Projects

The Projects section brings together the ongoing research initiatives developed under the framework of Re-learning the Nautch. These projects extend the institute’s central aim of examining performing bodies as sites of knowledge, negotiation, and historical transformation. Each project approaches the archive from a distinct analytical angle, drawing on textual records, visual materials, oral histories, and critical theory to explore how performance traditions have been documented, interpreted, and reshaped across time.

Rather than functioning as isolated studies, these projects form part of a larger research ecosystem. They investigate specific questions surrounding hereditary performance communities, the politics of cultural reform, embodied knowledge systems, and the shifting meanings attached to performance practices within colonial and postcolonial contexts. Through careful archival reading and interdisciplinary inquiry, the projects seek to illuminate how performers, institutions, and audiences have interacted within broader structures of power, morality, and cultural legitimacy.

Many of the initiatives presented here are collaborative in spirit, bringing together researchers, performers, and scholars who engage with the archive from different intellectual and experiential perspectives. In doing so, the Projects section reflects the institute’s commitment not only to documenting historical material, but also to cultivating new conversations and research pathways within the study of performance, body politics, and South Asian cultural history.

As the archive continues to expand, this section will grow alongside it, serving as a space where archival discoveries evolve into sustained research inquiries and where new questions about performance, memory, and knowledge can emerge.