A Guru's Journey by Sarah Morelli

A Guru's Journey by Sarah Morelli

An important modern exponent of Asian dance, Pandit Chitresh Das brought kathak to the United States in 1970. The North Indian classical dance has since become an important art form within the greater Indian diaspora. Yet its adoption outside of India raises questions about what happens to artistic practices when we separate them from their broader cultural contexts.

A Guru's Journey provides an ethnographic study of the dance form in the San Francisco Bay Area community formed by Das. Sarah Morelli, a kathak dancer and one of Das's former students, investigates issues in teaching, learning, and performance that developed around Das during his time in the United States. In modifying kathak's form and teaching for Western students, Das negotiates questions of Indianness and non-Indianness, gender, identity, and race. Morelli lays out these issues for readers with the goal of deepening their knowledge of kathak aesthetics, technique, and theory. She also shares the intricacies of footwork, facial expression in storytelling, and other aspects of kathak while tying them to the cultural issues that inform the dance.

"Novel, original, and impressiveA story of the dance and one of its most important personalities, and an important book for all interested in the diaspora of Indian and Eastern arts."--George E. Ruckert, author of Music in North India: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture

Sarah Morelli is an associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Denver and a performing kathak artist.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780252042867
ISBN 10	0252042867
Title	A Guru's Journey
Author	Sarah Morelli
Series	Music In American Life Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	University of Illinois Press
Year published	2019-12-15
Number of pages	270
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.