Research and Publications

Pallabi’s academic research focuses on dance and national identity, the anthropology of performance, processes of globalization, embodiment, gender, and the intersection of religion and performative practices.  Her geographical focus is on south Asia.

She recently completed a book titled Bells of Change: Kathak Dance, Women and Modernity in India which is forthcoming from Seagull Press.  This is the first critical study of Kathak, a classical Indian dance from North and East India.  The book traces two centuries of Kathak, from the colonial nautch dance to classical Kathak under nationalism and post-colonialism, to transnationalism and globalization.  She reorients dance scholarship to focus on the lived experiences of dancers from a wide cross-section of society, and places the history of Kathak from baijis and tawaifs to the global stage. She also co-edited a monograph recently titled Performing Ecstasy: The Poetics and Politics of Religion in South Asia.  It is currently being evaluated. Her current research focuses on dance and song sequences and the role of extras (the background dancers) in Hindi and Bengali films.  

As a dancer and choreographer she uses anthropological knowledge in making dance works to address community-based issues.  Her movement works use everyday movements and stylized gestures and her innovations are based on structures of Indian traditional idioms and western notions of choreography.

Publications:

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2007.  BELLS OF CHANGE: KATHAK DANCE, WOMEN, AND MODERNITY IN INDIA.  Calcutta: Seagull Books

Chakravorty Pallabi and Scott Kugle.  Forthcoming.  Performing Ecstasy: The Politics and Poetics of Religion in South Asia.  Currently being evaluated.

Chakravorty, Pallabi. Forthcoming. Dancing into Modernity: The Multiple Narratives of India’s Kathak Dance. Dance Research Journal. Refereed

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2006. Some Limits Of Orientalism: The Discourse of Heritage in Classical Indian Dance In Reorienting Orientalism, Chandrei Niyogi, Editor. New Delhi: Sage

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2005.  “Bhakti in Modernity and Modernity in Bhakti: Kathak and Kabir”.  Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, Vol 5: 2. Refereed

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2004.  “Dance, Pleasure, and Indian Women as Multisensorial Subjects”, Visual Anthropology.  March, Vol. 17 (1), 1-17. Refereed

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2004.  “Kathak in Calcutta: A Story of Tradition and Change.” In Culture Studies: An Introduction for Indian Readers, Nilanjana Gupta (Ed.), Worldview Press: New Delhi.

Chakravorty, Pallabi (Editor). 2004.  Dance In South Asia: New Approaches, Politics, and Aesthetics, Proceedings.  Swarthmore College Cooper Publication .

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2004. “Agency in Tradition: Gendered Subjectivity through the Practice of Kathak.” In Dance in South Asia: New Approaches, Politics, and Aesthetics, Proceedings, Pallabi Chakravorty (Ed.).  Swarthmore College Cooper Publication.

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2004.  “In Search of a Past for the Present”.  Pulse.  Summer, Volume # 8, P: 20-22.

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2003.  South Asian Dance: Coming of Age in U.S Universities.  Pulse.  Winter, Volume # 4:14-15

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2002.  Symposium on South Asian Dance (a report).  Dance Research Journal 34/2, Winter, P:121-124. Refereed

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2002. Kathak in Calcutta: A Story of Tradition and Change. Society of Dance History Scholars Proceedings. June 2002, P: 15-20.

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2002  Runaway Wives: Customary Divorce and Remarriage in Shivpuri District.  Film Review.  Visual Anthropology Review,Vol.18 (1-2).

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2002.  Dance Symposium on South Asia.  Sruti  August, Issue 215: 33-35

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2000. From Interculturalism to Historicism: Reflections on Classical Indian dance", Dance Research Journal 32/2 Winter 2000/01: 100-111. Refereed

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 1998. Dance, Hegemony, and Nation: The Construction of Classical Dance in India, South Asia 21: 107-120.  Refereed

Other Writing

Chakravorty, Pallabi. 2006.   Review of the Film “Guria, Gossip and Globalization” by Amelia Macizewsky for H-Gender-MidEast Review.

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2006.  “Stitching it Together: A Report on the Live Tradition Festival”.  Celebrasia (now renamed Remapping).

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  2005. “Letter to the Editor”.  Dance Research Journal. 37/1

Chakravorty, Pallabi.  1997.  “Readers Feedback”, Little India.

Numerous articles were published in The Telegraph where I worked as a dance critic. 

Ethnographic Film

Kathak in the City: Women of Calcutta Speak and Dance.  A 20-minute ethnographic film on the women practitioners of Kathak dance in Calcutta; in collaboration with Sanjoy Chakravorty and Cate Leonard.