Performer Voices & Oral Histories

As part of the Re-Learning the Nautch project, we spoke with Sahil Mudaliyar a young Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi practitioner about their experiences, reflections on classical dance pedagogy, and encounters with historical narratives, particularly around the Devadasi system and Sadir. Sahul has been studying Bharatanatyam for six years and Kuchipudi for five, offering a rich perspective as a student deeply engaged with both the technical and historical aspects of these art forms.

When asked about their exposure to discussions on Devadasis and Sadir, Sahil explained that while their formal education did not always foreground these histories, they encountered them through self-study and classroom discussions: “We used to have healthy discussions in class without disputes. Learning about Devadasis and Sadir gave me a deeper understanding of the cultural and historical roots of Bharatanatyam.” This awareness, they shared, reshaped how they view the dance: “Actually, learning even a little about Devadasis and Sadir changed how I view Bharatanatyam as a form. It is central to understanding it as an art, and not just a performance tradition.”

The interview highlighted the importance of engaging with difficult or complex histories in dance education. The practitioner emphasized that while knowledge of Devadasis and the transformation of Sadir into Bharatanatyam is essential, it should not be treated as a burden: “I think that practitioners have a responsibility to engage with these histories even if briefly, but not as a burden.” This perspective aligns with the goals of Re-Learning the Nautch, which seeks to amplify the lived experiences and historical contexts that have often been marginalized or erased.

Reflecting on the selective memory of history in classical dance, Sahil observed, “History is selectively remembered based upon events, popularity, and controversies. Some narratives are left unspoken. Sadir, which is now known as Bharatanatyam, has been widely refined and practiced, while the Devadasis have been largely erased from the history of Indian classical dance.” This insight underscores how societal, cultural, and institutional choices shape collective memory, affecting which stories are celebrated, refined, or erased.

The conversation also touched on the personal and cultural significance of dance. Sahil a Keralite, described how learning about the Devadasis reshaped their understanding of Bharatanatyam as an art form rooted in cultural practice: “It is rooted in my culture, so learning about Devadasis has changed my view, considering Bharatanatyam as a true art form rather than just a performance.” This reflects the way historical knowledge, personal identity, and embodied practice intersect in shaping a dancer’s experience.

Finally, Mr. Mudaliyar shared a reflective quote in Tamil that resonates deeply with the ethos of classical dance: “If the dance is worship, then the stage will be your temple.” This statement encapsulates the spiritual and performative dimensions of Bharatanatyam, emphasizing that dance is not only technical mastery but also devotion, expression, and cultural continuity.

The interview concluded with explicit consent for the material to be featured in the project’s journal, The Énoncé.Their perspective highlights the value of documenting practitioner voices, offering insights into pedagogy, historical awareness, and the ongoing negotiation between tradition and contemporary practice.

This interview exemplifies the aims of Re-Learning the Nautch: to create a living archive of classical and cultural dance traditions by recording the experiences, reflections, and interpretations of practitioners themselves. By foregrounding the histories of Devadasis, Sadir, and the cultural contexts of Bharatanatyam, this project encourages critical engagement, mentorship, and reflective practice, ensuring that these stories and embodied knowledge endure for future generations.

Through narratives like these, the archive fosters understanding not only of the art itself but also of the broader social, cultural, and historical forces that have shaped its evolution. It reminds us that dance is simultaneously personal and collective, a form of expression, memory, and cultural heritage, whose histories must be remembered, interrogated, and celebrated in their full complexity.

As part of the Re-Learning the Nautch project, we spoke with Ansh, a young Kathak practitioner of the Lucknow Gharana, about his experiences, reflections on Nautch history, and the ways in which gender, lineage, and memory shape the art form today. Ansh has been practicing Kathak for over a decade, though his formal training began only recently in class 11. His story highlights both the personal and social dimensions of dance in contemporary India.

When asked about his training journey, Ansh shared, “I haven’t formally learned Kathak since childhood, but I’ve always performed on my own. My family noticed my interest in dance and encouraged me to learn formally. This year, I took Kathak as my optional subject, so this is my first year of proper learning. However, I’ve been practicing roughly for 11 years.” Despite the informal nature of much of his early practice, his commitment and self-motivation reflect a deep, embodied connection to the art, echoing the improvisational spirit that characterized historic Nautch performers.

As a male dancer, Ansh has faced specific societal expectations and challenges. He described the tension between personal passion and public perception: “I faced many obligations in my childhood of being called feminine or gay. It was painful to live in a society where dance is often seen negatively. But my mother always supported me, and when I dance, I forget everything and just indulge in my art. Over time, I realized that dance is art, and art has no gender. I portray both female and male characters with full enthusiasm, without any guilt or shame.” His reflections underscore how Kathak performance is not merely about rhythm and narrative; it is also a negotiation of identity and a medium for expressing a spectrum of embodied energies.

Ansh’s engagement with the history of Kathak, particularly the role of Nautch dancers and Tawaifs, illustrates how contemporary practitioners confront gaps and silences in traditional pedagogy. He noted, “During my Kathak lessons, I learned about the Tawaifs—their origins, living standards, and their role in Kathak history. Kathak became popular in the Mughal era, evolving from temple performances to entertainment in kingdoms. Tawaifs played a crucial role in this history.” He was candid about the historical erasure of these artists: “Yes, they were treated very badly. They were erased from history books. A dancer, an artist, was often displayed in demeaning ways. But Kathak is art, and art can be acknowledged by anyone.”

Ansh’s perspective highlights the tension between authenticity and contemporary perception. When asked what students should know about Kathak, he emphasized history and significance. Regarding ongoing discomforts within the form, he explained, “People think Kathak is old-fashioned, maybe. Authenticity is required more.” When prompted to reflect on Kathak as a memory, and whose memories are represented in contemporary practice, he responded simply, “Something else,” hinting at alternative, often overlooked narratives that continue to shape the art today.

These reflections reveal multiple layers of Kathak as both heritage and living practice. Ansh’s story illustrates the transformative potential of dance as a medium for personal expression, cultural memory, and scholarly inquiry. His experiences also foreground the importance of mentorship, inclusive pedagogy, and critical engagement with history in shaping the next generation of Kathak practitioners.

Ansh’s contributions demonstrate the value of documenting lived experiences alongside formal training. By including voices like his, the Re-Learning the Nautch project seeks to recover stories of agency, resilience, and creativity that have often been marginalized or erased. His narrative emphasizes that Kathak is not only a technical discipline but also a space for negotiating identity, engaging with memory, and reinterpreting history in contemporary contexts.

This interview, conducted via chat, is part of the RTN project’s effort to combine scholarly rigor with personal narrative, creating a layered understanding of classical dance forms. By foregrounding the perspectives of active practitioners, the project provides primary sources that inform teaching modules, workshops, and curriculum development, ensuring that Kathak’s traditions are preserved, interpreted, and reimagined with integrity.

In Ansh’s words, the journey of Kathak—both as art and as lived experience—is defined not just by lineage or technique but by engagement, reflection, and resilience. He reminds us that dance is a medium for expressing the full spectrum of human experience, and that embracing its history and memory is essential to sustaining its relevance today.

The Re-Learning the Nautch project gratefully acknowledges Ansh’s participation and permission to feature this interview. His insights contribute meaningfully to the broader conversation about Kathak’s history, pedagogy, and future, and exemplify the type of nuanced reflection that RTN seeks to document.

As part of the Re-Learning the Nautch archive, this interview documents a conversation with Bharatanatyam practitioner Gulshan Kumar, whose journey challenges conventional assumptions about the dancing body, pedagogy, and access within Indian classical dance. Although this interview was not formally recorded, it is reconstructed from attentive listening and reflective note-making, preserving the core ideas, critiques, and insights shared during the conversation.

Gulshan Kumar is a dancer who identifies as disabled and practices Bharatanatyam while using a wheelchair. His practice, achievements, and public performances—some of which have received international recognition, including mentions of world records—stand as a powerful intervention in how classical dance spaces define capability, discipline, and legitimacy. Rather than positioning disability as limitation, Gulshan’s practice reframes it as a site of innovation, resilience, and expanded pedagogy.

A central theme of the conversation was access to training. Gulshan spoke critically about how many gurus and institutions hesitate to teach young students with disabilities, often due to assumptions about “physical structure,” correctness of posture, or the perceived impossibility of executing prescribed movements. This exclusion, he noted, is rarely articulated openly but operates through silence, discouragement, or denial of opportunity. His critique was not directed at individuals alone, but at a larger pedagogical culture that equates classical dance excellence with a narrowly defined able-bodied ideal.

Importantly, Gulshan emphasized that his engagement with Bharatanatyam is not a symbolic or diluted version of the form. He performs Bharatanatyam as Bharatanatyam, without redefining it as something lesser or separate. The grammar of movement, rhythm, expression, and devotion remains intact. Where footwork would traditionally be articulated through stamped steps, he translates rhythm through the controlled tapping and movement of his wheelchair, aligning his upper body, hands, and torso with tala and musical structure. This adaptation, rather than deviating from the form, reveals its underlying logic more clearly: Bharatanatyam is not only about legs—it is about rhythm embodied.

In this sense, Gulshan’s practice exposes an often-unquestioned assumption within classical dance pedagogy: that authenticity depends on a single physical template. His work suggests instead that authenticity lies in commitment to structure, intention, and rasa, not in conformity to a fixed body type. By performing with the same rigor, seriousness, and aesthetic discipline as other Bharatanatyam dancers, he resists narratives that frame disabled dancers as inspirational exceptions rather than serious practitioners.

The conversation also addressed achievement and recognition. Gulshan spoke about reaching national and international platforms and being associated with world records, including Guinness recognitions. These accomplishments matter not as trophies, but as evidence that disabled dancers can meet—and redefine—standards of excellence when given access and opportunity. At the same time, he was careful not to present success as the only measure of worth. The deeper concern, he suggested, is building systems that do not require extraordinary achievement simply to justify inclusion.

Another important insight from the interview was Gulshan’s forward-looking stance. Rather than dwelling only on barriers he faced, he spoke about building something new—a future where classical dance pedagogy is more inclusive, thoughtful, and flexible without compromising rigor. This involves training environments that adapt teaching methods rather than excluding bodies, and gurus who are willing to rethink how they communicate rhythm, movement, and expression. His vision aligns closely with the goals of Re-Learning the Nautch: to question inherited structures while remaining deeply respectful of tradition.

Gulshan’s narrative also raises critical questions for the broader classical dance ecosystem. Who is classical dance for? Whose bodies are imagined when syllabi are written, stages are built, and auditions are conducted? And what histories of exclusion remain unexamined under the guise of “purity” or “discipline”? While his interview focused on disability, these questions resonate with other marginalized experiences across gender, caste, class, and geography.

Within the context of Bharatanatyam’s long history—shaped by reform, codification, and selective visibility—Gulshan’s practice becomes part of an ongoing process of reinterpretation. His work does not reject tradition; it insists on its capacity to hold more than it currently does. By embodying rhythm through wheels, gesture through precision, and devotion through persistence, he expands what the Bharatanatyam body can signify.

This archived interview is included in Re-Learning the Nautch as a record of lived pedagogy—knowledge produced not only in classrooms or texts, but through bodies navigating structures that were not designed for them. Gulshan Kumar’s journey reminds us that classical dance is not static inheritance, but a living practice shaped by those who dare to enter it on their own terms.

This conversation foregrounds pedagogy as a deeply personal and reflective practice rather than a purely technical one. Ms Nainika situates memory primarily within the personal—recalling her own experiences as a student—while also acknowledging the presence of inherited gestures that exceed individual training. Rather than attaching fixed meanings to these movements, she describes her relationship with dance as holistic, suggesting an understanding of embodiment that resists rigid historicization.

Her articulation of lineage is notably non-hierarchical. Instead of positioning lineage as authority-bound or guru-centric, she frames it as something accessed through stories, repertoire, and historical continuity. This aligns with RTN’s interest in lineage as transmission rather than ownership.

Importantly, Nainika identifies silences within dance ecosystems—particularly around privilege, access, mental health, and abuse. While performances and histories are publicly celebrated, the structural and emotional realities of training remain under-discussed. Her reflections on privilege—urban access, nutrition, and bodily conditioning—extend this critique to contemporary pedagogy, highlighting how training spaces can unintentionally exclude many bodies and backgrounds.

Her response to questions of authenticity resists absolutism. By emphasizing honesty and process over fixed definitions, she acknowledges the generational gap in how authenticity is perceived, while refusing to position one era’s understanding as superior. Finally, her hope that future dancers question perfectionism and performativity reflects a pedagogical ethic grounded in care, dialogue, and critical self-awareness.

Together, her responses contribute to RTN’s thesis of dance as a living archive—one that preserves lineage while remaining open to interrogation, vulnerability, and change.

In this interview, Kathak practitioner Shweta Satish Kushwah offers a reflective and historically grounded perspective on the relationship between Kathak, Nautch, and the tawaif traditions, addressing the tension between artistic continuity and shifting social perceptions. She emphasizes that while the contexts in which Kathak was performed changed over time—from temples to royal courts and later to kothas—the art itself remained intact in its aesthetic purity, technical rigor, and expressive depth.

Shweta draws attention to the gendered ways in which tawaifs were historically viewed, particularly as women performing before male-dominated audiences in courtly and nawabi settings. She notes that this social framing often led to their work being dismissed as mere entertainment, obscuring their profound artistic contributions. However, she resists the notion that these associations compromised the form. Instead, she asserts that Kathak’s movement vocabulary, rhythmic complexity, and emotional expression were preserved and, in many ways, enriched during this period.

A significant part of her reflection centers on the role of tawaifs in shaping Kathak’s abhinaya and musical traditions. She highlights the development of thumri and bhav pradarshan as key expressive forms that flourished through the artistry of tawaifs, naming figures such as Gauhar Jaan as cultural innovators rather than peripheral performers. Through this lens, tawaifs emerge not as passive transmitters of tradition but as composers, interpreters, and custodians of refined aesthetic knowledge.

By separating moral judgment from artistic practice, Shweta challenges narratives that position Kathak’s courtly history as a deviation from an earlier, “purer” temple tradition. Her account underscores a core argument of Re-Learning the Nautch: that the marginalization of tawaifs represents a historical and cultural erasure, not an artistic decline. The interview thus reframes Nautch not as a footnote in Kathak’s history, but as a central chapter whose contributors deserve recognition within both pedagogy and performance discourse today.