A guru's journey : pandit Chitresh Das and Indian classical dance in diaspora.

Combining scholarly depth with hagiography requires distancing and objectivity; this is the challenge in A Guru's Journey. Both an ethnographer and a dancer/musician, Morelli (Univ. of Denver) meets that challenge in telling the story of kathak dance guru Chitresh Das's American success. Morelli explores Das's ambitions, drawing on her deep knowledge of kathak and the challenges in crossing cultures, gendering dance, and evolving self-awareness as an artist. For dance historians, this analysis offers new insights into practice in its times. For ethnographers, Morelli provides significant historical and analytic research to embed participant-observation. For dancers and other artists, she suggests how personal pathways and wider contexts intertwine. Those involved with Western dance forms will find ideas about gender and creativity, teaching complexity, relating one's own training to new artistic pathways, and evolving a dance's form through a lifetime of dance engagement. Das's kathak in San Francisco and its surround is a story of incremental practice and expertise, leading to kathak yoga and its demonstration of precise footwork with melodic declamation, and signifying to audiences amazing feats of excellence with recognition of union with the divine, or self, depending on the cultural reference. Morelli's book is deeply researched and a significant addition to dance studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; practitioners; general readers. --Joan L. Erdman, emerita, Columbia College Chicago