kNOwBOX dance Film Festival 2023
Official Selection Film Spotlight
Dancing The Fine Print
00:03:00 / Cambridge, United Kingdom
An insight into how the practice, performance and textual representation of Indian classical dance replicates socio-religious hierarchies within India.
What do you hope to communicate with our audience through your work?
Ranjini's PhD project is a practice-based inquiry into how the practice and performance of Indian classical dance replicates socio-religious hierarchies within India. In this short film, she examines how the newspaper became a site on which the dancing body was disciplined into a bodily carriage which must adhere to aesthetics determined by the dominant caste practitioners of dance. These words carried in the paper nudged the "classically trained" dancing body into a comportment which was considered to be morally befitting of the nation, disenfranchising hereditary practitioners of dance in the process.
Louis Norris is a filmmaker from London. His short films have been shown at festivals worldwide (including PÖFF Black Nights, London Short Film Festival, BFI Future Film Festival and Norwegian Short Film Festival), and have won a number of awards. Louis is also one half of 'Moving House', a film production company specialising in short documentaries about architecture that mesh together interviews and dance.
Ranjini Nair is a professional Kuchipudi dancer, building a practice-based methodology to research aesthetics as a politico-cultural choice in the making of Indian classical dance. She's currently doing a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Her research forms the basis of this film, which is a collaboration facilitated by Cambridge Creative Encounters.
Louis Norris - Director
Ranjini Nair - Writer
Selen Etingu-Breslaw - Producer
Connect
IG: @r.a.n.jini / @louis_norris_