Is It All About Hips?
Around the World with Bollywood Dance
- Sangita Shresthova - Dancer and media artist
In this pioneering work, Sangita Shresthova brings alive the world of Bollywood dance through the chronicling and analyses of live performances, dance classes, film spectatorship, and personal narratives.
Watch how dances travel and meanings unravel…
The book, which zigzags through India, Nepal, the United States, is a fine blend of in depth research, humour, and astute cultural sensitivity….Is It All About Hips? has lot more to say.
Sangita Shresthova’s book is a personalised ethnography of Bollywood dance, and the reader follows her as she follows the trail of “Bollynatyam” form one continent to the other.
The book has plenty of useful notes at the end, a list of films and a glossary and the index is useful, too. This was an interesting read, indeed an enjoyable journey through Bollywood dance.
Her artistic vision, sensitivity to her subjects, and her eye to story-tell tough real world issues through visual performance in superb. I believe her rather unusual Czech/Nepali cultural background allows her to traverse nuanced cultural issues.
Shresthova`s experiences as a dancer and choreographer allow her to observe and describe these performances with a nuanced attention to detail, while her theoretical sophistication gives us a larger framework for thinking about what live performance means in an increasingly global, but nevertheless always local, culture.
An exciting, sensitive, accessible journey through Bollywood dance.