Cirrus@Austlit

'The Celestial Dancers: Manipuri Dance on Australian Stage charts the momentous journey of the popularization of Manipur’s Hindu dances in Australia.

'Tradition has it that the people of Manipur, a northeastern state of India, are descended from the celestial gandharvas, dance and music blessed among them as a God’s gift. The intricately symbolic Hindu dances of Manipur in their original religious forms were virtually unseen and unknown outside India until an Australian impresario, Louise Lightfoot, brought them to the stage in the 1950s. Her experimental changes through a pioneering collaboration with dancers Rajkumar Priyagopal Singh and Ibetombi Devi modernized Manipuri dance for presentation on a global stage. This partnership moved Manipur’s Hindu dances from the sphere of ritualistic temple practice to a formalized stage art abroad. Amit Sarwal chronicles how this movement, as in the case of other prominent Indian classical dances and dancers, enabled both Manipuri dance and dancers to gain recognition worldwide.

'This book is ideal for anyone with an interest in Hindu temple dance, Manipur dance, cross-cultural collaborations and the globalizing of Indian Classical Dance. The Celestial Dancers is a comprehensive study of how an exceptional Hindu dance form developed on the global stage.' (Publication summary)

'In Diaspora literature, most 'homes' are constructed through the memories of the migrants - the idea of the belonging to someplace stable. In relation to this, Manfred Jurgensen (1986) has argued that ethnic writers are ‘monocultural writers whose creative imagination remains restricted to a native culture (home) in exile...’ 

'Some happy occasions, like the 1995 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book to Bangladeshi-Australian author Adib Khan, the 2008 Man Booker Prize to Indian born Australian writer Arvinda Adiga, and the 2013 Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction to Sri Lankan-Australian author Michele de Krester, have boosted the self-confidence of South Asian-Australian writers in Australia. South Asian diasporic communities have also been the focus for relatively small, but constantly growing, studies by anthropologists and sociologists on the interrelation of gender, race, ethnicity and migration in Australia. The terms Labels and Locations capture numerous aspects that contribute in the making of a diasporic consciousness. This book critically examines the issues of identity, gender, family, class and caste, expressed in the short narratives of South Asian diaspora writers based in Australia. Taking an interdisciplinary approach–from literary, cultural, historical, anthropological, and sociological studies–this book engages chiefly with the oeuvre of postcolonial writers and academics, namely: Mena Abdullah, Adib Khan, Yasmine Gooneratne, Michelle De Kretser, Chandani Lokuge, Chitra Fernando, Satendra Nandan, Suneeta Peres da Costa, Hanifa Deen, Christopher Cyrill, Suvendrini Perera, Sunil Govinnage, Brij V. Lal, Sunil Badami, Glenn D'Cruz, Chris Raja, Manik Datar, David De Vos, Rashmere Bhatti, Kirpal Singh Chauli, Sujhatha Fernandes, Neelam Maharaj, Sushie Narayan, Madu Pasipanodya, Shrishti Sharma, Beryl T. Mitchell, and Sunitha. This book will, by calling upon the works of this much-neglected South Asian diaspora group, fill a lacuna in the broader critical rubric of diaspora studies.' (Publication summary)

This literary reader on Australian studies for India not only investigates this central question by exploring many other facets of Australian literature especially Australian cross-cultural relationships with India and Asia. Taking a broad view of what Australian literature is, it explores the dimensions of Australian literature (national, Aboriginal, multicultural, ecocritical, postcolonial, modernist, comparative, feminist, and popular) in its varied genres of drama, poetry, autobiography. explorers' journals, short stories, literature of war, travel writing, Anglo-Indian fiction, diasporic writing, mainstream novel, nature writing, children's literature, romance, science fiction, gothic literture, horror, crime fiction, queer writing and humour. Each paper in this Reader presents different ways of "reading down under" and "performing Australianness" (Source: Backcover).