Copy of the Copy
inDevelopment Project
Performer/choreographer/writer and co-Artistic Director of Sangam, Priya Srinivasan brings together an extraordinary team of artists, makers, and thinkers in conversation.
What does it mean to be a copy of the copy such that the origins become obscured? Who profits from it? What does profit look like? What happens when those who cannot be represented because of power differentials have their art copied by dominant bodies while their bodies are discarded in the process? How do we move forward from these histories of entanglements?
What gets labeled contemporary and what gets labeled “traditional” when they are actually hybrid forms influenced and borrowed from each other? How can we move away from binaries to redefine the contemporary?
Dr. Priya Srinivasan's practice is rooted in South Asian classical dance, prioritizing feminist decolonization processes, and making visible minority women’s histories. Her work has been presented internationally in major festivals and venues in USA, Europe, China, India and Australia.
With a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, Priya is the author of the award-winning book “Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labour.”
“Copy of the Copy” is a multidisciplinary interactive performance work based on Srinivasan's book “Sweating Saris” which looks at dancers as gendered racialized labourers in the USA and Australia in the 20th century. “Copy of the Copy” looks at South Asian performance of hereditary artists and other cultural workers in the 19th-20th century in Europe and Australia and the impact they have had on Western classical and contemporary performance despite the White Australia Policy in Australia, the Asian Exclusion Act in USA and the colonial mechanisms in Europe that restricted the movement of South Asian bodies even while absorbing their cultural forms.
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