Ipshita Rajesh Stockholm

I never fully understood this until I began travelling within India and internationally while also collecting stories. These are the stories that I share in turn, through my performances as, what I call myself, a dancer-storyteller.

Equipped with a graduate and post-graduate degree in Bharatanatyam in India, my international travels began in 2014 for an MA in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage, an Erasmus Mundus Masters programme for which I was the first Indian to receive a scholarship and I travelled to Norway, France, Hungary, and United Kingdom while interacting and getting a taste of various cultures and societies. It is during this time that I began questioning the global relevance of Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance that I have been learning for the past 23 years under the tutelage of some of India’s most revered teachers and Gurus – are only Indians or South Indians supposed to enjoy it? Does the audience have to know the stories being enacted, or appreciate Carnatic music to enjoy the performance? Does an international audience appreciate it only because of its ‘exotic’ nature – the silk costumes, beautiful jewellery, elaborate eye make-up, or the attami (side-to-side gliding movements of the neck)?

Ipshita Rajesh

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