Mirrors and Gestures: Conversations with Women Dancers is the second of C.S. Lakshmi’s three volumes of detailed interviews with notable women musicians, dancers, and painters in India. Here she recounts the experiences of well-known classical dancers like Chandralekha, Zohra Segal, Sita Pooviah, the Jhaveri sisters, Chandrabhaga Devi, Indrani Rehman, Leela Samson, Alarmel Valli, Malavika Sarukkai and others, as well as Ranu Bai, a poikal kudirai (dummy-horse show) artiste whom she spoke to in Thanjavur. What I really wanted," says Lakshmi, "was to try and understand the artistes as women…living and functioning as women and as artistes in a patriarchal society that fixed them in particular ways. I wanted them to talk about their lives in general, to learn about how art was to be taken into account as a factor in their everyday lives; how they sustained their art over the years; how it influenced their decisions in life, why they continued to pursue it, did they have choices; what their family life was like; and how they looked upon life as a whole." Like her first volume, The Singer and the Song: Conversations with Women Musicians, this rare document is accompanied by photographs and an insightful introduction on the importance of oral history in recording women’s experiences.
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