Balasaraswati

Balasaraswati PDF

Author: Douglas M. Knight

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0819569062

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An intimate portrait of one of the great performing artists of the twentieth century

At Home in the World

At Home in the World PDF

Author: Janet O'Shea

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2007-05-21

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780819568373

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The compelling story of a beautiful and versatile South Indian dance form

Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition

Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition PDF

Author: Tracy Pintchman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-03-29

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780198039341

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In this book, Tracy Pintchman has assembled ten leading scholars of Hinduism to explore the complex relationship between Hindu women's rituals and their lives beyond ritual. The book focuses particularly on the relationship of women's ritual practices to domesticity, exposing and exploring the nuances, complexities, and limits of this relationship. In many cultural and historical contexts, including contemporary India, women's everyday lives tend to revolve heavily around domestic and interpersonal concerns, especially care for children, the home, husbands, and other relatives. Hence, women's religiosity also tends to emphasize the domestic realm and the relationships most central to women. But women's religious concerns certainly extend beyond domesticity. Furthermore, even the domestic religious activities that Hindu women perform may not merely replicate or affirm traditionally formulated domestic ideals but may function strategically to reconfigure, reinterpret, criticize, or even reject such ideals. This volume takes a fresh look at issues of the relationship between Hindu women's ritual practices and normative domesticity. In so doing, it emphasizes female innovation and agency in constituting and transforming both ritual and the domestic realm and calls attention to the limitations of normative domesticity as a category relevant to many forms of Hindu women's religious practice.

Taken by Surprise

Taken by Surprise PDF

Author: Ann Cooper Albright

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2003-10-24

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780819566485

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First comprehensive overview of improvisation in dance.

Rukmini Devi Arundale, 1904-1986

Rukmini Devi Arundale, 1904-1986 PDF

Author: Avanthi Meduri

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9788120827400

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The essay in this book endeavour to capture the multifaceted cultural and aesthetic legacy of Rukmini Devi preserved both in India and international scholars, including dance cirtics, dance administrators, dancers, dance teachers, bueraucrats, and alumni of the world-renowned lalakshetra arts institution that Rukmini Devi founded in 1936. The essaysalso discuss Rukmini Devi`s aesthetic vision in relation to history,to tradition, her creation of ensemble dance-drama productions, and contemporary dance in the United Kingdom.

World Dance Cultures

World Dance Cultures PDF

Author: Patricia Leigh Beaman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-20

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 1000956121

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From healing, fertility, and religious rituals, through theatrical entertainment, to death ceremonies and ancestor worship, the updated and revised second edition of World Dance Cultures introduces an extraordinary variety of dance forms and their cultures, which are practiced around the world. This highly illustrated textbook draws on wide-ranging historical documentation and first-hand accounts taking in India, Bali, Java, Cambodia, China, Japan, Hawai‘i, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Africa, Türkiye, Spain, Native America, South America, and the Caribbean, with this second edition adding new chapters on the Pacific Islands, Southern Africa, France, and Cuba. Each chapter covers a certain region’s distinctive dances, pinpoints key issues and trends from the form’s development to its modern iteration, and offers a wealth of study features including: • Spotlights zooming in on key details of a dance form’s cultural, historical, and religious contexts • Explorations—first-hand descriptions by famous dancers and ethnographers, excerpts from anthropological fieldwork, or historical writings on the form • Think About—provocations to encourage critical analysis of dance forms and the ways in which they’re understood • Discussion Questions—starting points for group work, classroom seminars, or individual study. Offering a comprehensive overview of each dance form covered with over 100 full color photos, World Dance Cultures is an essential introductory resource for students and instructors alike.

Yoga Journal

Yoga Journal PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1977-05

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13:

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For more than 30 years, Yoga Journal has been helping readers achieve the balance and well-being they seek in their everyday lives. With every issue,Yoga Journal strives to inform and empower readers to make lifestyle choices that are healthy for their bodies and minds. We are dedicated to providing in-depth, thoughtful editorial on topics such as yoga, food, nutrition, fitness, wellness, travel, and fashion and beauty.

The Bhāgavata Purāna

The Bhāgavata Purāna PDF

Author: Ravi M. Gupta

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-03-19

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0231531478

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A vibrant example of living literature, the Bhagavata Purana is a versatile Hindu sacred text written in Sanskrit verse. Finding its present form by the tenth century C.E., the work inspired several major north Indian devotional (bhakti) traditions as well as schools of dance and drama, and continues to permeate popular Hindu art and ritual in both India and the diaspora. Introducing the Bhagavata Purana's key themes while also examining its extensive influence on Hindu thought and practice, this collection conducts the first multidimensional reading of the entire text. Each essay focuses on a key theme of the Bhagavata Purana and its subsequent presence in Hindu theology, performing arts, ritual recitation, and commentary. The authors consider the relationship between the sacred text and the divine image, the text's metaphysical and cosmological underpinnings, its shaping of Indian culture, and its ongoing relevance to contemporary Indian concerns.

Dancing Bodies of Devotion

Dancing Bodies of Devotion PDF

Author: Katherine C. Zubko

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 0739187295

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Dancing Bodies of Devotion: Fluid Gestures in Bharata Natyam examines how Bharata Natyam, a traditionally Hindu storytelling dance form, moves across religious boundaries through both incorporating choreography on Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Jain themes and the pluralistic identities of participants. Dancers traverse religious boundaries by reformulating an aesthetic foundation based on performative rather than solely textual understandings of rasa, conventionally defined as a formula for how to physically craft emotion on stage. Through the ethnographic case studies of this volume, dancers of Bharata Natyam innovatively demonstrate how the rasa of devotion (bhakti rasa), surprisingly absent from classic dance-related texts, serves as the pivotal framework for expanding on their own interreligious thematic and interpretive possibilities. In contemporary Bharata Natyam, bhakti rasa is not just about enhancing religious experience; instead, these dancers choreographically adapt various religious identities and ideas in order to emphasize pluralistic cultural and ethical dimensions in their work. Through the dancing body, multiple religious and secular interpretations fluidly co-exist.