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Two More Busby Berkeley-Inspired Top Shots in 1930s Indian Film Dances
In my post last year about Dance in Early Indian Cinema, I had marveled at the technical advancements in Indian film dances from the 1930s like that in Raitu Bidda (1939), Chandrasena (1935), and Amrit...
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Odissi Dance in Odia Films - Including a Rare Dance in Lalita (1949)!
I must start this post immediately with a startling find—a 25-second clip of "Odissi" dance from Lalita (1949), the second Odia-language film ever made. Odissi dance as we know it today was not even...
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Odissi Dance in Indian Cinema Outside Odisha
Continuing on from last week's post about Odissi dance in Odia films, here I want to highlight the usage of Odissi in films outside of Odisha. Like other classical dance forms beyond the ubiquitous...
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Film Classical Dances of Shobana
Shobana, the well-known Bharatanatyam dancer and film actress/dancer, was my first film dance love alongside the equally luminous Bhanupriya. Until now I have posted very little about her, the subject...
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Film Dances of Gopi Krishna - Including Three Little-Known Videos
The late Kathak dancer Gopi Krishna (≈1933-38 to 1994) is perhaps best remembered for his dances in the 1955 Hindi film Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje. His dances in that film exemplified his trademark—his...
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Film Dances of L. Vijayalakshmi
L. Vijayalakshmi—the cute-as-a-button, dimple-faced dancer who danced and acted most prolifically in 1960s Telugu cinema—is a dancer that I've not featured much on this blog to date. For a long time I...
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Zohra Segal's Shankar-Style Choreography in Neecha Nagar (Hindi, 1946)
For some time the only thing I knew about Zohra Segal was that she was an adorable elderly woman who had small roles in a lot of recent Hindi films. Then I learned that Zohra's life has been one of...
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Found: Vyjayanthimala's Other Bharatanatyam Dance in Chittor Rani Padmini...
In my first post on V.S. Muthuswami Pillai, the nattuvanar who among many things choreographed most of Vyjayanthimala's best Bharatanatyam in Indian cinema, I had discussed a beautiful Bharatanatyam...
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Uday Shankar, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn in Utah!
While browsing through the Utah Digital Newspapers website (mostly public-domain material, woo!), I was surprised to learn that Uday Shankar, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn all performed multiple times...
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Meeting and Interviewing Kamala! And a Rare Video Find at the NYPL!
Get out of the way people, dance nerds coming through!Last week I had the pleasure of taking a dream trip to New York City and visiting the hallowed walls of the place that has for years beckoned me...
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My Article "Screendance in Indian Cinema" and Thoughts on Film Dance
Last week saw the end of the fourth Naada Bindu Festival—a three-day residential arts retreat at the Chinmaya Naada Bindu gurukul for Indian performing arts in Pune. The festival features a number of...
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Adventures in Date-ing the BritishPathe Devadasi Dance and Video
Since I last posted about the amazing video find of two South Indian devadasis dancing in Baroda around the 1930s, I have been obsessed with finding proof of two things: the identities of the...
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Bharatanatyam in Sri Lankan Sinhalese Films and in Sri Lanka
While on a zealous search to see what kinds of dance could be found in the cinema of Sri Lanka, India's island neighbor to the south, I was completely perplexed when I stumbled onto this...
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Manipuri Dance in Indian Cinema and the Beautiful Dances in Sanabi (1995,...
Reading about Manipuri Dance in books about Indian dance, especially those written pre-1990s, has always been quite entertaining to me. There is a distinct exoticised "othering" seen in statements like...
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Classical Dances in Recent Indian Films - Including Sattriya and Kootiyattam!
While I've been mostly looking back in history as I've blogged about Indian film dances for the past few years, a number of films have released in recent years with songs or scenes featuring classical...
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Remembering the Film Bharatanatyam of the Late Adyar K. Lakshman
When I learned the sad news yesterday that the Bharatanatyam Guru Adyar K. Lakshman has passed away, my mind immediately went to his excellent choreography in Indian cinema. Since it still seems that...
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Found: Vyjayanthimala's Devadasi Dance in Piya Milan (Choreographed by V.S....
Huge thanks are due to Mr. Naidu for uploading Vyjayanthimala's dance in the 1958 Hindi film Piya Milan (a dub of the 1956 Tamil film Marma Veeran) which was choreographed by the hereditary nattuvanar...
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Rabindra Nritya/Tagore Dances in Bengali Films
In my efforts over the past year to look beyond my focus on South Indian cinema dance to see what other regional cinemas of India have to offer, my research on Odissi, Manipuri, and Sattriya film...
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The "Indian" Dances in Kali Yug (1963, Italy/France/Germany)
Back in 2011 when I researched for my post series on Indian dances in Western films about India, I found some images from the 1963 Italian film Kali Yug that seemed to depict India and feature an...
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Mystery Indian Dancers in Seven Wonders of the World (1956, US)
When fellow Indian dance sleuth Ragothaman translated sections of Shankar Venkatraman's Tamil book Thiraiulagil Isai Kalaignargal (Musicians in Cinema), I was surprised to read a number of little-known...
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