Arshiya Sethi Fulbright Fellow from India Lincoln Center Festival Lincoln Center New York New York 10023 212-875-5249(Work)
A practitioner and scholar of Indian dance for over twenty years, Arshiya Sethi has long been concerned with the dynamics surrounding traditional dance and dancers working during times of social transformation. Issues of preservation, presentation, and the progression of art forms have been the subjects of her research and very active public career. Arshiya Sethi serves as the Creative Head of Programmes, at New Delhi's prestigious India Habitat Center, one of India's most innovative showcases for the performing arts. She is one of the foremost contemporary scholars of Sattriya, a dance form that has flourished for five centuries in the Vaishnav monasteries of Assam, in eastern India. Ms. Sethi has been the dance critic for the Times of India for several years, and for more than two decades, has hosted and narrated a program on national television showing archival value recordings of the greatest Indian dance and musical performers. Ms. Sethi is currently based in New York as the first Fulbright Fellow ever attached to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Sattriya dance, from the eastern state of Assam in India is located in a matrix of an intense system of belief. It is drawn from a five hundred year old dance and comprehensive theater tradition nurtured in the vaishnav Monasteries of Assam. Preserved by the monks, most of them celibate, the dance form of Sattriya, has been extracted, like many of the other Classical Dance forms of India, from a mother theatrical tradition. In the year 2000, it was declared a "major dance tradition of India" at par with all major dance traditions of India, which are loosely called the Classical dances of India. This action introduced into the pantheon of the classical dances of India, a rare aesthetic gem. But raised a deep problematic that has many aspects to it. It raises several questions of motivation, cultural property and management, appropriation and future of the style. This research project looks simultaneously at the kinetic form, and the socio-anthropological paradigm that nurtures the dance. It takes into cognizance our concerns of inclusivity of a deeply grounded regional cultural expression, into an oceanic sub-continental culture, and audits its success or failure. It also deals with the issue of the other in a regional-national paradigm. The talk will reveal how the listing of the dance as "a major dance tradition of India at par with other major dance traditions of India," is a mixed blessing for the art form and analyses who really benefits from such political interventions in the arts. It also recognizes the processes of an ancient religious art dealing with the demands of a secular, competitive and novelty ridden performance platform. The critical factor is the timeliness of this talk while the dynamics are happening, and the changes are taking place. This talk is not only about the aesthetics and kinetics of the form, nor about the secrets of life in medieval celibate monasteries. It is equally about politics and economics, as it is about history. It comes with the large clipboard of a multidisciplinary approach. More information on Arshiya Sethi can be found on her website www.arshiyasethi.com -- saurav _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam Mailing list FAQ: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/assam/assam-faq.html To unsubscribe or change options: http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/options/assam
