Unmaking contact : choreographing South Asian touch /
'Unmaking Contact' interrogates 'contact' through the examination of South Asian aesthetics, bodies, discourses, and philosophies on physical and intersubjective touch and relations within dance, and shifting its conceptualisation beyond contact improvisation.
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2025]
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | 'Unmaking Contact' interrogates 'contact' through the examination of South Asian aesthetics, bodies, discourses, and philosophies on physical and intersubjective touch and relations within dance, and shifting its conceptualisation beyond contact improvisation. |
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| Abstract: | "Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch interrogates “contact,” understood in Global North dance discourse as a shorthand for the movement discipline of contact improvisation (CI) and its characteristic shifting points of weight-sharing between two or more bodies through physical touch, by attending to inherent power asymmetries that are foundational to this practice. By placing South Asian aesthetics, bodies, discourses, and philosophies on touch at the heart of its interrogation through the lenses of caste, ecology, faith, gender, and sexuality, the book argues for an intersectional, intercultural, and inter-epistemic understanding of contact that may or may not involve touch. The book shifts and expands understandings of “contact” in dance-making through intercultural epistemologies that examine notions of touch and contact, which are often used interchangeably in Global North dance discourse. In this book, the term “contact” signals both a shorthand for CI and a shift away from it to more expansive choreographic considerations: it becomes an apparatus for dismantling power regimes (Chapter 1); it is conjured as a catalyst to examine power in social relations (Chapter 2); it appears as a fulcrum of ecological relationality (Chapter 3); it arises as critical encounters full of generative and transformative potential (Chapter 4); and finally, it manifests as community (Afterwords). The book examines the interconnections between these expansive and varied manifestations of “contact” and their relationships to physical touch, by foregrounding South Asian aesthetics, artistic practices, philosophies, and voices of four transnationally located South Asian–heritage dance-artists—India-based Akila and Diya Naidu, UK-Pakistan-based Nahid Siddiqui, and US-based LaWhore Vagistan—who become the touchstones of each of the chapters and the Afterwords"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xxviii, 256 pages) : illustrations |
| Audience: | Specialized. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780197627808 0197627803 |