Priya Srinivasan's recent book puts into conversation dance history, transnational politics and culture, and constructions of race, citizenship, and gender among dancers from the late nineteenth century, to the present day practice of Bharata Natyam (an Indian classical dance form) on the U.S. West Coast. An ambitious undertaking, Sweating Saris draws from historical, ethnographic, performance studies, feminist, and political methods of inquiry.
Srinivasan's book chronicles the receptivity and influence of Indian dance forms and artists' labor within both the U.S. dance world and broader American society at large, from 1880 to the present day. Offering archival evidence, historical and feminist analysis, and attention to power and national policy, the author argues that public reactions to and treatments of Indian dancing bodies in the United States to a large extent paralleled, and perhaps even preceded, exclusionary U.S. political and race policies toward Asian Americans and their paths to political and cultural...
