SOLODANCE: Perspectives from South India and Beyond

Here is the full schedule. This promises to be a unique engagement with history, theory and practice–academic lectures/panels interspersed with performances by senior dancers from around the world.

SOLODANCE: Perspectives from South India and Beyond

Friday June 4, 2010– 10:15 am to 8 pm

Saturday June 5, 2010– 10:15 am to 5 pm

Signy and Cleophee Eaton Theatre

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Free with museum admission–Limited Seating–REGISTER at www.rom.on.ca/whatson

Friday 4 June 2010

10:15-10:30 Opening Remarks

Hari Krishnan, Artistic Director, inDANCE

Deepali Dewan, South Asia Curator, Royal Ontario Museum

10:30-10:45 Inaugural Solo Dance Performance

The Ritual Dance Repertoire of the Tiruttani Temple

Saskia Kersenboom (University of Amsterdam)

10:45-11:30 Plenary Address

Solo Dance and Its Discontents: The Resonances of Solo Bharatanatyam in the Twenty-First Century

Janet O’Shea (University of California, Los Angeles)

11:30-12:30 Lunch Break

12:30-1:00 Special Session

Anecdotal and Oral History Journeys with Devadasis in Tamilnadu

B.M. Sundaram (Kala Pariseelana Trust, Chennai)

1:00-2:45 PANEL 1:

Devadasi Dance: History and Representation

Chair: Margaret Walker (Queen’s University, Kingston)

Salon to Cinema: Telugu Javalis in Colonial South India

Davesh Soneji (McGill University, Montreal)

The European Performances of Five Devadasis in 1838 and 1839

Joep Bor (Academy of the Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University, The Netherlands)

Tiziana Leucci (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales/Centre d’Etudes de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Paris, France)

Murai: The Right to Perform

Saskia Kersenboom (University of Amsterdam)

2:45-3:00 Coffee Break

3:00-3:30pm Special Session

Rare Documentation of Some of the Exponents of the Mysore School of

Bharatanatyam as Preserved in the Archives of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi

Sunil Kothari (Independent Scholar and Critic, New Delhi, India)

4:00-4:45 Solo Dance Performance

Seven Graces

Anita Ratnam (Arangham Trust, Chennai, India)

Solo Dance Performance

Accumulating Venus

Patricia Beaman (Wesleyan and New York University)

4:45:6:00 Dinner Break

6:00-6:45 Reception

Hosted by the Friends of South Asia at the ROM

6:45-7:00 Introduction of Leela Samson by Hari Krishnan

Remarks from the Canada Council for the Arts

Remarks by Her Excellency Mrs. Preeti Saran, Consul General of India (Toronto)

7:00-8:00 Plenary Address and Lecture-Demonstration

Reflections on My Journey

Leela Samson (The Kalakshetra Foundation, Chennai, India)

Saturday June 5, 2010

10:15-11:00 Plenary Solo Dance Performance

Padams and Javalis: Solo Dance as Crafted by T. Balasaraswati

Shyamala (Chennai, India)

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:30 PANEL 2:

Twentieth-Century Shifts in Solo Dance

Chair: Matthew Allen (Wheaton College)

Bharatanatyam: Analyzing the History of a Fetish (oops, I mean ‘Dance’)

Teresa Hubel (Huron University College, University of Western Ontario)

Hereditary Master, Feminist Student: Notes on Bharatanatyam Pedagogy

Srividya Natarajan (King’s University College, University of Western Ontario, London)

Living the Transformations in Bharatanatyam from 1964 to the Present

Anne-Marie Gaston (Cultural Horizons and University of Ottawa)

12:30-1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-2:15 Solo Dance Performance

Nineteenth-Century Solo Dance in the Twenty-First Century

inDANCE (Toronto)

2:30-3:45 PANEL 3:

Reflections on Contemporary Solo Dance, Identity, and Selfhood

Chair: Davesh Soneji (McGill University)

Shyamala Moorty’s Contemporary Indian Dance-Theater: Solo Contemporary Choreography Using Abhinaya and Navarasas

Ketu H. Katrak (University of California, Irvine)

Fancy/Fantasy: Flying Solo on an Indian Breeze

Chitra Sundaram (Independent Dancer and Choreographer, London, United Kingdom)

Maintaining Solo Dance in America

Rathna Kumar (Anjali Center for Performing Arts, Houston, Texas)

3:45-4:00 Coffee Break

4:00-5:15 Roundtable Discussion

The Politics of Solo Dance: Perspectives from India and Canada

Moderator: Hari Krishnan

Peggy Baker
Patricia Beaman
Denise Fujiwara
Anita Ratnam
Leela Samson

5:15-5:30 Vote of Thanks

Neera Chopra (Friends of South Asia at the ROM)