ABSTRACT

THE WORLD OF INDIAN CLASSICAL DANCE IN THE GRIP OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES: BEING AN ARTIST IN THE TIME OF THE PANDEMIC

This research stands at the intersection of the performative arts world of the Classical India Dance (I.C.D.), the artist’ condition during pandemic times (how to continue one’s career, how to still be visible in the public space, how to continue one’s artistic (dance) practice when access to one’s teacher and the arts community is severed, how to teach during these times?) and the use of the New Technologies of Information and Communication (N.T.I.C.), namely the social networks of the Web 2.0 (Facebook), video-sharing platforms (YouTube, Vimeo) and video-conference (Zoom, Google Meet). While the need of social distancing lead to the (physical) separation of the teacher from the student, of the performer from the audience, but also of the artist from his / her group of practice, and from their networks of collaboration; new ways of practice, teaching, learning, communicating were developped using the new technologies of information and communication. Which undoubtedly will leave their mark not only on the present, but on the future practices. But, do these technologies facilitate a greater accessibility of the art (classical dance) for larger audiences? Do artists enjoy a greater inter-connectivity at a global level ? Starting from such questions, I conducted interviews with professionals of the Indian classical dance, while closely observing what was developping in the virtual environment (through netnographic metods)). Bringing dance to the online social networks could bring up questions regarding diversity, inclusion, and social, economic or cultural consideration, as well the equality to chances to learn, share knowledge, have access to the community common practices through internet (age, knowledge, time, affordability). The results of this research show that the more extensive use of new technologies in the field of classical Indian dance practice community was received in a positive manner, the artists learned to give value to the possibilities offered by the online platforms, facing the constraints, which might be even more difficult to overcome in the case of dance, which involves a corporeal activity, most often realised in presentia.

Keywords: pandemics, new tehnologies, inter-connectivity, Indian classical dance, artist.

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