From Nautch to Nritya

This article positions the women’s question in terms of performance within the larger ongoing nationalist concern and freedom movement in the early part of the 20th century. It reads Rabindranath Tagore’s experiments in his dance drama as embodying a postcolonial aesthetic, not always in harmony with the nationalist ideals churned out at the time, often jostling with contending notions about art, femininity and sexuality.