Kathak, a classical dance form of Northern India, portrays an iconographic representation of the cultural constructs of the Hindu world view, most particularly, the ideology of gender roles within the culture. Essentially a dance form that emerged from within the Hindu religious beliefs and practices, Kathak was significantly influenced by the bhakti movement popularized in the early medieval period on the one hand, and on the other, by its incorporation in the Moghal courts after the fifteenth century. However, I limit my arguments to the Hindu concept of gender and its portrayal in the performance of Kathak. This paper focuses on the fluidity of gender performance in light of the indigenous philosophical concepts of “oneness” or non-dualism exemplified in Kathak abhinaya (1). This study is inspired by my observation and participatory experience as a dancer-performer of this form.

The late Robert Ellis Dunn (1928–1996) made a vital contribution to the maturation of modern dance in the twentieth century as a master teacher of improvisation and choreography. His pedagogy in both the professional and academic milieux reinforced interdisciplinary associations between dance and related disciplines in the arts and humanities, and helped situate dance as a science within a theoretical framework worthy of scholarly study. The following article is a study of the principles and pedagogy that Dunn engaged in as a master teacher of improvisation and choreography for nearly forty years.

I first met Dunn in 1981 at the Laban Institute of Movement Studies in New York and in 1982, I worked as his teaching assistant at the Dance Notation Bureau in New York and at the University of California Summer School of Dance in Long Beach. During the six-week summer dance intensive in California, I assisted and performed in two events directed by Dunn: Top, a structured improvisation for nine dancers, and Pivot/Delay, a choreographic process for twenty-two dancers (1).

Dance teacher behaviors have been studied for many years in an attempt to describe what these teachers do in the classroom. One method of describing dance teacher behaviors is to place the behaviors in categories or classes (Gray 1983; Gray 1984a; Skrinar 1986; Skrinar and Moses 1988; Minton 1992; Davenport 1993). Researchers have also attempted to describe dance teacher behaviors by drawing relationships between one behavior category and another. This has been accomplished through the use of proportions, patterns or domain analysis (Lunt 1974; Lord 1981/82; Gray 1984b). More recently, dance teacher behaviors were analyzed by dividing the task presentations into distinct moments: the set-up, presentation, and transition to execution (Lord, Chayer and Girard 1995). In addition, some investigators preferred to classify dance teacher behaviors by describing the type of imagery used during the instruction process (Overby 1990; Overby 1991/92; Minton 1996). Finally, the case study has been used to describe and classify the behaviors of a single dance teacher.

Different dance forms attract different people. Dancers involved in folk dance, ballroom dance, ballet, and modern dance differ in both their background and participation profiles (Nieminen 1997) and in their reasons for participating in dance (Nieminen 1998). In Finland, the 1980s can be considered a golden age in the field of dance education. It was the decade that at long last saw the start of university-level and vocational dance education in the country. At the same time students of physical education were given the opportunity to specialize in dance pedagogy. The new Finnish Opera House in Helsinki also generated a great deal of publicity for dance in general. All this gave impetus to a demand for qualified dance teachers and increased the number of people involved in art dance. Since the 1970s, folk dance has also become more popular than in previous years and today there are many innovative folk dance choreographers who want to see folk dance not only as the transmission of tradition but also as a theater-art form. The latest changes to take place in the field of folk and ballroom dance are partly due to the new four-year program for folk and ballroom dance instructors offered by the Oulu Conservatory of Music.

The lights coming up from downstage left pick up a group of six women edging their way onto the stage from the diagonally opposite corner, their spines collapsed forward from their pelvises, backs jutting out to emphasize the broken line of the spine, knees flexed low, feet weighted to the ground, arms lying stiff and lifeless at their sides, but their heads still reaching searchingly forward. With their broken backs, they move painstakingly, slowly: the heel of one foot rises almost imperceptibly and drags the foot forward, the sole ever unable to dissociate itself fully from the ground. The weight shifts forward with this arduous endeavor as the body resigns itself onto the forward foot. Now the heel of the other foot rises in a barely visible movement and drags the foot, yet unable to lift itself from the ground, forward. The weight shifts one more time and another step is inched on. And again, the heel of one foot rises almost imperceptibly and drags the foot forward and another step is inched on. Each step speaks of weariness and pain, and a quest in spite of that. One by one, the feet pull themselves forward and haul the body across the stage in this terrifying, weighted effort. Halfway across the stage, the women are halted in this journey as if by some unseen attacker looming large in front of them. Acknowledging their arrested pathway, they begin to retrace their steps.

Martha Graham wrote this passage about the opening of Night Journey (1947) in her autobiography Blood Memory (1991). Night Journey tells the story of Jocasta who at the end of her life is reluctantly forced by the blind prophet Tiresias to relive the most significant and thus painful moments of her life. Graham too, at the end of her own life, seems almost to have been forced, perhaps by time or perhaps by the obligation to fulfil a publisher's contract, to write her autobiography (1). There is a nice symmetry here.

The study of audiences is rarely at the forefront of dance scholarship. When the social composition of an audience is studied, it is usually market research—material to be used by the development staff of a dance company for audience-building.

Such studies are indeed indispensable for audience-building, but quantitative and qualitative studies of audiences are also indispensable for dance scholars. It is not necessary to argue here that the dance and the audience shape each other.

A superb example of a qualitative audience study, though not of dance audiences, is Joseph Horowitz's Wagner Nights: An American History. In his postlude he writes: