Flexible Bodies

Flexible Bodies honors the lives and labor of British South Asian dancers and celebrates their contributions to a distinct and dynamic sector of British dance. Drawing on expertise gained from over seven years dancing in Britain, author Anusha Kedhar presents a multifaceted picture of British
South Asian dance as its own distinctive genre.�Analyzing dance works, dance films, rehearsals, and touring - alongside immigration policy, arts funding initiatives, and global economic conditions - Flexible Bodies traces shifts in British South Asian dance from 1990s "Cool Britannia"
multiculturalism to fallout from the 2008 global financial crisis and, more recently, the anti-immigration rhetoric leading up to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Kedhar draws on over a decade of interviews and conversations with dancers in Britain as well as in-depth choreographic analysis of major
dance works to reveal the creative ways in which British South Asian dancers negotiate neoliberal, multicultural dance markets through an array of flexible bodily practices. Providing a new, critical dance studies lens through which to view the precarious economic, racial, national, and legal
positions of South Asians in Britain, Flexible Bodies�ultimately argues for centering dance labor in studies of neoliberalism.

"Flexible Bodies charts the emergence of British South Asian dance as a distinctive dance genre. Analyzing dances, dance films, rehearsals, workshops, and touring alongside immigration policy, arts funding initiatives, citizenship discourse, and global economic conditions, author Anusha Kedhar evokes the feel of British South Asian dance as it moves from 'Cool Britannia' multiculturalism in the 1990s to fractious race relations in the wake of the July 7th, 2005 terrorist attacks to austerity measures and the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, and, finally, to the Brexit referendum in 2016. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with dancers in Britain and India, in-depth choreographic analysis of major dance works, and the author's own lived experiences as a professional dancer in London, Flexible Bodies tells the story of British South Asian dancers and the creative ways in which they negotiate the demands of neoliberal, multicultural dance markets through an array of flexible bodily practices, including agility, versatility, mobility, speed, and risk-taking. However, flexibility, the book demonstrates, is also a precarious road to success that can stretch dancers (almost) to breaking point. Theorizing flexibility as material and metaphor, the book argues that flexibility is both a tool of labor exploitation and a bodily tactic that British South Asian dancers exploit to navigate volatile economic and political conditions. With its unique focus on the everyday aspects of dancing and dance-making Flexible Bodies honors the lives and labor of dancers and their contributions to a distinct and dynamic sector"--

"Vivid, engaging, and insightful, Flexible Bodies: British South Asian Dancers in an Age of Neoliberalism draws its readers into the working lives of dancers navigating Cool Britannia's transformation into the UK of post-7/7 and Brexit. Well-researched and deftly argued, Flexible Bodies makes a
compelling case for understanding dance as an integral part of neoliberalism's demands for and restrictions on human movement." -- Janet O'Shea, author of At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage (2007)

"Flexible Bodies is the first monograph that skillfully and boldly examines the South Asian dance sector in the UK by centring the lives, labours, material conditions, artistries and hybrid postcolonialities of the dancers at the intersections of British multiculturalism and neoliberalism. Kedhar's
dexterity to bring together complex ethnographic fieldwork, historiography, performance analysis and political economic analysis is commendable. Thoroughly researched, evocatively written and compellingly argued, the study signals the futures of dance studies as fundamentally interdisciplinary and
places the racialisations of danced labour at its heart." -- Royona Mitra, author of Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (2015)