About

Relearning the Nautch (RTN) is a digital research institute, archive, and publication platform dedicated to the study of Kathak, courtesan culture, dance history, music history, performance traditions, and cultural memory in South Asia. Through archival research, interviews, essays, source notes, and public scholarship, RTN explores the histories of performers, artistic communities, and cultural worlds that have shaped South Asian performance traditions.

Our Mission

"Relearning the Nautch is dedicated to researching, documenting, and critically examining the histories of Kathak, courtesan culture, dance, music, and performance in South Asia. Through archives, interviews, publications, and public scholarship, RTN seeks to make research accessible while fostering deeper engagement with performance, memory, heritage, and cultural history."

What We Study?

RTN's research focuses on:

Kathak
Courtesan Culture and Tawaif Histories
Hindustani Music
Performance Studies
Cultural Memory
Gender and Performance
South Asian Cultural History
Archives and Oral Histories
Colonialism and Performance

What We Do?

Interviews

Documenting conversations with dancers, musicians, scholars, archivists, and cultural practitioners to capture perspectives on artistic practice, pedagogy, memory, history, and contemporary performance.

The Repertoire

Publishing research papers, essays, reviews, and source notes that explore performance history, cultural history, heritage, historiography, and the artistic traditions of South Asia.

Resources

Providing reading lists, bibliographies, glossaries, and research guides that make scholarship on dance, music, performance, and cultural history more accessible to wider audiences.

Our Methodology

RTN approaches performance as both an artistic and historical practice.

Rather than studying dance and music solely as aesthetic forms, the project examines how performance intersects with questions of memory, identity, gender, labor, patronage, power, and cultural change.

Research is conducted through:

Archival Research
Oral History
Interview-Based Documentation
Performance Analysis
Historiography
Cultural History
Public Humanities

Why "Relearning the Nautch"?

The project takes its name from the colonial term "nautch," once used to describe a wide range of South Asian dance and performance practices. To relearn is not simply to recover forgotten histories. It is to revisit inherited narratives, question established assumptions, and remain open to new interpretations. RTN therefore approaches performance history as an ongoing process of inquiry, revision, and discovery.

Questions We Ask

How are performance traditions remembered and forgotten?
How do dancers, musicians, and performers transmit knowledge across generations?
What role did courtesans, hereditary performers, and artistic communities play in shaping cultural history?
How do archives represent performance, and what remains absent from them?
How have colonialism, reform movements, nationalism, and modernity reshaped performance traditions?
What can the performing body reveal about history?

Vision

The long-term vision of Re-learning the Nautch is to develop a sustained research infrastructure for the study of hereditary performing communities and the historical transformations of performance cultures in South Asia. By assembling and organizing dispersed archival materials, the project seeks to make visible the institutional, social, and intellectual processes through which the category of the nautch emerged, evolved, and was ultimately reinterpreted within colonial and postcolonial cultural frameworks.

Beyond documentation, the initiative aims to encourage new lines of inquiry into the historical relationship between artistic labor, social hierarchy, and cultural authority. In doing so, Re-learning the Nautch seeks to contribute to broader scholarly conversations in fields such as South Asian Studies, History, and Performance Studies by providing a platform where archival evidence, analytical writing, and interdisciplinary dialogue can intersect.

Over time, the project hopes to expand into a comprehensive digital repository and research environment that supports comparative study, critical interpretation, and the continued re-examination of South Asia’s hereditary performance traditions.

An Evolving Archive

Re-learning the Nautch remains an evolving project. As new materials, perspectives, and collaborations emerge, the archive continues to expand seeking to document, question, and reinterpret the complex histories of performance across South Asia.

Join the Archive

RTN welcomes conversations with artists, scholars, researchers, archivists, students, and cultural practitioners interested in the histories of Kathak, courtesan culture, dance history, music history, and South Asian performance traditions.

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