‘Cultural Translation’ of Bharata Natyam into ‘Contemporary Indian Dance’. Second‐generation South Asian Americans and cultural politics in diasporic locations

Abstract This essay explores the phenomenon of Contemporary Indian Dance in the Southern California region. Practitioners create new choreography using contemporary, even feminist themes, basing their work on their training in the most popularly studied traditional classical dance style from India, namely Bharata Natyam along with other movement vocabularies such as modern dance, jazz, and yoga. Second‐generation involvement with popular cultural practices such as dance in the Southern California diasporic South Asian American community, and innovations to 'tradition' within a local‐global context of cultural politics engages the work of four dancers analyzed in this essay.