Dancing bodies of devotion : fluid gestures in Bharata natyam /

Zubko (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Asheville) argues for Bhakti rasa (aesthetic flavor of devotion) in the classical Indian dance form bharata natyam, and suggests, through ethnographic examples, that there are multiple ways of embodying and communicating this devotional mood. The author's expertise in dance (as well as religion) is evident, and she points out how a dance associated with Hinduism is, in fact, also used to communicate non-Hindu--but definitively Indian--ideas and emotions. For nonexperts, the glossaries of terms and gestures will be useful and necessary, though some of the "thick descriptions" of dances will be too dense to follow. For connoisseurs of this dance form, dance descriptions provide an opportunity to experience the rasa without seeing (or perhaps by imagining) the performance. Unlike Barbara Browning--in her reader-friendly Samba: Resistence in Motion (CH, Apr'96, 33-4415)--Zubko eschews most personal involvement, though she includes vignettes of her research experiences. She moves from one of bharata natyam's most celebrated exponents, Balasaraswati, to the much less-known Tehreema Mitha, categorizing performances as primarily devotional, educational, or cultural. In a final section she discusses what she calls "performed pluralism," echoing arguments about India's "unity in diversity" and "the one and the many." Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; professionals. --Joan L. Erdman, Columbia College Chicago