Flexible Bodies by Anusha Kedhar, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

As the British South Asian community has grown since the 1980s, a specifically British form of South Asian dance has exploded alongside it. Akram Khan's 2012 London Olympics performance, a number of concerts featuring South Asian dance, and the increased offering of South Asian dance classesat exercise studios are just some examples of this style's growing popularity. Not only has the South Asian dance community in Britain made an indelible mark and irrefutable impact on contemporary dance - it has also navigated precarious racial, economic, and national identities through an array offlexible body tactics and choreographic techniques. Drawing on expertise gained from eight years dancing for British South Asian choreographers, author Anusha Kedhar presents a multifaceted picture of British South Asian dance as its own distinctive genre. Flexible Bodies analyzes dances, dance films, rehearsals, workshops - along with immigrationpolicy, arts funding initiatives, and global economic conditions - to trace the movement of British South Asian dance from 1990s "Cool Britannia" multiculturalism to fallout from the 2008 financial crisis and, more recently, the anti-immigration rhetoric leading up to the 2016 Brexit referendum. Kedhar features interviews with dancers in Britain and India and in-depth choreographic analysis of major dance works to reveal the creative ways in which these dancers negotiate neoliberal and multicultural dance markets. In doing so, she argues that dancers' physical flexibility helps themnavigate the economic and material flexibility demanded of them by an exploitative labor market. Providing a new, celebratory lens through which to view the precarious economic, racial, national, and legal position of South Asians in Britain, Flexible Bodies honors the lives and labor of dancers andcelebrates their contributions to a distinct and dynamic area of dance. | Flexible Bodies by Anusha Kedhar, Paperback | Indigo Chapters