Manjari Chaturvedi | The Uncharted History Of India's Tawaifs | At Algebra
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- If one of the measures of an artist’s mastery is their ability to open up whole new ways of seeing, Manjari Chaturvedi is inarguably one. A dancer extraordinaire for over two decades, she is pioneer and sole practitioner of sufi-kathak; trained in the Lucknow gharana of kathak.
But Manjari has taken her obsession with classical dance and turned it into more than expression: in her hands, it is cultural renaissance and syncretism; narrative form and dialogue. And nothing is more evocative of this than the Courtesan Project, through which Manjari chronicles the historically remarkable role of the ‘tawaif’ in artistic life: as exemplary artists and poets in themselves, and muse to other poets and painters, writers and kings, musicians and leaders.
And in conversation with the formidably articulate danseuse, we talk of her passion for returning to these women the reverence due them for their learning and their performance art; their intelligence and wit; their talent and raw sensual power, in Subversive Ustads.
#culturaldance #sufikathak
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Very engrossing...and I must say very informative too !!!! And can I say Manjari Chaturvedi is very beautiful with a v beautiful voice too !!! 👍👍👍👌👌👌👌👌👌👌
What a wonderful talk! I could be listening to this for at least more ten hours. Thank you for such valuable content!
Really good points
I am 5 year's late.
Filmstars aspire to be seen by us ! Not the other way -
Who were the teachers of the tawaifs? Who taught them music, dance and social etiquette that they are supposed to have excelled in and also passed on to the Urdu speaking elites of northern India?
Devdasiyan of temples!
Kathak dancing, Devadasi girls in temples, Natya Sastra, Kama sutra -- all of this was part of indian culture for over a millennia before the Mughal era. But Algebra keeps shoving it down our throats. Next they will say that Vipassana and Yoga are Sufi!
Kesarbai Kerkar, a tawaif? A court singer, yes. Nothing against tawaifs at all... but simply being a professional singer isn't the same as being a tawaif.
Mughal culture actually removed much of the eroticism in Krishna-Radha Kathak dances and made them into more somber expressions:
It should be remembered that the first Kathak dancers were, after all, Hindus who danced for Moghul overlords. Too much outward expression of religious belief was without doubt undesirable. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the wide use of 'abstract' dancing, intricate bell work (tatkar), dazzling turns and the fleeting, transient, glimpses of Radha and Krishna in Kathak arose both to remind the dancers about their reasons for dancing and (gently, unobtrusively) to deceive their courtly Moghul audiences. Perhaps tatkar and tukras formed the bulk of these first dancers' performances. Gradually more and more images, then stories of Krishna and Radha crept in. - Drid Williams, Anthropology of the Dance
As a kathak dancer if I may correct..mughals introduced Kathak in their courts from temples and with this singar ras was introduced and bhakti ras was out introducing sensuality to kathak ...
@@rashmikapoor42 Its a quote from a book by Drid Williams, a famous anthropologist of dance. You're correcting a quote.
Algebra is using its platform to Appropriate Hindu culture with Arabic names. Tawaif culture is nothing but Hindu Devadasi culture in Temples.
Isn't this a little reductionist. Devdasi culture would definitely be the base for it but by the time we come to a point in history where we start using the word Tawaif, the art form has already evolved a lot and galvanized into a separate culture altogether.
Or are you saying that the Devdasi dances and songs and Tawaif dances and songs were exactly the same with no differences whatsoever?
The irony is be it tawaif or devadas or thevaradiyar all have been used as a derogatory term of women
Put lipstick on a pig it is still a pig - put an arabic name to describe an Indian concept it is still Indian, just culturally appropriated.
Nice borat impression
There was no India back then, where does the appropriation come here then?
did this broad just compare Lata Mangeshkar to a Tawaif?
And with this statement you have hence proven her point. Even after hearing an hour of talk from somebody who has researched well into the history of the artform the most poignant thing you took away was that Lata Mangeshkar was compared to a Tawaif? You garbage of a human being they were exactly what Bollywood Actors and Singers are today. As a matter of fact their audience was the absolute elite of the society unlike the bollywood singers and actors who perform for the lowest common denominator. So a tawaif would have commanded much more authority and respect back then, than a lot of singers and actors in todays society. And judging by the very tiny amount of grey cells you seem to posses you are much more of a broad than an artist with not only the highest level of proficiency in her art form but also high levels of academic knowledge in her discourse.
Did your sickly brain just not get the implication? or were you born an idiot with zero understanding and intellect.
Yes
Desist calling someone a broad. It's derogatory
They just addressed both of them as artists.