Papers by Debanjali Biswas
Studies in Theatre and Performance , 2025
Manipuri theatre in postcolonial India owes its evolution and
acclaim to three director-dramaturg... more Manipuri theatre in postcolonial India owes its evolution and
acclaim to three director-dramaturgs–Lokendra Arambam,
Heisnam Kanhailal, and Ratan Thiyyam. Through exploration of
three plays – Macbeth: Stage of Blood (1997), Draupadi (2000), and
Chinglon Mapan Tampak Ama (2006) – this article locates the form,
content, and context of each of them, interweaving analyses of the
staged works and performances with narratives of everyday life
gathered through ethnographic practices to offer new theoretical
possibilities of reading performance in the context of violence.
Beyond myth and lore, these plays indicate an understanding of
the socio-cultural activities of the communities which reflect the
militarism, pursuit and repression of self-determination movements,
and internecine conflict in the region. While offering
a critical dimension to the study of how violence acts as a framing
device in Manipuri proscenium theatre, this article contextualises
how unsettling disruptions are cited as en/k/counter or encounter in
everyday life and performances. It explores how the interweaving of
anthropological and performance-based research locates the coevalness
of violence and art within interconnected narratives on
agency and resistance in everyday life and on stage. Further, it
proposes how such narratives might interpellate official narratives
of violence and counterviolence while offering glimmers of refuge
and repair.
Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, 2024
Violence and precarity in Manipur is its past and current. What becomes of dance when violence ... more Violence and precarity in Manipur is its past and current. What becomes of dance when violence spills over to various parts of society? What does it mean to be haunted by unspeakable memories of violence and yet dance for self and community, region, and nation? The essay is written collaboratively and individually by co-authors—practitioners and researchers who have worked on exhuming the sublimated tensions and contradictions in dance cultures of Manipur (India) in the last decade. Though chronologically years apart, they find ideological connections in the demands of the peoples from their government. On the back of historical and cultural circumstances, such demands, fear, or violence arise from exclusionary processes of being minority communities within the nation. Biswas conducted her doctoral fieldwork through agitation, riots, and blockades during the Inner Line Permit (ILP) movement (2014–2016). Devi’s doctoral fieldwork began during months of COVID-19 pandemic (2020) and concluded in May 2023 as violent clashes between two ethnic communities broke out. “What will remain of our dances when we are gone?” is often asked of us during conversations with peoples; “we can’t let go” of hope or fear, they assert. The purpose of the essay is two-fold: We look back on methods, ethics, and care involved in fieldwork with interlocutors who have witnessed violence, while we witnessed violent events ourselves. Secondly, we deliberate on observance of rituals and staged performances while our interlocutors grapple with experiences of loss, grief and trauma framed by conflict, exclusion, and an overall fraught silence to their demands. We further deliberate on what remains of dance in Manipur at a time of rising tensions and divisions.
South Asian Dance Intersections, 2023
This essay is an exploration of precarity and sociality within performing arts in India. It analy... more This essay is an exploration of precarity and sociality within performing arts in India. It analyses dances made digitally for audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-21) and engages with scholarly literature and movement system with reference to Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and forms of dance identified as rabindranritya. Interpreted through interdisciplinary research methods of digital ethnography, questionnaires, content analysis and dance studies, the essay aims to understand why some of us continued to dance through the global pandemic. I focus on YouTube as a site of research as we realize that technology's relationship with human and arts have now evolved and 'liveness' could be optional. I question various forms of precarity in arts industries through respondents' answers and observe what notions of sociality are exchanged between the performer and their audience. I bring to light the mundane and vibrant of the quotidian lockdown lives of performers who remained cloistered at home, but with cameras on them, how they seized the pandemic precarity and continued dancing with a sense of immediacy and new kinds of intimacy, communicating their imaginations and emotions and bridging socialtemporal-spatial distances.
Eastern Quarterly, 2016
This paper illustrates the course of Manipuri dance in post-independent India studied from an eth... more This paper illustrates the course of Manipuri dance in post-independent India studied from an ethnographic perspective and by studying the life history of dancer Thiyam Suryamukhi Devi of Imphal, Manipur. The diachronic examination of her performing and non-performing life, aids in exploring the key moments when ritual-dances of the Meitei community came to be known as Manipuri in the landscape of performing arts in India and what did the dances entail. The core pedagogy of Manipuri dance was primarily developed with the help of dancers like her. Besides that, Thiyam's self-examination of identity, femininity, ideas of stage-choreography and ritual efficacy of movements is reflective of how dance histories journey beyond neat continuities; they are constructed despite ruptures, differences, ambiguities. What this paper does is trace the deep interdependencies of performer, performance, oral history, life narrative and ethnography to seek the formalised definitions of a dance. Alongside, this paper attempts to place these interdependencies and definitions within the context of oral-performative history of early modern Manipur.
Cafe Dissensus, 2021
This essay is a study of the processes, histories, performers, as I analyse dances in Ray’s films... more This essay is a study of the processes, histories, performers, as I analyse dances in Ray’s films - Jalsaghar (1958) and Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1969) while briefly touching upon Shatranj ke Khilari (1977) and discuss how creatively Ray imagined Bengal’s past with his use of classical and modern dance in his films.
Journal of Indian Anthropological Society. , Mar 1, 2012
Biswas, D. 'Her body, her story: Situating the Maibis in the ritual-performance of Lai Haraoba', ... more Biswas, D. 'Her body, her story: Situating the Maibis in the ritual-performance of Lai Haraoba', Journal of Indian Anthropological Society. 47(1):29-38. This paper looks at the nature, effect and influence of corporeal techniques in relation to the Maibis or priestesses in Lai Haraoba. This ritual-performance observed in Manipur, in north-east India, not only intricately weaves the cosmology, history and growth of the region into it but indicates how this ritual is related to the history of dance and the distribution of political power in this region. I specifically look at the role of the Maibi, her performance traditions, her body and states of trance as a cultural condition and as a part of the enactment of local myths. A Maibi inhabits a significant socio-cultural space and is a key in preserving the parameters -both physical and moral -of the Meitei community. This space and society are mutually constitutive as well as fluid and this is mediated by the Maibi. Her body has come to bear symbols and meanings through a complicated process of appropriation and, in recent times, has subsumed the ritual, the performative/gestural, the political motifs of Lai Haraoba and the Meiteis.
Book Reviews by Debanjali Biswas
Doing Sociology, 2024
While examining the livelihood practices of indigenous communities rooted in the Eastern Himalaya... more While examining the livelihood practices of indigenous communities rooted in the Eastern Himalayan Region comprising Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Northeast India, the editors of this volume inform readers about the symbiotic relationships people nurture with their surrounding food systems.
Contemporary South Asia, 2017
Contemporary South Asia, 2014
Drafts by Debanjali Biswas
Eastern Quarterly, 2016
This paper illustrates the course of Manipuri dance in post-independent India studied from an eth... more This paper illustrates the course of Manipuri dance in post-independent India studied from an ethnographic perspective and by studying the life history of dancer Thiyam Suryamukhi Devi of Imphal, Manipur. The diachronic examination of her performing and non-performing life, aids in exploring the key moments when ritual-dances of the Meitei community came to be known as Manipuri in the landscape of performing arts in India and what did the dances entail. The core pedagogy of Manipuri dance was primarily developed with the help of dancers like her. Besides that, Thiyam's self-examination of identity, femininity, ideas of stage-choreography and ritual efficacy of movements is reflective of how dance histories journey beyond neat continuities; they are constructed despite ruptures, differences, ambiguities. What this paper does is trace the deep interdependencies of performer, performance, oral history, life narrative and ethnography to seek the formalised definitions of a dance. Alongside, this paper attempts to place these interdependencies and definitions within the context of oral-performative history of early modern Manipur.
Transregional Crossings : Narrative Storytelling, Aesthetics and Manipuri Dance in Indian Cinema
The elaborate song and dance sequences of early modern Indian cinema echoed the diverse performan... more The elaborate song and dance sequences of early modern Indian cinema echoed the diverse performance cultures of a nation in transition. This essay focuses on
the brief screen presence that was enjoyed by the dances of Manipur beginning in the 1940s to the 1950s. Filmmakers, actresses and choreographers adapted, remade or extensively borrowed movement vocabulary from the repertory of Manipuri dances originally performed by indigenous communities in multiple locations across east India. Typically seen in films in Hindi and Bengali language, most ‘Manipuri’ dance sequences were choreographed for mythological, devotional, (quasi)-historical narratives, or social melodramas with dancing protagonists. This essay particularly concentrates on this significant yet neglected strand of transregional exchanges and influences; alongside it seeks to locate corporeal histories that stand for the labour of a few well-known and numerous unacknowledged bodies of dancers, excavate the interlinked stories of practices, legacies and networks that came to represent Manipuri dance in cinematic history. Bringing together conversations on choreographic analysis, ethnographic work, interviews with film directors, cine performers, and Manipuri dancers, this essay also traces why these dances gradually disappeared from commercial Indian cinema.
Imphal is a city where the everyday is a conscientious witness to political turbulence that erupt... more Imphal is a city where the everyday is a conscientious witness to political turbulence that erupt due to indigenous struggles for self-determination, insurgency and counterinsurgency measures by the Indian armed forces. It is within this context, I explore everyday life in India through the works of local photographers who have methodically documented each corner, crevice, rituals and revolutions in a city often paralysed by conflict. These images stand as informed insider images on contemporary Manipur and forms a meticulous narrative on everyday life under extraordinary circumstances. Just like the everyday life in this region, many images carry a sense of urgency; many convey an energy that reflects an 'impulse for change' while most mark silences and opacities of dominant political discourses. (Lorenzo & De Gemes 2016; Ram 2015). In this paper, I analyse the aesthetics of everyday photo-ethnography in Manipur and address how politics, indigenous issues and sense of one's own community is represented through the vernacular lens. The trove of images I curate, captures two sides of conflict in Manipur-episodes of territorial disputes, contested borders, militarisation, political violence on one side; the flux and flow of ordinary life on the other. This paper has been largely based on my doctoral fieldwork in Imphal (2015) and the images I analyse come from little-known and nonprofessional photographers who shared their work with me, in the digital sphere and at local exhibitions. This is an attempt at reading the quotidian life from the vantage point of visual sociology i.e. what is documented, what is remembered and in tracing accounts of agency and personhood. This is a part of my ethnographic research on local art practices that offer prospects to critique the state and construct the contemporary idea of Manipur.
Invited Blog by Debanjali Biswas
Akademi/ WednesdayWisdom, 2020
In Manipuri dance, the word for ‘hasta’ or ‘mudra’ is Khut-thek; khut means hand and thek is for ... more In Manipuri dance, the word for ‘hasta’ or ‘mudra’ is Khut-thek; khut means hand and thek is for gestural movement in Meiteilon, or Manipuri language. Khut-thek is mostly paired with the word jagoi – the word for dance. In the context of dance, Jagoi-khut-thek means ‘movements of hands’, in the context of ritual it means ‘offering of movements’.
In the first segment, I introduce khutthek as observed in Lai Haraoba and Huyen Lanlong. These are the core hand-gestures from rituals of ancient and medieval Manipur. In the second segment, I introduce khutthek as derived from Nata Sankirtana and Raas Lila rituals of Vaishnavite Hindu traditions, and came into usage in dance from late 18th century. Alongside a brief history, context and evolution of dance of the Meiteis, I discuss how hand gestures have become a part of new choreographies.
This was written as blog-posts as a part of the #WednesdayWisdom series that began during the 40th anniversary celebration of Akademi, UK to revisit Indian classical dance roots.
They were written for public engagement and outreach with the intention to increase accessibility and readability of classical dances of India.
All accompanying photographs of hand gestures are credited and copyrighted to the author.
Yendai, 2019
This short essay explores Meitei women's role and engagement with the Raas Lila tradition in cont... more This short essay explores Meitei women's role and engagement with the Raas Lila tradition in contemporary Manipur.
Film Reviews by Debanjali Biswas
India Cultural Forum , 2019
Axone
Film review
October 21, 2019
For a mouth-watering meal, smoked pork stirred with ax... more Axone
Film review
October 21, 2019
For a mouth-watering meal, smoked pork stirred with axone (akhuni) or fermented soya bean-paste, chives, bamboo shoots and ghost pepper is irreplaceable. In Director/Writer Nicholas Kharkongor's film, Axone these become ingredients for chaos. Kharkongor visualises food as a metaphor for belonging, as well as ethnonationalism. Those attempting to cook, are friends who live and eat together and primarily belong to communities who live in the northeast side of India. They form a myriad cast going about their everyday life as aromas of the piquant axone spreads through the neighbourhood.
Indian Cultural Forum, 2017
Chapters by Debanjali Biswas
The Routledge Companion to Northeast India, 2022
Dance Cultures of the Northeast Indian Region.
Chapter 17.
J.J. W. Wouters and T.B Subba (eds.)
Manipur State Film Development Society, 2021
This short essay locates Manipuri dance at the intersection of performance and cinematic cultures... more This short essay locates Manipuri dance at the intersection of performance and cinematic cultures that represented collective growth of creative communities in the twentieth century.
Traversing Traditions: Celebrating Dance in India (New Delhi: Routledge)., Dec 2010
Books by Debanjali Biswas
This publication gathers history, transformations and choreographies in the field of Manipuri dan... more This publication gathers history, transformations and choreographies in the field of Manipuri dance traditions primarily from the perspective of practitioners’ experiences and proficiency. The book also collates a gamut of themes ranging from the dances performed in the centuries-old socio-religious rituals, as well as contemporary, thematic productions staged for an ever-changing, curious audience. The anthology of essays is penned by renowned artistes as well as emerging dancers and scholars who highlight a broad range of interests, information, experiences and practices associated with Manipuri/Meitei dance style(s).
It is a crossover book.
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Papers by Debanjali Biswas
acclaim to three director-dramaturgs–Lokendra Arambam,
Heisnam Kanhailal, and Ratan Thiyyam. Through exploration of
three plays – Macbeth: Stage of Blood (1997), Draupadi (2000), and
Chinglon Mapan Tampak Ama (2006) – this article locates the form,
content, and context of each of them, interweaving analyses of the
staged works and performances with narratives of everyday life
gathered through ethnographic practices to offer new theoretical
possibilities of reading performance in the context of violence.
Beyond myth and lore, these plays indicate an understanding of
the socio-cultural activities of the communities which reflect the
militarism, pursuit and repression of self-determination movements,
and internecine conflict in the region. While offering
a critical dimension to the study of how violence acts as a framing
device in Manipuri proscenium theatre, this article contextualises
how unsettling disruptions are cited as en/k/counter or encounter in
everyday life and performances. It explores how the interweaving of
anthropological and performance-based research locates the coevalness
of violence and art within interconnected narratives on
agency and resistance in everyday life and on stage. Further, it
proposes how such narratives might interpellate official narratives
of violence and counterviolence while offering glimmers of refuge
and repair.
Book Reviews by Debanjali Biswas
Drafts by Debanjali Biswas
the brief screen presence that was enjoyed by the dances of Manipur beginning in the 1940s to the 1950s. Filmmakers, actresses and choreographers adapted, remade or extensively borrowed movement vocabulary from the repertory of Manipuri dances originally performed by indigenous communities in multiple locations across east India. Typically seen in films in Hindi and Bengali language, most ‘Manipuri’ dance sequences were choreographed for mythological, devotional, (quasi)-historical narratives, or social melodramas with dancing protagonists. This essay particularly concentrates on this significant yet neglected strand of transregional exchanges and influences; alongside it seeks to locate corporeal histories that stand for the labour of a few well-known and numerous unacknowledged bodies of dancers, excavate the interlinked stories of practices, legacies and networks that came to represent Manipuri dance in cinematic history. Bringing together conversations on choreographic analysis, ethnographic work, interviews with film directors, cine performers, and Manipuri dancers, this essay also traces why these dances gradually disappeared from commercial Indian cinema.
Invited Blog by Debanjali Biswas
In the first segment, I introduce khutthek as observed in Lai Haraoba and Huyen Lanlong. These are the core hand-gestures from rituals of ancient and medieval Manipur. In the second segment, I introduce khutthek as derived from Nata Sankirtana and Raas Lila rituals of Vaishnavite Hindu traditions, and came into usage in dance from late 18th century. Alongside a brief history, context and evolution of dance of the Meiteis, I discuss how hand gestures have become a part of new choreographies.
This was written as blog-posts as a part of the #WednesdayWisdom series that began during the 40th anniversary celebration of Akademi, UK to revisit Indian classical dance roots.
They were written for public engagement and outreach with the intention to increase accessibility and readability of classical dances of India.
All accompanying photographs of hand gestures are credited and copyrighted to the author.
Film Reviews by Debanjali Biswas
Film review
October 21, 2019
For a mouth-watering meal, smoked pork stirred with axone (akhuni) or fermented soya bean-paste, chives, bamboo shoots and ghost pepper is irreplaceable. In Director/Writer Nicholas Kharkongor's film, Axone these become ingredients for chaos. Kharkongor visualises food as a metaphor for belonging, as well as ethnonationalism. Those attempting to cook, are friends who live and eat together and primarily belong to communities who live in the northeast side of India. They form a myriad cast going about their everyday life as aromas of the piquant axone spreads through the neighbourhood.
Film Review
December 12, 2017
https://archive.indianculturalforum.in/2017/12/12/a-letter-to-a-filmmaker/
Chapters by Debanjali Biswas
Books by Debanjali Biswas
It is a crossover book.