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Choreography and Corporeality pp 85–102Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Festivals and Local Identities in a Global Economy: The Festival of India and Dance Umbrella

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Part of the book series: New World Choreographies ((NWC))

Abstract

The Festival of India showcased Indian culture on a large scale for global audiences. A phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s, the festival launched in Britain in 1982, then extended to sites such as the United States, France, the Soviet Union, Germany, and China. Although using a similar terminology to the Festival of India, Dance Umbrella began in 1978 as a showcase of independent performance, initially centred on a single, small-scale venue. Only gradually, over its 30-year history, has Dance Umbrella emerged as a mainstream showcase in which the world’s most prominent contemporary dance companies appear in London’s most renowned venues. These two festivals provide an arena for examining the workings of festival structures. In this chapter, I suggest that festival programming engages with three related histories: the relationship between scholarship, cultural tourism, and imperial display; the construction of national identities; and the relationship of dance to diplomacy.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jens Giersdorf for providing comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks to Neelima Jeyachandran and Pallavi Sriram for locating source material on tourism in India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Janet O’Shea

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  1. Janet O’Shea
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. African and African American Studies, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Thomas F. DeFrantz

  2. Department of Politics and Philosophy, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Philipa Rothfield

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O’Shea, J. (2016). Festivals and Local Identities in a Global Economy: The Festival of India and Dance Umbrella. In: DeFrantz, T., Rothfield, P. (eds) Choreography and Corporeality. New World Choreographies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54653-1_6

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