Art — Culture — Dance

DECOLONISING DANCE

Through academic research and performance, Louth-based Indian classical dancer Subhashini Goda seeks to explore what art is capable of when you look beyond gender norms and the idea of perfection. Sarah McKenna Barry spoke to the multi-disciplinary artist about their journey with dance and their vision for the future of the art form. Photo taken from An talamh faoi gheasa – The Enchanted Land by Pradeep Mahadeshwar.

Whether it’s through study or art, dance plays a central part in Subhashini Goda’s life. The Louth-based Bharatanatyam practitioner was the recipient of the prestigious Emma O’Kane dance bursary in 2024, and last year, they had a featured role in An Talamh faoi gheasa – The Enchanted Land, a film by Pradeep Mahadeshwar. Subhashini also recently completed a PhD in Cultural Studies and Dance Anthology from University College Dublin.

Indeed, they have come a long way since their journey with dance first began during their childhood in India.

“I was five years old when I started dancing and it was because I had seen a show in my hometown with a bunch of dancers that were just passing through, and my family decided to take me to see it,” they say. “I saw those people on the stage and I was like, ‘I think I want to do that’.”

Subhashini began taking lessons in Bharatanatyam, a form of Indian classical dance that originates from Tamil Nadu in southern India. However, when they entered their early teens, they began to “hate” it.

“I just felt like it was too disciplinary and people were expecting you to really do exactly what you are told,” they say. “I have always had a problem with authority, so I was like, ‘this won’t do’.”

In their late teens, Subhashini suffered a knee injury and was unable to dance for a year. However, after rehabilitation, they returned to classes under a different structure and rediscovered their passion for Bharatanatyam.

The dance form dates back to 500BC and was performed in the temples and courts by the devadasis – female artists who dedicated their lives to worship, and occupied a status in Indian life through which there is no equivalent in Western culture. For instance, the devadasis were regarded as the protectors of the arts, and were affluent as a result, with many receiving land, property and jewellery. However, under British colonisation, they were viewed as sex-workers, the practice was outlawed, and the artists were ostracised.

“The history is very complicated and very complex,” Subhashini says. “Many of us who practice Bharatanatyam have built on the sacrifices of these women who are not even recognised anymore. I carry a lot of responsibility when I perform it.”

Subhashini’s devotion to the dance form is evident, but so too is their desire to challenge some aspects of Bharatanatyam and explore what is possible beyond some of its conventions. Through academia, Subhashini examines the ways in which gender, religion and identity are wrapped up in Bharatanatyam.

“My problem with the way I learnt dance, was the very rigid gender roles it was perpetuating, and its ideas of perfection and religious symbolism,” they say.

According to Subhashini, gender plays out in “very specific ways” in Bharatanatyam.

“Teachers told me, ‘Don’t jump too high – you’re a girl, don’t do it so powerfully, don’t do things like a man,” they say. “On the other side, for male-presenting people, they’re usually told, ‘Don’t be so effeminate because people are going to judge you.’ As a result, there is a little bit of hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity that comes with the very played out performative genders in the dance form.”

Subhashini hopes to challenge this ideology through both research and performance.

“The more research I did, as well as in my own practice, I was more interested in seeing what Bharatnatyam could be or what dance could be beyond these kinds of markers. So, that’s something that I’m kind of exploring for myself,” they say.

Subhashini hopes that interrogating some of Bharatanatyam’s conventions will help open the art form to new practitioners.

“By itself, the art form has a lot of potential for kind of breaking barriers and boundaries and transcultural work but the way it’s practised now is very compartmentalised,” they say.

Additionally, Bharatanatyam is a form of storytelling; however, many of the established narratives are not relatable to contemporary audiences or performers, Subhashini explains.

“There’s always a woman who is pining for a lover, the lover is always a guy – I don’t relate to most of this,” they say. “I’m sure there are people who don’t relate, but are imagining it differently, so it works for them, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the dance form has become incredibly one-dimensional when it doesn’t need to be.”

Decolonising the dance is another important aspect of Subhashini’s work.

“When British colonisers left India, one of the things that happened was the reform and the revival movement,” Subhashini says. “The reform specifically focused on devadasi women becoming ‘respectable’ by getting married into families and having a good social standing. The revival was intent on reviving the dance form, but the problem was that it was being revived by upper caste people who were already, most of the time, British-educated, so the dance had a lot of English influence. The pedagogy was influenced by ballet, which is why you see ballet-like movements, with respect to the plié and the perfect lines.”

This revived form of the dance contrasts greatly with Bharatanatyam’s origins.

“If you look at old-school videos of devadasi women dancing, it’s worlds apart because we’ve been so influenced by outside dance forms,” Subhashini says.

In Ireland, the dancer performs regularly, and they are currently working on a piece of art that plays with the idea of inter-futurism.

“It’s the idea of what the future would be like if we had not been colonised,” they say. “I’m weaving movement into it, and I’m working with the idea of mass-consumption and textiles, and this return to slowness as a way of decolonising ourselves. It’s going to be this abstract dance on stage, which looks like a ritual, but it’s not. I just want to fuck around with people a bit.”