the temples and courts of South India until the early twentieth century.3 The mudras, or hand gestures, parallel, in both shape and meaning, those described in the Natyasastra, a canonical dramaturgical text written in the ancient, elite lingua franca of Sanskrit. A standardization of concert practice by the nineteenth-century Thanjavur Quartet, a renowned group of musicians, produced the margam, or concert order. Despite these commonalities between bharata natyam and past practice, many elements of present-day performance are new. Dancers transformed the style of rendition of the movements over the twentieth century (in some interpretations more than others), extending lines out into space and augmenting the angularity of positions. Some performers have also broadened the floor patterns of the choreography, covering more ground than sadir dancers did, in order to suit the larger, proscenium theaters of the contemporary performance context. Similarly, dancers have amplified and “theatricalized” the facial expressions of the abhinaya, or dramatic elements of choreography, again with the aim of rendering the expressions legible to a less proximate audience. Repertoire also changed during the twentieth century. Even the most “traditional” choreography is not completely fixed. A dance piece consists of a compilation of phrases, set to a piece of music that belongs to a dance style’s customary repertoire. A dancer or, most commonly, a dance teacher arranges phrases, learned from her own mentor, but assembled according to her decisions.4 The amount of decision making increases as a practitioner takes on more responsibility for teaching. Repertoire, therefore, changes in the process of its transmission. Presentday practitioners also commission music and devise new items of repertoire . Likewise, they choreograph pieces outside conventional genres, create works of ensemble choreography, and compose evening-length pieces based on the bharata natyam movement vocabulary. In addition, many elements that frame the performance are new.5 The name “bharata natyam,” for example, is a twentieth-century appellation .6 The “traditional” bharata natyam costume developed out of changes to concert attire in the 1930s. Even the temple performance context , despite its suggestion of antiquity, is itself a product of the changes that the dance form underwent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . In 1892, activists mobilized against the performance of dance in 124  ’ Hindu temples and succeeded in banning such events in 1947. Only in the 1980s did dancers return to temple performance, bringing with them the movement vocabulary and repertoire of the concert stage. Present-day temple dance events have therefore developed out of a fractured tradition.7 A possible conclusion to draw from this scenario is that the dance form derives solely from an intentional, self-conscious engagement with the past and not from an unbroken oral tradition. One could, in looking at such a situation, call bharata natyam an “invented tradition.”8 An alternative conclusion might be that there is a single authoritative history, which aligns with one set of choreographic choices, while the other versions of history are inaccurate. I want to suggest, however, that the actual situation is more complex than such assertions would indicate. Bharata natyam is neither entirely “ancient” nor is it solely a product of the twentieth century. Furthermore , none of the histories that practitioners put forth is spurious: dancers describe different versions of the past through the selection of competing sources, each of which constitutes a potentially valid historical “truth.” Twentieth-century dancers, through their choices...

Share