Indian Diaspora

1) When watching a Bollywood film, the song and dance sequences may feel like “interruptions” or “non-linear” to the movie narrative for someone unfamiliar with watching this genre of film. Please describe two or more alternative ways of seeing the role these music/dance sequences play in Hindi film cinema. (6-8 sentences)

• Rather than seeing Bollywood song and dance sequences as interruptions to the story, they can be understood as an alternative narrative system with deep roots in Indian performance tradition. Scholar Lalitha Gopalan argues that these "interruptions" are actually purposeful and systematic — they carry emotional and narrative weight that straightforward dialogue cannot. Dance sequences often serve as shorthand for character development, revealing inner desires, dreams, and motivations that would otherwise remain private or unspoken. They also reference broader cultural contexts through choreographic choices — the type of dance, the setting, and the movement vocabulary all communicate meaning to an audience fluent in those codes. This format has ancient precedent in Indian epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata, classical and folk theater traditions, and Parsi theater, all of which used song and dance pauses similarly. So rather than breaking the story, these sequences are the story told in a different, richer language.

2) What is the history behind and what genres of theater, performance and/or dance forms have influenced Bollywood choreographies/Hindi film music/dance sequences to create this genre we recognize today? (6-8 sentences)

• Bollywood dance is a genuinely hybrid form built from centuries of Indian performance tradition fused with global influences. Its earliest roots lie in two celebrated Sanskrit epics — the Ramayana and Mahabharata — as well as classical Indian theater, folk theater traditions like the Yatra of Bengal and Tamasha of Maharashtra, and 19th century Parsi theater, all of which used song and dance sequences as central storytelling tools. Indian classical dance forms like Bharatanatyam and Kathak provided the foundation of gesture, facial expression, and movement vocabulary. At the same time, Bollywood continuously absorbed non-Indian influences — Western pop, jazz, hip-hop, Arabic dance, and even Charlie Chaplin's physical comedy have all left visible marks on Hindi film choreography. Today schools like Honey Kalaria's academy in London teach Bollywood as an explicit fusion of Indian classical, filmi, Punjabi, salsa, Arabic, hip-hop, street, and jazz — reflecting how the diaspora itself has further accelerated this blending into something genuinely new and global.

3) How did Bharatanatyam dance become “classical” and “respectable” enough to become a symbol for India’s cultural heritage? (5-7 sentences)

• Bharatanatyam's elevation to "classical" status was a deliberate political and cultural project tied to India's postcolonial nation-building. Originally called Sadir, it was practiced by Devadasis — temple dancers — and was considered disreputable under British colonial influence. In the early 20th century, reformers like Rukmini Devi Arundale worked to resignify the form by connecting it to Sanskrit texts, spiritual devotion, and high literary and musical standards, effectively separating it from its secular associations. The codification process incorporated mudras (hand gestures) and body positions from the ancient Natyashastra text, giving it a legitimizing historical authority. With the establishment of National and State Academies after independence, Indian dance was formally institutionalized along Euro-American lines, creating official categories of "classical," "folk," and "tribal" — and Bharatanatyam's carefully constructed spiritual and textual credentials placed it firmly at the top as a symbol of national cultural heritage.

4) Are performing Bollywood dance sequences in India versus performing outside of India the same experience for those who participate or watch these choreographies? If not, then why? (4-6 sentences)

• Performing or watching Bollywood dance outside India carries a fundamentally different emotional and cultural weight than it does within India. For the diaspora, Hindi films function as mediators of nostalgia — they bring the homeland into the diaspora and create what scholar Vijay Mishra calls an "imaginary solidarity" across diverse South Asian communities separated by language, region, and generation. For second-generation Indian Americans in particular, performing Bollywood at cultural shows becomes a way of enacting ethnic identity and asserting what it means to be Indian-American — it is less about authentic reproduction and more about packaging cultural nostalgia for a community negotiating its identity between two worlds. The choreography itself often shifts in this translation, with dancers selectively remembering, adapting, and reinterpreting movements through the lens of their own hybrid experience, making the performance a display of Indian-American identity rather than purely Indian identity.

5) What is the process of “surrogation” as proposed by Joseph Roach? Provide the examples of this process according to the chapter, and then provide your own historical example of this diasporic process. (4-6 sentences)

• Joseph Roach's concept of surrogation describes how culture reproduces itself through a three-sided relationship of memory, performance, and substitution — when something is performed, it is never an exact replica but always a selective act of remembering some things, forgetting others, and replacing what is lost with something new. In the Bollywood context, when the group Chamak staged "Dola re dola" from Devdas, they kept the unison movement between the two women but replaced assertive original movements with gestures from hip-hop and Indian classical dance — surrogating the film version with something that reflected their own Indian-American identity. A good historical example is Irish step dance in America — the informal communal social form from Ireland was remembered and preserved, but replaced over time with the competitive, theatrical, elaborately costumed style of Riverdance, creating a surrogate the diaspora now treats as the authentic tradition.