Sweating Saris

Indian Dance As Transnational Labor

By: Priya Srinivasan

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Hardcover | 9 December 2011

At a Glance

Hardcover
236 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.0

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Combining critical dance history and ethnography to look at issues of immigration, citizenship, and ethnic identity, Priya Srinivasan's groundbreaking book Sweating Saris considers Indian dance in the diaspora as a form of embodied, gendered labour. Chronicling the social, cultural, and political relevance of the dancers' experiences, she raises questions of class, cultural nationalism, and Orientalism. Srinivasan presents stories of female (and male) Indian dancers who were brought to the United States between the 1880s and early 1900s to perform. She argues that mastery of traditional Indian dance is intended to socialize young women into their role as proper Indian American women in the twenty-first century. The saris and bells that are intrinsic to the shaping of female Indian American gender identity also are produced by labouring bodies, which sweat from the physical labour of the dance and thus signifies both the material realities of the dancing body and the abstract aesthetic labour.

Industry Reviews

"The immense detail, the careful deployment of scholarly and personal narrative, and the dexterity of weaving history and ethnography together in Sweating Saris results in a beautiful and critical piece of scholarship for those interested in Asian American embodied practices. Srinivasan's adept interdisciplinary study is an essential read for those exploring transnational embodied practices across historical periods and ideologies. Its most important contribution, perhaps, is its framing of Bharata Natyam and other dance forms not as staged events subject to the gaze of spectators, but rather as continuous forms of physical, intellectual, interpretive, and performative labor that contribute to the honing of (personal, national, and cultural) identity, both in the public domain and within practitioners' bodies." The Journal of Asian Studies, August 2012

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