Paper short abstract:

Bollywood dances and the popular dancing bodies thereof, have become global phenomena. This paper works on the analysis of the corporeal, looking at hyper-gendered bodies in Bollywood dance in the global, local and the glocal context.

Paper long abstract:

Much to the distress of the Indian Scholars and practitioners of Classical Indian dances, Bollywood dances and the popular dancing bodies thereof, have become global phenomena. The popularity of the dances of Bollywood and its own obsession and contribution through creation of largely controlled market- led body stories, and counter- aesthetics (completely in opposition to the much acclaimed traditional aesthetics upheld and perpetuated through classical dances in India), has successfully moved beyond the local, and created a global market. The choreographers in these dances make use of tropes of the 'orient' and the 'Indian' as well as the so called 'Western' in creating 'whatever sells' - a Glocal product, not only because of the market, but also because of the aesthetics it strives to create. Through hyper- masculine and hyper- feminine bodies and dance/movements Bollywood has consistently kept up its experiment of re- formatting the 'Glocal' popular idea of dance, consistently producing a set of meanings and spaces, which are both biomorphic and anthropological. This paper works on the analysis of the corporeal, looking at gendered bodies in Bollywood dance in the global, local and the glocal context.