Unmaking contact : choreographing South Asian touch / Royona Mitra with Akila, Diya Naidu, Nahid Siddiqui, Lawhore Vagistan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitra, Royona, 1978- author.

Akilā, author.

Naidu, Diya, author.

Siddiqui, Nahid, author.

Vagistan, Lawhore, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Choreography--South Asia.

Choreography.

Touch--South Asia.

Touch.

Improvisation in dance--South Asia.

Improvisation in dance.

Improvisation in dance--Social aspects--South Asia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxviii, 256 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

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.

"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.

Contents:

Introduction: Unmaking contact

Contact as caste justice: Theenda Theenda (2018) by Akila and The Touch of Death

Contact as reframing sociality: Rorschach Touch (2018) by Diya Naidu and "Normalizing Touch"

Contact as ecological relationality: Mirror Within (2022) by Nahid Siddiqui and Shakila Maan and touch without tactility

Contact as Adda: critical encounters in #KAATENAHINKATTE Instareel (2020) by LaWhore Vagistan and digital touching

Afterwords: Against conclusions.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on January 22, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: Mitra, Royona, 1978- Unmaking contact

ISBN:

9780197627808

0197627803

OCLC:

1485602356

Publisher Number:

CIPO000189009

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license