Book Launch: Ram Gopal - Interweaving Histories Of Indian Dance

Join us for an evening of dance, music and conversation to launch Ann R David‘s newly published book on Indian dancer Ram Gopal: Ram Gopal. Interweaving Histories of Indian Dance (Bloomsbury).

Author Professor Ann R David offers insights into Gopal’s especially important role in transforming the Indian dance that westerners witnessed from the late 1930s to the period following World War II, and the subsequent change in perceptions of the classical Indian dancer. Gopal created a new, modern, international concert dance, based on classical Indian technique, and established an innovative aesthetic through his culturally and historically woven material, disrupting perceived notions of fixed identities, origins, gender, styles and geographies.

Books will be available for purchase and signature in the bar after the reading where all are welcome to stay for a drink.

ANN R DAVID

Ann R David, PhD, Professor of Dance and Cultural Engagement, is Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Bonn, Germany. She holds an Emerita professorial position at the University of Roehampton where she worked for 17 years, including as Head of the Dance Department for 6 years. Her research and teaching specialisms are in dance anthropology (ritual, migration, diaspora, embodiment) and South Asian classical & popular dance; her dance training includes ballet, contemporary, folk, and the Indian classical styles of bharatanatyam and kathak. She has published widely on this work, as well as on dance in Bollywood and on the ritual dances of Tibetan Buddhism and has completed a monograph of Indian dancer Ram Gopal (Bloomsbury). Ann is passionate about the need for the arts and dance in education, working closely with policy makers in the arts, and is on the board of several arts organisations. She has given public talks at the V&A, the British Library, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery and been involved in post-show discussions at Asia House, Nehru Centre, Sadler’s Wells, Southbank and the Bhavan. Ann has appeared on BBC radio and TV on several occasions and is on the editorial board of several academic journals. Her current interests are in creating cultures of (mutual) care in the arts that support an ecological dimension.