As a child, Sukanya Rahman secretly prayed that her family would ‘become normal’. This never happened. Dance was, and remained, the family obsession. Eventually, Sukanya too was swept up by the excitement of her mother’s and grandmother’s daily domestic life — where ‘home’ could shift from a comfortable apartment in New Delhi, to a snake-infested room in an Orissan village, and the only stable figure in a long line of foot-tapping gurus, tabla players and dancers, was Ayah with her tin trunk — to leap into her ancestral footsteps, thankful that her prayers had remained unanswered. Dancing in the Family is the story of how Sukanya’s grandmother, born Esther Sherman, in Petoskey, Michigan, transformed herself into Ragini Devi, classical Indian dancer, pioneer and writer of the first book in English on the dances of India. It is the story of her mother’s struggle to shake off the ‘stigma’ of becoming India’s first Miss India in order to prove herself, as Indrani Rahman, as one of India’s foremost classical Bharata Natyam and Odissi Artistes. It is also the story of Sukanya’s own struggle to stay afloat in this family of dynamic, indomitable women. Written with rare honesty and humour about matters close to the heart, this is an insightful and fascinating look into the Indian dance scene from the 1920s on. More than 50 archival family photographs, dating from 1893, contribute to making the book a gem in the history of Indian dance.
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