Transcending tradition, beckoning backlash: How and why did “fusion” become so politically charged?
It was only a few years ago when a teacher of mine told me that bringing together my training in classical and contemporary dance forms would taint my reputation and ruin any prospects of a career in dance. It was not long after that when one of my peers took five minutes out of a rehearsal to berate me for utilizing mudra-inspired hand movements in a piece that I was wearing shoes while dancing. It was only days later that it seemed my TikTok feed was filled with angry internet users berating dancers for pursuing untraditional hybrid forms of movement.
Clearly, the idea of “fusion” has become a highly controversial, politically charged concept within the South Asian dance space. But how and why did we get here, and how ridiculous might this paranoia be?
Perhaps we must first look to the South Asian relationship with traditional dance to begin to deconstruct our relationship with the untraditional. Before the early 20th century, dance was primarily practiced by hereditary communities of dancers, who performed a plethora of styles that we might know as classical, folk, or social dance today. Around the time of independence, dance forms began to be taken away from these communities by upper-class artists, appropriated, re-conjured, and categorized: some were “classicized” like Bharatanatyam, while others were relegated to the seemingly inferior ranks of “folk” or “popular” dance.
For now, let’s focus on the realm of classicism. In the first half of the 20th century, classical forms were, in general, stripped of references to romance and sensuality, recast as religious acts of Hindu devotion, and fastened with false narratives connecting the dance to an imagined multi-thousand year history of Hindu rule on the Indian subcontinent; this frequently manifests itself in a narrative of classicized dance forms being the direct descendents of temple rituals, ignoring the history of these dance forms in home, court, and festival environments while amplifying their historical connections to Hinduism. Thus, these dance forms became essential pieces of the emerging Hindu nationalist movement that sought to define a South Asian nation state based on religious culture; with this fabricated history of ancient Hindu art forms, the task of mobilizing a national movement revolving around a shared religio-cultural identity became simpler. The arts were used as evidence of shared ancient Hindu culture, and imbued with political power and significance as they were classicized. Classicized dance was also thus given status, sitting at the top of a hierarchy of art forms on the subcontinent. This implicit hierarchy remains salient; I could not begin to try to count the number of times various classical dance teachers would look down upon me for training in any other dance style because of their fears of it “cheapening” my classicized body.
Sadirattam, Bharatanatyam's predecessor
These narratives of classical dance forms being primeval, Hindu-religious, and a pinnacle of Indian Hindu culture persist, and these classicized dance forms remain not just dance vocabularies, but reflections of a highly political religious and cultural identity. And so one can perhaps begin to understand how the deconstruction of these dance forms can also become a politically and emotionally charged process that could elicit such controversial responses.
Fusion is political because classical dance is political. When dancers begin to deconstruct and play around with classicized shapes, they are also deconstructing structures of power, religious culture, and hallmarks of an invented national identity. For those who see classical dance as cultural and spiritual knowledge that is central to their idea of sacred nationhood and ancestry, any effort to toy with classical dance is thus sacrilege, anti-country, and anti-culture. Because of classicized dance’s history, in which it is implicated in the formation of India, Indian Hindu culture, and a Hindu nationalistic national identity, the deconstruction and reconstruction of these dance forms calls into question the structures of power that the forms were created to support. And it is understandable that many people could feel threatened by this.
The status of classicized dance also cannot be ignored. Because cleansed, Hindu-fied classical art forms are seen as pure, brahmanical, and have the most elite status of any dance genre on the subcontinent, tampering with these forms is especially taboo, even compared to religious folk dance forms. Just like unspoken rules govern the affairs of royalty, unspoken rules similarly guard the monarchs of the dance social pyramid from acting out of line, being “cheapened” or disgraced, and acting below their class. Dancers who use classical movement in untraditional ways are taking this art form out of its spot at the top of the social ladder, as all other forms of dance sit below it. A recent flurry of hate on social media directed towards genre-bending dancer Ishita Mili’s work “Kathak 2049” is a prime example of this fear of the undermining of power structures; comments including “my god who are those two cartoons and what were they thinking?” from celebrity dancer Devesh Mirchandani illustrate the anger that the deconstruction of classicized style can provoke — and the ways in which “fusion” choreography is not just despised, but how disgust towards it is often framed in condescending ways that implicitly blame “fusion” art makers for being below those who still reproduce the aesthetic and intention classicized art forms.
IMGE, a product of dancer Ishita Mili, that incorporates aesthetic representations of both classicized and non-classicized dance into their work.
The myth of history also adds depth to debates over fusion. When one is made to believe that an art form has existed, virtually unchanged, for thousands of years, a natural reaction to tampering with it would be anger. The fabrication of an ancient history of classical dance not only serves to establish authority over myths of Hindu birthright to the Indian subcontinent, but also to the need to preserve classical dance forms as antique objects, heirlooms on the brink of destruction. It seems to be an unspoken feeling among many practitioners of classicized art forms that they must save their art from the vices of modernity, that they must continue to make sure generation after generation respects the hierarchy that places their art form at the top. Because, particularly for mediocre practitioners of classicized dance, perhaps they have no feelings of status or self-importance beyond the notion that their dance practice is “better” than those of others.
A few years ago, when I was studying and practicing classicized dance forms with different teachers than I do today, I had the opportunity to be the lead in a feature film about a burnt out classical dancer that turns to hip hop, eventually falls back in love with the aesthetics of their original dance training, and finds joy in a hybrid style fusing the two. When my then-primary teacher found out about this, I was immediately told (in many more words than this) that I could not be a part of this project, and that any instance of fusion like this was “cheap” and “dirty” and distasteful. When I protested, she tried to get the filmmaker to change the script to one in which I did not find love in fusion, but rather fell back in love with classicized dance and rejected hip hop. Odd, I know. I think this film and its plot was such an immediate red flag to her however because it presents a narrative in which classicized dance is not a dancer’s pinnacle, their dream, their perfect match. The story asserted that fusion could be successful, and that classicized dance forms might not always be the best fit for a dancer. And this undermines the self-appointed power and prestige that classical dancers carry with them.
We hate fusion because successful fusion takes our feeling of being on top of the food chain, of being the best because of our purity and history and tradition, of being a member of the elite, away from us. When genre-bending dance becomes popular, it undermines the structures of power that place classicized dance forms at the top of the social pyramid, as the only dance that can live within respected venues and gain critical acclaim. If a dancer were to become disenchanted with classical dance and turn to other forms, or god forbid fusion, that would be like a billionaire throwing their money away, burning the dumpster, and moving into a studio apartment. And seeing dancers who reject their “pure” classical roots in favor of hybridity or modernity and succeed in doing so are like lower or middle class people who suddenly have more power than those with all the capital in the world. Naturally, the rich would get angry in this scenario, and the same thing is happening here with today’s leaders in the field of classicized dance.
We don’t like our feeling of being the best to come under threat. We don’t like to see lower class people, non-Hindu people, non-Brahmin people gain power and artistic success, and so we, as a community, spew these artists with hate because perhaps in the process we will end up feeling better about ourselves, more secure in our notion of being at the pinnacle of the dance social pyramid. Or at least, that’s what I will argue.
However, as anger over fusion and deconstruction is understandable (though certainly problematic) given the social, political, and cultural contexts in which these dance forms exist, I find it quite ironic, considering the ways in which these forms were created. Odissi, for example, was invented in the early 20th century, borrowing postures from temple sculptures, temple worship, folk and tribal dance forms, paintings, and nature. If that itself is not fusion, I am not sure what is. Classicized dance forms became what they are today because of fusion and appropriation; each of these forms represents a hybrid of dance styles, taking inspiration from varied iconography and aesthetic representations.
Many classicized dance forms, like Odissi, pictured here, borrow heavilty from the postures of sculptures that choreographers observed on temple walls. While many view this as evidence of the dance’s long history, scholars recently have used this fact as a way to discuss the recent creation and false historical narratives constructed surrounding classical dance.
Priyanka Das, Odissi Dancer
So perhaps, with an understanding of the problematic histories of classicized dance in South Asia, we can begin to see why “fusion” artists choose to break away from tradition and deconstruct the dance forms that, in their purest forms, reinforce oppression and hierarchy. As a multi-disciplinary creator myself, I know that my choices to use shapes, grooves, and aesthetic patterns from both classicized and non-classicized art forms is both a stylistic preference and an intentional act of dismantling the social, political, and cultural hierarchies that classicized dance represents and reproduces. I am uninterested in reproducing the aesthetics of Hindu nationalism, brahminization, and casteism, and profoundly interested in the dismantling of these systems of oppression. And I know that many other genre-blurring artists are thinking about similar things.
Instead of getting all up in arms when we see a dancer utilizing elements of diverse dance forms in their work, I hope we can collectively exhale and move away from our policing of classicism, of religion, of caste, of power, of national identity, of culture, of hierarchy, of exclusion … because at the end of the day, our collective disdain for fusion boils down to just that.
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For your consideration …
How have you engaged with “fusion” dance forms?
Do you have a positive, negative, or neutral relationship with tradition? Or a combination? How has that experience shaped your view of breaches of tradition?
How can you see “fusion” outside the dance space in other art forms? What about outside the arts? Is fusion politically charged in every context?
