Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliteration -- Introduction -- 1. Taking Center Stage: The Poet-Saint and the Impersonator of Kuchipudi Dance History -- 2. "I am Satyabhama": Constructing Hegemonic Brahmin Masculinity in the Kuchipudi Village -- 3. Constructing Artifice, Interrogating Impersonation: Madhavi as Vidūṣaka in Village Bhāmākalāpam Performance -- 4. Bhāmākalāpam beyond the Village: Transgressing Norms of Gender and Sexuality in Urban and Transnational Kuchipudi Dance -- 5. Longing to Dance: Stories of Kuchipudi Brahmin Women -- Conclusion: Rewriting the Script for Kuchipudi Dance -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Open Access https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
Learn more at www.luminosoa.org.Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance centers on an insular community of Smarta Brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who are required to don stri-vesam (woman's guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. Impersonation is not simply a gender performance circumscribed to the Kuchipudi stage, but a practice of power that enables the construction of hegemonic Brahmin masculinity in everyday village life. However, the power of the Brahmin male body in stri-vesam is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian dance form. This book analyzes the practice of impersonation across a series of boundaries-village to urban, Brahmin to non-Brahmin, hegemonic to non-normative-to explore the artifice of Brahmin masculinity in contemporary South Indian dance.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:
In English.
9780520972230
10.1525/9780520972230 doi
Brahmans--Social life and customs.--India, South Female impersonators--Social life and customs.--India, South Gender identity in dance--India, South. Kuchipudi (Dance)--Social aspects--India, South. SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General.