[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”RGBA(255,255,255,0)” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”700px” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n
Over the recent past, most contemporary dance work in India suffers from the affliction of politics always<\/i><\/em>\u00a0trumping physical language. Choreographers are entirely preoccupied with perfecting a standpoint rather than labouring at articulating a devised phrase of movement. It\u2019s a can of worms boring through the entire ecosystem of this field. And within a performance landscape where classical dance happens everyday (ranging from the terrible to the terrific); a regular engagement with viewing contemporary dance performance and evolution feels rare. This rarity contributes to our collective delusion that the history of contemporary dance in the Indian context isn\u2019t as long or short <\/i><\/em>as the constituting of the cultural category of classical dance itself. In this mode, where contemporary dance is always presented<\/i><\/em>\u00a0as brand new, it sidesteps critique by having the right<\/i><\/em>\u00a0politics but the wrong<\/i><\/em>\u00a0moves. The overwhelming trend: ponderings on body autonomy, gender, and sexuality \u2013 ripe for excavating into movement vocabulary are instead translated into narratives of social justice for easy applause. The remedy isn\u2019t to start from scratch or ignore it, as might be the want, but to remind the community of ways of making that avoid these pitfalls.<\/p>\n It falls upon a dance writer (a nearly extinct creature in this ecosystem) to dive into contemporary dance\u2019s past, retrieve the ephemeral, and attempt to parse the process of its making. Not just to pull up but to reveal to practitioners in the present that the politics must<\/i><\/em>\u00a0power the physical expression.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *** *** ***<\/p>\n Seven bodies \u2013 six men and one woman \u2013 in various items of underwear slouch, shuttle and strut across a stage. This was my second encounter with Mandeep Raikhy\u2019s choreographic practice at the Attakkalari India Biennial 2014, where he presented A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae<\/i><\/em>. They move within the geometric grid of industrial scaffolding on the sulphur glow of a dance mat in its centre. Over 53 minutes, the movements are fattened, fashioned and forged through repetition into pulsing phrases of dance. It doesn\u2019t just tell<\/i><\/em>\u00a0us that it is interested in scrutinising the spectrum of Indian masculinity, it shows<\/i><\/em>\u00a0us.<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1.-AMHSA-51-scaled.jpg” title_text=”1. AMHSA-51″ show_in_lightbox=”on” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”0a6c4baa-304e-458e-9003-bb7edad6cc4b” text_font=”Josefin Sans|500|||||||” text_line_height=”1.5em” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Figure 1: Still from A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae<\/i><\/em>, Choreography, Mandeep Raikhy, Photo credit: Soumita Bhattacharya, Image Courtesy Mandeep Raikhy. \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”700px” module_alignment=”center” custom_margin=”||16px|||” locked=”off” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Over a telephone call, fittingly underscored by the clatter of construction work and the thrum of traffic, Raikhy describes the intentionality behind his sophomore work: The movement vocabulary was built on an impulse towards wanting \u201cto identify the ways that different body parts held different notions of masculinity\u201d. Taking this further, he asks: \u201cWhat kind of masculinity did we hold in our wrists, chests or sternums? Where does masculinity sit in the muscle memory of each of our bodies? Was it in different body parts for each one of us?\u201d In the studio space, along with his dancers, Raikhy employed these as springboards for the improvisational process before specific movements were constructed and then choreographed into sequences and scenes.<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2.-Amaleant-5411_Photo_-Soumita-Bhattacharya.jpg” title_text=”2. Amaleant-5411_Photo_ Soumita Bhattacharya” show_in_lightbox=”on” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”0a6c4baa-304e-458e-9003-bb7edad6cc4b” text_font=”Josefin Sans|500|||||||” text_line_height=”1.5em” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Figure 2: Still from A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae<\/i><\/em>, Choreography, Mandeep Raikhy, Photo credit: Soumita Bhattacharya, Image Courtesy Mandeep Raikhy. \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”700px” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Raikhy attributes this impulse to use dance as \u201cconstruction material\u201d to the experience of \u201clearning dance on the job\u201d with the London-based Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. \u201cIn the mornings, we would have our bharatanatyam classes, and the afternoons were spent rebuilding, breaking it down, putting it upside down, or mixing up the movements,\u201d he recalls. He believes \u201cthat this sense of play\u201d was embedded into choreographic practice from this point on. He recalls working on The Ghost Ship<\/i><\/em>\u00a0(2008) \u2013 his second choreographic work \u2013 in collaboration with UK-based dancer-choreographer Phil Sanger. The work \u201ca response\u201d to Roland Barthes\u2019 A Lover\u2019s Discourse: Fragments<\/i><\/em>\u00a0\u201creally excited them because of the nuggets\u201d about the different components of love tackled in this book. He remembers being drawn by the \u201cvery physical images\u201d in the text. \u201cOne of the fragments looks at the absence of a lover but as a kind of physical condition where it might feel like one\u2019s head is being held underwater. Another was an eight-legged creature \u2013 emerging from the union of the two lovers and one can\u2019t tell them apart; these were some of the physical representations\u201d that were developed into movement fragments.<\/p>\n For Raikhy, reading Barthes\u2019 text \u201cwhich seemed to deliberately ungender\u201d the roles of the lovers but represented them as interchangeable tropes catalysed and unlocked \u201ca queer imagination of love\u201d. And so The Ghost Ship <\/i><\/em>played out these possibilities that queer love held through the movement between these two male dancers. \u201cIn way, this work \u2013 The Ghost Ship <\/i><\/em>\u2013 is a precursor to Queen-size<\/i><\/em>\u00a0(2016), which had a more direct political framing as it was a response to article 377 of the Indian Penal Code [that criminalised homosexuality in India up until 2018]. While The Ghost Ship <\/i><\/em>was not activism at all, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n *** *** ***<\/p>\n Similarly Big Man, Little Drawings<\/i><\/em>\u00a0[2012] \u2013 Raikhy\u2019s first choreographic work \u2013 could be read as the antecedent to A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae <\/i><\/em>[2013]. While the former was a solo exploration of Raikhy\u2019s own relationship with being Punjabi and its cultural notions of masculinity; the latter brought many bodies and their experiences together to unpack collective ideas of Indian masculinity. During rehearsal, Raikhy\u2019s strategies, along with looking at the gestural performances of gender sitting in the muscle memory of each of the dancers, \u201cwhich was different for each one of us,\u201d he says. \u201cWe also looked at the ways these sites in the body threatened some of the notions of masculinities we had grown up with.\u201d<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/3.-AMAHSA-Mandeep-4-scaled.jpg” title_text=”3. AMAHSA (Mandeep)-4″ show_in_lightbox=”on” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”0a6c4baa-304e-458e-9003-bb7edad6cc4b” text_font=”Josefin Sans|500|||||||” text_line_height=”1.5em” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Figure 3: Still from A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae<\/i><\/em>, Choreography, Mandeep Raikhy, Photo credit: Soumita Bhattacharya, Image Courtesy Mandeep Raikhy. \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”700px” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n He kept the questions simple: \u201cWhat wouldn\u2019t you do in front of your father? A figure who for many of us has been upheld as the consummate expression of masculinity. What could we do with the doors of our bedrooms closed?\u201d In this way, they began to use the different allowances, adjustments and accommodations that their bodies made in their expressions of masculinity as the building blocks to create the movements. \u201cWe looked at the walk. It\u2019s functionality but also the act<\/i><\/em>\u00a0of walking and to propose just one change to the body. We worked at exaggerating one part of the body in a particular direction; dropping the pelvis forward or backwards, pushing the chest forward, pulling down the shoulders and so on to see if ideas of masculinity or femininity began to emerge from these anatomical departures,\u201d he says. \u201cWe learned that even one of the new alignments changed the body and in this way different creatures with gender began to emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n \n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/galleryespace.com\/artespace\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4.-AMAHSA-Mandeep-5-scaled.jpg” title_text=”4. AMAHSA (Mandeep)-5″ show_in_lightbox=”on” align=”center” _builder_version=”4.27.6″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”0a6c4baa-304e-458e-9003-bb7edad6cc4b” text_font=”Josefin Sans|500|||||||” text_line_height=”1.5em” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n Figure 4: Still from A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae<\/i><\/em>, Choreography, Mandeep Raikhy, Photo credit: Soumita Bhattacharya, Image Courtesy Mandeep Raikhy. \u00a0<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.27.4″ _module_preset=”default” max_width=”700px” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”]<\/p>\n *** *** ***<\/p>\n There wasn\u2019t a message<\/i><\/em>\u00a0in Raikhy\u2019s early work, \u201cit was a very direct experimentation with the gendered body,\u201d he says. \u201cEven with my experiments with Bharatanatyam [Inhabited Geometry<\/i><\/em>, 2010], it was about finding the softness and sense of flow in this vocabulary which is really quite geometric with hard lines. How do I begin to find the circularity in this form that is quite angular? So, even before breaking down. It\u2019s been important to experience masculinity in my body and then begin to disrupt it \u2013 it\u2019s quite a considered process,\u201d he adds. With a work like Queen-size<\/i><\/em>, Raikhy admits, \u201cI wasn\u2019t looking at undoing gender in any way; that\u2019s probably a critique of the work. Now when I look at it, to look at homosexuality without examining its relationship with gender was something I wasn\u2019t ready to do at that point. Just looking at sexuality was an urgent desire. And now, I have begun to get comfortable with the different dancers bringing the gender to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n In Raikhy\u2019s early works, the gendered body was at the centre of his choreographic enquiries. And from Queen-size<\/i><\/em>, it\u2019s become more an investigation into the expression of that gender \u201clike the desire that extends from somebody\u2019s body\u201d. In a sense, Raikhy sees his early works as coming from \u201can autobiographical space\u201d and needed to \u201cbe resolved through the body\u201d. But over time, he has pulled away from \u201chis own sort of urgent desires\u201d and has begun to look a little bit more into the ways that the different bodies could bring into the process \u201ceven if work might start with my own concerns\u201d. And presently, his works \u201caren\u2019t so much about questions emerging from his own body\u201d but tackle larger ideas \u201caround the framing of the body\u201d in our contemporary contexts.<\/p>\n But this progression speaks to the evolution of Raikhy\u2019s choreographic sensibilities, it doesn\u2019t read as reactive. \u201cEven if I strip away the political ideas of Queen-size<\/i><\/em>, it is a study of intimacy at a formal level or with Hallucinations of an Artifact<\/i><\/em>\u00a0[2023], it was an investigation into the tribhanga and not just the Dancing Girl figurine from the Indus Valley civilization,\u201d he says. This is important for Raikhy that he imagines work where \u201cthe political or the asking questions is done through finding a form for those ideas through a set of exercises, codes, and rules\u201d and the gap is that lately, contemporary dance work \u201cseems to speak more than embody\u201d.<\/p>\n In its present-day mode as social justice warrior, contemporary dance seems to present the body always on the receiving end of violences and constraints. It isn\u2019t channelled into conveying the textures of being<\/i><\/em>. If queerness is the daily search for a way of choreographing our bodies within this world; then it must<\/i><\/em> \u201cbring some agency back into the body\u201d in contemporary dance too.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the recent past, most contemporary dance work in India suffers from the affliction of politics always\u00a0trumping physical language. Choreographers are entirely preoccupied with perfecting a standpoint rather than labouring at articulating a devised phrase of movement. It\u2019s a can of worms boring through the entire ecosystem of this field. And within a performance landscape […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":1270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"Figure 3: Still from A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae, Choreography, Mandeep Raikhy, Photo credit: Soumita Bhattacharya, Image Courtesy Mandeep Raikhy. 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