18
BETWEEN ‘CELESTIAL MAIDEN’ AND ‘SACRED PROSTITUTE’: THE MYTH OF THE DEVA-DĀSĪ IN THE IMAGINARY OF THE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN CLASSICAL DANCE PRACTITIONERS
Authors: Angelica MARINESCU
Number of views: 188
One of the most controversial discussions in the contemporary Indian arts environment
remains the connection of the post-colonial classical dance practice with the DevadƗsƯ or the
MaharƯ, the temple dancing girls. Born in the Early Medieval India, amidst and in close
connection to the Bhakti and the Tantric movements, abiding in the temple institution, the socalled ‘DevadƗsƯ temple system’ remains a mystery, between awe and fascination to the
nowadays practitioner and connaisseur of Indian arts. While tracing back the socio-religious
contexts that brought the temple dancers on the foremost place of the stage of Indian art
history, the author looks for the understanding of this myth in the imaginary and the reality
of contemporary practitioners, from the perspective of a foreigner researcher-cumpractitioner of an Indian art form. The paper is based on consulting the existing literary
sources concerning the Devadãsĩ system, and the research is focusing on the nowadays
classical dance practitioners’ imaginary (re)construction(s) of this system. Till today, here
she stands, the woman-as-dance practitioner, either Indian or from any other part of the
world, at the cross-road of all myths, imaginarily rooted in the past, but living all the
aspirations of the nowadays social, cultural, religious, political dynamics, neither celestial
maiden, nor sacred prostitute.