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East Indian Nautch Dance

Year of production
1944

Ruth Saint Denis, a pioneer of modern dance, created choreography that was often inspired by traditional indigenous dances from Asia. One famous example of these works is her “East Indian Nautch Dance,” shown here. Music for the dance was composed by Charles Wakefield Cadman.

This film represents a brief performance of Saint Denis’s “street nautch” (as opposed to the “white nautch”), filmed in August 1944.

The film opens with a medium shot of St. Denis seated, with arms posed and eyes closed. She wears a great deal of jewelry, makeup, and an ‘exotic’ costume of many fabrics.

Source: Chicago Film Archive

More information: http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/

After first appearing on the western stage in 1838, Indian dance once  again surfaced prominently in the early 20th century. As with the  bayaderes in 1838, the performers of the troupe in 1906 were of Indian  origin. This time, however, their lead dancer and choreographer was not  an Indian, but a young American named Ruth Saint Denis.  

Saint Denis’ Indian dance pieces were attempts to convey Hindu  philosophical ideas to Western audiences in a manner that would be  intelligible to them. These were not authentic Indian dances, as were  those of the bayaderes, but were inspired by Indian themes and included  the sinuous and rippling arm motions and graceful body movements and  postures of classical Indian dances. St. Denis abundantly used Indian  dress materials and jewelry and designed and wore long flowing costumes. To create an Eastern ambience, she used Indian brassware, ornate  columns, flowers, incense and other creative stage props. 

Saint Denis was a gifted dancer whose artistic creations demonstrated how  to relink dance with spiritualism at a time when Western dancers had  generally cut themselves off from its religious and spiritual origins.  She had studied and was deeply inspired by non-Western and especially  Indian civilization at a time when a tendency–much later dubbed as  “Orientalism” by Edward Said–prompted her contemporaries to look upon  non-Western people as inferior, backward and static or even weird and  animalistic. Ruth Saint Denis’s relative open-mindedness was thus a fresh  departure that helped free Western dance from its shackles, elevated it  onto a higher plane and placed important and even profound facets of  Indian culture before Western audiences.

Source: Dr. Kusum Pant Joshi, London

More information: https://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=5055 

Choreography
Collection
Year of production
1944
Performance
Ruth Saint Denis