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96 Chapter 4 passage, it is the corporeal “liveness” of the orientalist spectacle that brings such an overwhelming response for white American audiences. The reviewer bases his reading of st. Denis’s performance on extratextual information about india gleaned from literary sources that inform his understanding of the spectacle before him. But the live bodies of the “natives” in contrast to st. Denis are what captivate him. Classic tropes of orientalism suggest that the east is rendered passive and feminized in opposition to an active, masculine West. similarly, the writer of the second passage describes the natives as at times stoic, passive, and essentially inactive, in opposition to st. Denis’s authorial, moving, “speaking” body of the first passage. Perhaps it was the visceral and striking presence of the indian men, albeit feminized, who stood in contrast to st. Denis’s white female form that further authenticated and enhanced her performance in contradictory ways. On the one hand, these men were portrayed as barbaric, which made st. Denis’s performance dangerous (at least in a staged and controlled way). Audiences were always aware st. Denis was in control over both the actual indian male bodies and their representation, but the men still represented the danger of the unknown. On the other hand, her performance was less dangerous because she maintained a clear difference from the men even as they assisted in rendering her performance “authentic,” as implied by the third passage. They rarely came close to her or touched her in performance. st. Denis was always literally and symbolically separate from these men; she performed at center stage, while they existed only on the peripheries of the stage and performance. she never performed for these men since they could not be sexualized beings. They were feminized as other Asian men were, conferring power to st. Denis. Thus, it is st. Denis’s body in performance that mediates between east and West. By centering her own white female body and contrasting it with the indian men, st. Denis thus maintained control and mastery over the unknowable, dangerous Orient. st. Denis’s white body allowed the desire for the unknowable and mystical to exist in ways that were safe. By assuming patriarchal control over the representation of india and therefore of indians themselves, st. Denis stabilized audience fears of the essentially unknowable Orient. At a time when anticolonial dissent was fomenting in india and the United states and anti-Asian immigration laws were unfolding in the United states, a white woman was assuming patriarchal control over the representation of india and therefore of indians themselves onstage. As seen in the reviews of st. Denis’s 1911 performers, these men evoked india through their corporeal presence onstage, thereby authenticating st. Denis’s performances . But when white women could perform the exotic and become the choreographers of staged “live” orientalist visions, the danger of Oriental Legal Failures and Other Performative Acts 97 bodies polluting the American landscape could be laid to rest. st. Denis’s show thus surpassed anything an audience could see at Coney island or in other displays of female indian dancers themselves, because it is only through the illusion of a white woman performing the Orient that its mystique could be maintained (yegenolugu 1998).17 The presence of actual indian dancers and performers center stage would rupture the mystique of the Orient. During her 1911–1914 tours, st. Denis was benefited by the anti-Asian immigration debates and was effectively staging these ongoing debates over labor and immigration that plagued indians at the time. The Disappearing Indian Bodies i argue in this section that, far from being a benign discourse, north American orientalism manifested in a violent, racialized economy accompanied by antiimmigration laws that enabled a white woman such as st. Denis to perform indian dances of sorts without opposition or question.18 Thus, the quixotic love-hate, desire-repulsion, excitement-fear binaries were ever present in the relationship between white Americans and various Asian “others.” it was through this complex prism of relationships that st. Denis gave herself and countless numbers of her white female students the discursive, corporeal, and representational power not only to control but also to choreograph how indian dance would be viewed for decades to come in the United states.19 As white women absorbed nautch women’s practices, the state played out its irreconcilable and contradictory desire and loathing for Asians in racist immigration policies that curtailed Asian women, including indian women, from entering the...

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