Anusha Kedhar, Anthea Kraut, and Jose Luis Reynoso (Bello): New Work in Dance Research

Anusha Kedhar 

“What's Love Got to Do With It? Intercaste Intimacies and the Making of the Modern Guru”

This talk explores an important but overlooked post-Independence moment when male nattuvanars (music conductors) started teaching a critical mass of brahmin girls and young women up until the transition in the 1990s when those same women started their own dance schools, becoming gurus in their own right and marking the moment when bharatanatyam established itself as a brahmin-dominated art form. The transmission of embodied knowledge from lower caste gurus to elite dominant caste girls in the mid 20th century was a pivotal period--and indeed the starting point, I argue--in the making of the modern bharatanatyam guru, but one that has not been adequately analyzed with most research stopping at 1947 (Indian Independence) or starting in the late 20th century. This talk explores the inter-caste, interclass, intergender, and intergenerational dynamics of guru-shishya relationships between male nattuvanars and brahmin women during these important transitional decades. I’m especially interested in the role of intimacy and the way affect, particularly feelings of familial love and gratitude as well as hurt and frustration, mask questions of caste power in guru-shishya relationships.

Anthea Kraut 

“Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies”

This presentation will give an overview of Kraut’s recently published book, Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies (Oxford University Press, 2025), which offers a historical examination of the figure of the dance-in, a dancer who performs in place of a star prior to filming. The book argues that the dance-in helps expose a “corporeal ecosystem” that operated in mid-century Hollywood to prop up the seeming coherence and self-referentiality of white stars’ dancing bodies. In addition to rehearsing the book’s argument, the talk will address some of the intellectual concerns that drive the book, including the relationship between history and theory, Black feminist critiques of the body and dance studies’ investment in the body, and the values and limitations of bodily evidence. 

Jose Luis Reynoso (Bello)

“Researching Mythologies & Other Contemporary Narratives of Self and World Making”

The title of this presentation serves as a frame for some reflections on narratives people formulate to describe to themselves and others who (they think) they are as people, dancers, artists, and dance scholars (among other identifications). These ideas, still in early development, are part of the process of identifying shared values, language(s), repertoires of concepts, and recurrent/resonant approaches to dance/performance making that help people recognize each other (explicitly and implicitly) as members of what I’m tentatively calling imagined communities of artistic practice. The long-term project is to increase understanding on the role of agency and the contradictions involved in practices and discourses contemporary artists/dancers use to construct their identities and the worlds they want to inhabit as individuals and collectives. 

Participants:

Anusha Kedhar  is an Associate Professor of Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. She is the author of Flexible Bodies: British South Asian Dancer in an Age of Neoliberalism and a Co-Investigator on the South Asian Dance Equity project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the United Kingdom. Her new project focuses on the under-theorized figure of the guru (teacher) in bharatanatyam and examines how dance functions as a pedagogy of caste.

Anthea Kraut is Professor in the Department of Dance at UC Riverside, where she teaches courses in critical dance studies. Her research focuses on the racial and gender politics of U.S. dance. She is the author of Choreographing the Folk: The Dance Stagings of Zora Neale Hurston (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies (Oxford University Press, 2025) and the past recipient of an ACLS fellowship, an NEH fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Jose Luis Reynoso (Bello) is Associate Professor of Critical Dance Studies at UC Riverside. He was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies in/and the Humanities at Northwestern University. He completed his Ph.D. in Culture and Performance (specialization in Dance Studies) and M.F.A. in choreography at UCLA, and a M.A. in Psychology at California State University Los Angeles. His research examines power dynamics and ideological aspects of artistic practices, identifications, and the politics of performing difference. His book, Dancing Mestizo Modernisms: Choreographing Postcolonial and Postrevolutionary Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2023), won the Dance Studies Association 2024 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research.

Part of “Transversal Re/Configurations: Flesh, Bodies, and Matter in Motion”

Current Topics in Dance Research Colloquium Series: January 08 - March 12, 2026

– María Regina Firmino-Castillo, Curator & Coordinator 

Transversal Re/Configurations: Flesh, Bodies, and Matter in Motion was made possible through generous sponsorships from the California Center for Native Nations; the Rupert Costo Endowment in American Indian Affairs, University of California, Riverside; the CHASS Dean's Office and the Center for Ideas and Society; and the Departments of Music, Ethnic Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Media & Cultural Studies.

Many thanks to: taisha paggett (Department of Dance, Chairperson), Anthea Kraut (Department of Dance, Vice-Chair), Courtney Brubaker (Events Specialist), and Pete Pace (Technical Director) for their generous support of the Colloquium, and to Jonathan Ritter (Department of Music, Chairperson) and María del Rosario Acosta López (Professor, Hispanic Studies Department) for their vision and collaboration.

For Accessibility and Accommodations, contact mariafc@ucr.edu 

Photo Credits: Marie Bryant and Vera Ellen in Ebony Magazine. Photo by Larry Barbier. Published by permission of the Barbier Estate in Anthea Kraut's Hollywood Dance-ins and the Reproduction of Bodies (Oxford University Press, 2025).

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