Impersonations : the artifice of Brahmin masculinity in south Indian dance /
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 nar...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Berkeley :
University of California Press,
[2019]
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| Summary: | 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. |
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| Physical Description: | xv, 225 pages : color illustrations, maps ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780520301665 0520301668 |