Accepted Panels

The panel presentation is an effort to bring together three ethnographic research works conducted on embodied practices of women, commonly identified as dancers, from Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Bihar. The first paper “Labour of the erotic and the bodies of the sensory in the Arkestra of North India” analyses the erotic power of the dancer in relation to the performance of Arkestra girls in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The author argues that the existing binary between dance and sex work not only conceals the labour question but also hides the power of the erotic. The author situates the erotic body as a commodity but also as having a potential for radical intervention. The second paper “Understanding the ritual body: Through the performative trance and its corporeal noesis in ethnic cultural festivals of Tamil Nadu” explores the performative rituals including the trance and the local folk performances practiced as a part of the participatory celebrations during popular Tamil festivals named Thai Pusam and Panguni Pongal. The paper analyses the process as the praxis of individuals reaffirming community identity. The third paper “Buy one get one free” focuses on Bollywood dancers, whose bodies and the dance, coupled as a two-in-one product, are consumables sold together. The author argues that in neoliberal times, there is a perpetual state of uncertainty about self-marketability and the fear of being highly replaceable in women making them vulnerable to consistent dispossessions. The fourth paper, “Creating forces: corporal experiences of struggle of Black Women in Brazil”, discusses the production of corporality of women martial arts fighters in Brazil, by focusing on the bodily gestures of women that are triggered by the notions of “confronting”, “resistance” and “overcoming”. The research findings are from fieldwork between 2016 and 2020 in favelas in Brazil.