Past Events
Dancing with Shakti: Film Screening & Discussion
When: Thursday, September 11, 2008Dancing with Shakti A film by Anita Kumar
A film screening and discussion with Anita Kumar, Arthi Devarajan, Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, and Harshita Mruthinti
Thursday, September 11, 2008, 4-6:30 pm
White Hall 206, Emory University
Screening begins at 4:00 pm
Dinner from Bhojanic follows the discussion
Sponsored by the Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology and Practical Matters: A Transdisciplinary Multimedia Journal of Religious Practices and Practical Theology
Dancing with Shakti (2008, 59 minutes) emerged from the filmmaker¿¿¿s childhood experience of confronting in a quite visceral manner her own sense of difference, of what it meant to grow up Other in a white-majority state. The film is thus an exploration of autobiography as a genre in visual texts, an experiment in personal voice and critical reflexivity within the documentary.
Dancing with Shakti is also a cultural biography of Viji Prakash, who migrated from Mumbai to L.A. in 1976, and soon established Shakti, a bharatanatyam (South Indian classical dance) school and company. The film reveals Viji¿¿¿s remarkable success in the production and circulation of the dance form within as well as outside the South Asian diasporic community. The film¿¿¿s depiction of the ethnic diversity of Viji¿¿¿s students contests essential notions of race and nationhood, rewriting them as a performative field. By highlighting difference, performativity, and cultural hybridity throughout the piece, Kumar demonstrates that the notion of community is itself heterogeneous and always in flux.
Anita Kumar is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Southern California. Her research explores violence against women in the South Asian community in the U.S. She is currently a Research Associate at Amnesty International USA.