Snakes on the Dancefloor and Adventures in Bollywood

 

On Tuesday, March 1, at 6pm, Dr. Kareem Khubchandani will be giving a talk, “Snakes on the Dancefloor: Gender, Gesture, and Bollywood,” in Griffin Hall 4. Snakes on the Dancefloor” traces the mimicry of Bollywood screen divas Madhuri Dixit and Sridevi by gay South Asian boys and men. Combining film and dance analysis, interview and ethnography, this study maps the gestural language transferred between screen and body, and the affective and embodied politics of dancing like a diva.

Following the talk, Dr. Khubchandani will teach an “Adventures in Bollywood Dance” Workshop in the Dance Studio at the ’62 Center, starting at 7:45pm“Bollywood Dance” has become a global industry showing up in U.S. music videos, Chinese dance studios, and sexy dance bars in Nepal.  This intense globalization of the genre masks some of the more intimate and queer-er forms of the genre.  In this dance workshop, Kareem will lead you into the many places he has learned Bollywood Dance—high end Indian studios, his aunty’s living room, drag shows, and even the ’62 CTD.  Dancers will meet his various instructors to get a taste of the rich, diverse, global life of Bollywood Dance.

Before receiving his PhD, Dr. Khubchandani was the Assistant Director and Queer Life Coordinator at the Multicultural Center (Davis Center) here at Williams College. We are excited to have him back!

 Dr. Khubchandani’s talk and workshop are proudly co-sponsored by the Dance Department, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program, Asian Studies Department, the Dively Committee, the Lecture Committee, and the W. Ford Schumann ’50 Performing Arts Endowment.