This book is an investigation of movement, particularly dance. What kind of movement is dance? What is dance in India? And, what is it to dance in India? It recognizes the diversity and complexity of practice in India, but also of the contingent (institutional) circumstances through which performances emerge and become visible.

This volume assembles writing that combines description with analytics of movement practices in India in our time. Essayists include performers, theorists, historians and cultural critics. The essays are discursive interventions on a wide variety of topics that concern the many fields of dance practice. The themes range from questions of periodization to the temporal, the archive, the proximate body and its potentialities, spaces and audiences, and policy interventions on behalf of performance.