Hybrid Bodies in Transit: The ‘Third Language’ of Contemporary Kathak

Inspired by the third space theory of Homi Bhabha, this essay explores the postcolonial condition of a Theatre-Dance in transit: ‘Contemporary Kathak’. Travelling between contemporary Western dance techniques and Kathak, a South Asian classical dance form, the Anglo-Indian dancer Akram Khan has developed an innovative movement language. Contemporary Kathak may be seen as a ‘third language’, a hybrid language, which displays a variety of responses to the encounter between different cultures and histories. Khan’s transition between dance forms, cultures, and histories has produced ‘dances of interruptions’, mirroring and in-corporating cultural hybridity and postcolonial identity. The concept of ‘confusion’ developed by this dancer recalls the metaphoric tear produced in classical Indian languages as they overlap and enter into a syncretic conjunction with contemporary Western languages. The dislocative nature of Khan’s performances echoes some of the ‘confused’ Indian poetic voices which combine English and Indian mother-tongues to reflect the in-between condition of their hybrid bodies. The intention behind this paper is to use the privileged cultural space of Theatre-Dance in order to interrogate the body languages of postcolonial identities and the cultural implications of the process of transition in India today.