Speaker 1:	Thank you, and thank you so much for coming today. I know this is a really busy time for everyone, so I'm really grateful that you are here. And before I begin, I would like to actually thank Swarthmore College for awarding me the [Brand 00:00:26] Branch Shard Fellowship for my field work, research in India in the year 2011 and twelve. This grant especially enabled me to do field work in the National Archives in Pune, and some of that you will see today. Also, this particular paper is based on my research that I have been conducting in Palpatan and Bombay for the past six year, for a [Book Land 00:00:49] project, on new media and visual culture, especially focusing on Bollywood dance and dance reality show and the rise of a new generation of dancers, practitioners, and choreographers in India from the underprivileged and the middle classes. 
	Now before I embark on my paper, I want to thank Barbara for a wonderful and personal and generous introduction. Thank you. And also wanted to take this opportunity to make you aware of April 13th, the art's weekend, we have one of the most important kathak choreographers in the world among us today, Kumudini Lakhia who is sitting here and I want to thank Swarthmore College for inviting her to be the Visiting Cornell Professor. So you will be actually seeing her performance, her choreographies, and participating in a panel on kathak, which celebrates her legacy and her contribution. And I can promise you it's going to be a remarkable event. The event starts at 3, so I just would not give up this plaque you know, since you are all here. 
	I also want to mention that the way I look at this work is part of my ongoing research on dance in India. My first research was on the classical dance style kathak and democratization and modernization of this classical aura form into a modern form. And also looking at women's lives and their contribution in this particular dance as it modernized. And this particular work is a continuation of the same work in terms of dance and ethnography and lives of dancers. But the focus is popular dance form. 
	It's a very interesting time in India in terms of what's happening with the culture, the economy, and all kinds of values and issues colliding with each other. So that's the kind of world I'm trying to capture with this research, and of course you will be just hearing an excerpt of some of my other book chapters that are in the process of being written.
	The rapid and [inaudible 00:03:09] changes that signify India today can be construed as a bewildering ensemble of opposites. The condition is articulated in the contradictory mission of a globalizing economy and culture advocated through narratives of modernization, urbanization, and democratization on the one hand; and preservation of ancestral homelands, sacred places, and the environment from capitalist development on the other. However, both remain entrenched in the micro politics of the local and the vernacular. 
	In this present moment, the once dominant orientalist view of India living in the past has been replaced by a turbulent newness. The [movement of 00:03:55] of change had facilitated various kinds of boundary crossing among cultural forms, between high and low, classical and folk, Indian and western, which in turn has prompted different cultural forms and bodily practices to emerge. This most important aspect of this newness has been driven by the spread of media and electronic communication. The articulation and cultural practice of Indian dance have taken center stage in the mushrooming of visual culture circulated by new media and technology.
	One such new form that has saturated the media networks is television dance reality shows. You cannot escape this if you turn on a television in India. The Bollywood inspired remixed global dances of the reality shows are the most visible cultural product of India's new economy. In order to explore the new forms of subjectivities that are forged through the interactions of various media technologies, such as cinema, video, internet, and television, and the relationship to traditional visual culture, such as dance and ritual, I focus on the emergence of a new visual genre of dance television reality show. 
	However, rather than looking at it as a global phenomenon, which it is, I analyze it within localized contexts. In order to explore subjectivities shaped by sensory experiences of the body, and the relationship to technology and visual culture, I situate them in specific histories and ethnographic contexts. Thus, while dance television reality shows in India are conceptually borrowed from television reality shows in the West, they are deeply grounded in the visual and sensory culture of India and it's all pervasive media apparatus Bombay films, renames Bollywood in the 1980s. 
	My investigation is concerned with uncovering this indigenous logic visual genre by placing it within the song and dances of Bombay or Bollywood films. I argue that the song and dance sequences in Bombay films were forerunners of the music video industry and the music reality TV, both in the West and in India; and the internet connections between the west and the east are Hollywood and Bollywood are both narratives of homogenization and specificities of culture and aesthetics.
	The intersection of modern media, such as cinema, television, music, video, and the older traditions of music, dance, and theater are a complex area of investigation where various fields of meanings of simultaneously at play. In modern age of mechanical reproduction, the visual aesthetics of the past, which are derived from Indian philosophical, religious, and secular traditions, entangle with modern technologies of imaging, with photography, cinema, television, and various electronic media. In all this, the construction of desire and the desiring subject, I argue take center stage in negotiating in body aesthetics and technology not just as image and representation, but also as emotion and corporeal experiences.
	The media explosion of television dance reality shows in India forms a rich tapestry of lives, desires, aspirational experiences of dancers, choreographers, and spectators. In order to uncover the subjectivities within a mediatized global Indian [inaudible 00:07:25], I explored the conceptual framework of desire and it's relation to nation and citizen as they're articulated in the song and dance sequences of Bombay films. 
	The paper is divided into three sections. The first section, desire forms the [curatical 00:07:39] lens to explore the song and dance sequences as aspects of aesthetic and material desire in shaping Indian subjectivities. The second section maps the transition from Bombay to Bollywood films by analyzing some of the key song and dance sequences to establish a genealogical link between the television reality shows and the dancing in Bollywood films. So I'm arguing that they are interconnected. The third section situates the song and dance sequences in the context of reality TV, and dance practice on the ground. 
	However, I suggest in the paper that the transition from Bombay to Bollywood is not just an aesthetic, cinematic transformation, but is located in the ideological and material transformation of desire and the desiring subject within the changing narrative of Indian modernity. 
	In Indian philosophy, religion, and art, desire forms the common ground for exploring human emotions are feelings. The idea of desire is transformed into aesthetic emotions, such as bhava and rasa, in the performing and visual arts. Desire is articulated and embodied through the song and dances in the Bombay films of the past belong to a mythopoetical world of bhakti and sufi love mysticism. This music and dances were imbued with rasa, such as Bhaki Rasa, or devotional desire, or Sringara rasa, or erotic desire. The glossary of terms will give you some idea about what these concepts are. 
	Although many of the song and dance sequences were influenced by Uday Shankar, he's the modern dance pioneer in India, who gave a new dimension to classical rasa aesthetics and some were derived purely from western forms, the general repertoire of the songs and dances were associated with traditional Indian aesthetics. It is no surprise then that the Indian dances have been an important feature of Bombay cinema from its inception. Both have been integral to the project of nation building and fostering a sense of collective national identity. 
	Both cinema and dance have use similar cultural aesthetic codes of the rasas, making, meaning, affect, and identity construction, for establishing a deep sense of cultural identity. Classical and folk dances ranging from kathak and bharatanatyam to nautanki and raslila have been the staple of Bombay films. 
	In Hindi films such as Devas, Guide, Pyaasa, Kinara, these are very famous films, and others, the soul's longing to the union with the divine was imagined in the song and dance sequences express a lover's desire for his beloved. This how they're expressed. These sequences often evoked images of Radha and Krishna or Laila or Majnu, transforming the screen to a mythic land of love mysticism. The song and dances connected the audience to the cultural habitus of deeply felt emotions encoded in bhava and rasa. They helped to invent a sense of tradition and continuity in the narrative of nation and identity within a postcolonial context of nation building and citizenship. These dances and songs resonated with ethos of parampara, continuous tradition, that referred to a specific method of dance practice, social organization, and transmission of knowledge.
	Many films directly incorporated a special training relationship between student and teacher, which is known as guru-shisya parampara, in their plot. Films such as Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje, Ganga Jamuna, Suransangam, Shankar Varnum, and Umrao Jan show this specific practice-oriented disciplining of the body in narrating story of dancers and musicians. And I just want to show you a few clips that kind of embody some of these traditional aesthetics. 
	This was a really extremely popular big film, and Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baje is basically an onomatopoeic word, which describes the sounding of the bells. And you can the face and the animation of the face and the expression. This is a famous film actually on the story of a courtesan and it incorporated a lot of kathak. Kumudini can tell you more about it. She actually has been part of this history, so ... 
	In the last two decades due to globalization and new technology and democratization of consumption, a decentralized and fragmented visual field of images has replaced an earlier rooted aesthetic cultural identity. The embodiment of erotic desire through music and dance, such as Sringara rasa, encapsulated in "chherchhar", which is what is called romantic teasing in song and dances, has transformed into a new kind of desire.
	Bombay cinema, renamed Bollywood, has created some stunning images of dance through new digital technology, costume sets, and dance techniques. Bollywood song and dances have pushed commodification of images of dance and dancing bodies to a new material aesthetic dimension of desire. This new kind of desire is identified with aspiration, markets, and consumption. The song and dance sequences recently invented as item numbers, and the glossary of terms will explain to you what item numbers are, often offer myriad possibilities of heightened desire and aspirations to be an Indian today, who is a global consumer in an ever expanding visual field.
	The song and dances are the sites of this contestation of desire between the past aesthetic codes, associated with classical dances and new ones from MTV, Broadway musicals, music videos, and postmodern choreographies. Simply put, Bollywood song and dance sequences are the quintessential locus of the complex negotiation between India's past and its desire to be a modern democracy and stake a claim in the global cultural market. The song and dances are the sites of change for ushering in new imaginings of culture, power, democracy, and citizenship. Both faces the changes conventions and shifting meanings of song and dance representations in Bombay cinema of early times. 
	And I quote, "The visual images in these scenes have filled Indian theaters with a stylized vocabulary of dance and gesture, ranging from maidenly brushes of the 1940's Lila Chitnis to the brazen bump and grind of the 1990's Madhuri Dixit. Thus, when a song and dance scene appears in a film, of course it's very appearance is a narrative convention, the conventions form not only the musical, visual, and kinesthetic content, but also types of meaning one can expect, and the coded elements that will be used to construct that meaning." End quote.
	In the past two decades, a paradigm shift has taken place in the musical, visual, and kinesthetic content of the song and dance sequences that have challenged the established norms, codes, and meanings. The earlier codes predominantly drawn from the mythopoetic semiotic world of Bhakti and Sufi, love mysticism, have given away to gyrating bodies endlessly on display, creating overly sexualized commodity transactions. The latter roles once only reserved for the vamps in Hindi films, are now coveted by lead heroines. The song and dance sequences have taken on a new format and movement idiom. As they have taken on this format and movement idiom, they have increasingly dissociated from the plot. 
	Consequently, more value had been added to their commodity status. They now create the repeat value of a film and circulate as music videos and item numbers on television channels, iTunes, and YouTube. They function like franchise productions, transforming the notion of cultural production into the notion of a rhizomatic culture, where one product leads to other kinds of merchandise. The rise of multiplex and production houses in India are an aspect of the same rhizomatic multiplications. 
	I propose the idea of "remix" captures this new aesthetics and lived reality of Bollywood dance. Remix as a culture of practice and aesthetic concept represents the new kind of aspirational desire associated with markets and commodity. It reduces a sharpening of desire that is represented through hyper-visualization of commodity images, also called commodity aesthetics, associated with advertising products. Bollywood's song and dance sequences, I argue, create a potent engine for producing this kind of aesthetic desire that leads to consumption. Bollywood song and dances enable the dancer and the viewer alike to produce themselves as individual consumers disconnected from their social class, family, or community. The emergence of item numbers builds on commodity aesthetics to produce new heights of desire through aspirational images. 
	These remixed item numbers constitute the subjectivities of the global cosmopolitan Indian who has no easily identifiable citizenship, no localized identity, not any familiar ties. The aspirational images heighten the concept of commodity aesthetic to create a desire not only to consume or buy a product, but adds a desire for certain lifestyle of a geographical area. 
	Marrazella explain, and I quote, "The statement that objects of images may be aspirational implies that an orientation toward such objects or images indicates a desire for personal transformation, in line with a widely diffused and generally recognized index of advancement. Aspirational qualities appear, on the face of it, to be inherent properties." Thus marketing theorist David Aakar writes, and I quote, 'The brand Nike is very aspirational in the sense that wearing Nike represents what the users aspire to be like rather than their current self image.' Aspirational qualities are moreover, associable not only with particular brands, but also with whole quasi-geographical imaginaries."
	This form of aspirational desire of a new generation of Indians, I argue, is writ large on the of the song and dance canvases of recent films, such as Dhoom 2, Dhoom, and there are many like that. Now that heroes and heroines exude the cosmopolitan aura of western fashion models with their perfect bodies, stylish accessories, fair looks, and golden hair lights. They sport brand name clothes, drive around in foreign cars in exotic locations, and look like commercials for a global consumerist lifestyle.
	But the cultural products coming out of Bollywood are not homogenous. Directors such as Suraj Barjatya are interested in creating Bollywood films that harken back to past notions of culture and tradition in an auto-exoticizing mode. The transformation desire from rasa to remix is contradictory and complicated as traditional ways of doing things give way to expanding markets, and technological innovations, summarized often as the "Bollywoodization of Indian culture."
	And I want to show you a few clips about this particular kind of "Bollywoodization" that you see. These images are from this film Dhoom 2, and you can see the drastic transformation, just very obvious. You can all see the transformation is just not only for the female, but also for the male. So it's not that there are only female item girls, but also male item boys. So this is equal opportunity objectification. 
Audience:	(laughs)
Speaker 1:	The global prominence of Bollywood arguably began with the film Hum Aapke Hain Koun. It's also called HAHK, Who am I to You? In 1994, a musical that focused on two weddings. And you know how popular weddings are in Bombay films. And that played for almost a year, grossing more that a stunning $30 million. The expansion of Bollywood market to US, Canada, UK, and the Middle East, and also to East Asian countries, is a tale of spectacular marketing success. Hum Aapke Hain Koun, or HAHK, set a new standard of consumerism in India. The film is directed by Suraj Barjatya of Rajshri Productions, one of the most prominent production houses in Bollywood. The film is choreographed by Ajit Barjatya, who trained in both western and Indian classical dances. The dancing and choreography threw together an eclectic infusion of western and Indian form derived from the Punjabi folk dance Bhangra, with the distinct Bollywood flavor.
	The movie celebrated the quintessential notion of an Indian family, traditional family values with very extravagance at the center. It was the first film to run in mainstream cinemas in the US, UK, and other parts of the world. The film paved the path for commercial films in the overseas market and other films followed. The song and dances sequences repeated now with an eye to the box office rather than the storyline or the script. So they were really becoming completely decontextualized from the actual storyline. More of these trend coincide with Bollywood establishing itself as a major entertainment industry and spreading globally as an industrial conglomerate. 
	[Shubrha Sheh Gupta 00:21:33] observes, regarding the commercialization of aesthetic in Bombay cinema, and I quote, "A new aesthetic filtered by the music television entered in the cinema in the early to mid-90's." End quote. The remixing of traditional or old Bollywood film music in new packages was gaining popularity. The song and dance sequences picturized in exotic locales with stunning cinematography was claiming a separate from the actual film, such as the number "Chaiya Chaiya" from Del Se. The song and dance sequences brought the concept of the item girl, which is an overly sexualized dancing girl displayed on the song and dance sequences, to the forefront. 
	The dancing on top of a moving train, surrounded by nature, the Rajasthani costumes and the Rajasthani folk-inspired dancing and the music by AR Rahman, you are probably familiar with this name now, made the sequence, "Chaiya Chaiya," a memorable one. I want to show you a little bit of that. This is what was playing when you came in. Sorry, I have to stop that. I recommend the-
Audience:	(laugh)
Speaker 1:	I recommend the YouTube.
	So the lyrics by Gulzar for this song was based on a traditional Sufi song by Bulleh Shah, so lots of this were transforming. It was a traditional qawwali song that was being transformed in this song and dance sequence. The visualization of the music was so compelling that it wedded cinematography to the song and helped create a new visual music genre. The song and dance sequence of "Chaiya Chaiya" marks the arrival of Indian music video. It also put AA Rahman on the map for ushering a new kind of contemporary Indian music, musical, sorry.
	The choreography by Farah Khan, who was an assistant to choreographer Shah Rukh Khan, and these are big names in Bombay films also put her on the map as a choreographer, and she won the Best Choreographer's Award for the film. The music video of "Chaiya Chaiya" became a global hit.
	The interdependent relationship between Bollywood song and dance sequences and the music video market established a new global niche for the Bollywood industry. It's spread was propelled by remix hits like the controversial video "Kata Laga" by DJ Doll, again I recommend YouTube for this. It's quite stunning. The video created a controversy about censorship and women's sexuality. The idea of remix, which was not just confined to music videos but was also different languages, such as a mix of English and Hindi, or Hinglish, are shared in a new urban cultural phenomenon among the Indian diaspora. The trendy pop remix genre celebrated being South Asian and international at the same time in cities such as London and Birmingham. 
	The popularity of remix videos with integrated dancing, music, set, camera angles, and picturization is summarized in the Indian newspaper, Hindu. And I quote, "It is no big deal anymore that remix albums are selling like hotcakes. A few months ago, Indie Pop saw a renaissance in the remix scene. It started by the song by DJ Akhil," Akhil is here, but no he did start that. "'Kata Laga' by DJ Doll, and many more followed. And today it has become some sort of a rule that every music company must release a remix album featuring a video with three or four skimpy clad models gyrate to gravity defying pelvic moves." End quote. 
	The popularity of the remixes showed that the item number was going to be the engine for Bollywood films in the 21st century. The "item boy" also followed in films such as Delhi Belly. The song and dance sequences in Bollywood films, or the item number, functioned like music videos and have a life of their own now. They're now released many months before the film is released. They appear in television programs and circulate in video, cable, and DVD. In fact, the popularity of song and dance sequences now determines the Box Office success of the film. 
	Anustup Basu contends that they operate like, and I quote, "Designer products that can invoke bodies, spaces, and objects that can arrive from any visual universe." End quote. 
	"The dominance of Bollywood cinema over all cultural production deemed "Indian" especially music, dance, and fashion, is particularly significant and linked to a cultural conglomeration involving a range or distribution and consumption activities, from websites to music cassettes, from cable to radio,"writes Ashish Rajadyaksha. Moreover, the dramatic expansion of television since the early 2000, along with the emergence of cable networks, such as Zee, Sony, Star, provide publicity engines for rhizomatic circulations of Bollywood films and especially the song and dance sequences or item numbers. 
	If fact, the dance television reality shows are venues to present the item numbers. In the process, it brings the Bollywood industry even closer to the common audience, not just as passive audience members, but as active partakers in the making of a transnational celebrated culture. 
	In the next section, I look at Bollywoodization of Indian culture within ethnographic context of dance classes in Kolkata. And this is basically where my ethnographies located, and I've been conducting this research in both Mumbai and Kolkata. And it was really interesting that when I started this research, initially I was interested in looking at the background dancers in Bollywood films. Who are these people who are basically in the backdrop dancing away? I was very curious about these dancers and their lives. And when I arrived in Bombay, I realized just talking to the choreographers and dancers that these are the same people who actually compete in television reality shows. It's really an interconnected world. I wasn't aware of that at that point. Now, it becomes very obvious, when you watch television reality shows, you know that these people are connected to Bollywood.
	But back in 2006, 2007 when I started this, I wasn't aware and it was just an incredible revolution to me in terms of the striving that I saw among these people who are, many of them, coming from very underprivileged backgrounds. And many of them have no dance training at all. So, they have talent to do movements, and they look at YouTube videos, and they just pick it up. It's kind of that "ad hoc" system of learning. And somehow, they just dream of landing in some reality show or some Bollywood dance number. Slowly and slowly, it's getting professionalized, but even then it's a very difficult world, "dog eats dog" kind of world, the reality show world.
	It was a really astonishing experience for me to see how much, I mean ... When I watch these dancers from an audience perspective, from a [Rasika 00:30:34] perspective of someone who's been trained in classical Indian dance, sometimes I say, "Oh my god, what are they doing?" But just knowing these people very closely, I have learned so much about what it means to be a dancer, really. They are striving, and there are struggles to make it work in this new India. So this is where my work is actually located in the book. 
	There are many upward mobility accounts of the lower, middle, and working classes in contemporary India. The new media and the prominence of Bollywood have created a new awareness and popularity of dance in India. They have broadened the audience for dance, as well as opened up new opportunities for new classes and new generations, who can dream of pursuing careers as dancers and choreographers that were previously mostly reserved for the educated elite. The dance reality world is a world of such aspirations. 
	As the dance and music reality shows, which also have dancing, have exploded on television, dance studios, and dance spaces have mushroomed in cities such as Kolkata and Bombay. In Kolkata the dance spaces and tucked in various corners of the city, sometimes in the most unexpected places. I followed a few choreographers as they held classes in a variety of context, showing an incredible amount of dynamism, unpredictability, and flexibility, but with a steady fixity of purpose. I had to reorganize my sense of time and place from the precise schedules of American daily life. I could not plan much, as appointment were made and continuously changed, and I had to be flexible and patient.
	Here is an entry from my field notes: "[Bhashkar Kimon 00:32:15] was two hours late. I stood in from of the tall [Exide 00:32:18] building in Chowringhee Street in central Kolkata. This is a busy part of the city, but traffic was slow as it was a Sunday. As I waited, smells of chops and pakoras, which are flower fritters, wafted in the air. They were being fried on the pavement by a hawker. I was tempted to indulge and debating the potential health hazard of such small quartering street snacks in India. Then Bhashkar arrived. He said he could not answer my phone call, says he was driving his bike. I noticed he was holding his helmet. I accompanied him inside the old building. This is a landmark commercial building that had seen better days. We climbed up five dark and dilapidated floors to reach a bright, well lit room. This is the front office of [Shubela 00:33:04] Production. Bhashkar explained that his classes here are part of his production house, which are trying to bring dance and films on the same platform. 
	We sat in the front office that led to the studio and talked for a while. The room had posters of many dance forms and many dancers, including a poster that had Bhashkar in the center. The poster next to it showed Michael Jackson moon walking, his hands up, his face looking down and covered with a hat. There was also poster with many different dance poses that read, 'Jazz, Street, Lyrical, Modern, Hip Hop, Ballet, Contemporary' and all these forms mean very different things in India." This is something that you also learn. Because most of them are actually not aware of what Modern dance is like in America, so they have their own versions of Modern, Contemporary, Jazz, Ballet, all of this.
	"The dancers in the room came from a varied background. They arrived on different times, and at on point it seemed to me that they kept trickling in. The class eventually filled up and Bhashkar had two assistants, a male and a female, who helped him to teach. The laptop in the corner played some New Age music." For many of these dance instructor, their laptop is the most expensive things they own because this is where they have access to YouTube and they can just pick up music and dance movements.  
	"The dancers began moving with steps that looked like a mixture of Hip Hop, floor work, head spins, and lunges. When I asked about the movements, Bhashkar told me they called it 'freestyle.' Bhashkar repeatedly showed the head spin by breaking it part by part. I cringed a few times, as the dancers were on a cement floor that strained their necks and heads rather precariously. But then strong wooden floors are nowhere to be found in the city. The young males in the group were eager to execute the movements, and kept doing the same movements over and over again."
	The cultural landscape of a dance class such as this reflects the new style of dance practice in Mumbai and Kolkata, and the dance rehersals on film sets. The erosion of the culture and aesthetic codes connected to traditional methods of imparting knowledge of the body, was echoed by many dancers and choreographers in Bombay and Kolkata who spoke to me. 
	Geeta Kapoor, who has some [inaudible 00:35:17] training and is now assistant to the eminent choreographer Farah Khan and a judge on a major reality show, which is called Just Dance, talked about the emergence of new dance aesthetics. And she says, "In college, people asked me to do fashion shows. I got partnered with dancer Javed Jafri. I worked with Ken Ghosh who is a music video director, and he's know for his musical hit, "Ishq Vishq Piyar Viyar." It translates as "Love love love love." 
Audience:	(laughs)
Speaker 1:	"I have don't 40 or so videos with him. I have been working with Farah Khan as her assistant from 1994. I have choreographed [foreign language 00:35:58]. I also do a lot of film shows and events. This is the time of item numbers. Dancers have specific looks, glamor. They are professionals. We know that dancing is all about having a good frame of mind, and having a good look."
	In Bollywood and Bollywood-derived reality shows, changes are not only encoded in the nature of dance practice once associated with traditional embodied aesthetics, but in the negotiations between new editing techniques, computer graphics, and an impetus to represent bodies that are inspired by commodity images. The sculpted dancing figures, very often unite with fashion models, as fashion shows and film dance item numbers unite for a common platform to showcase commodities. 
	The concept of Bhakti and the relationship it forged between teacher and student, or dancer and devotee, and God are no longer relevant to the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. The structures of feeling associated with [inaudible 00:36:57] rasa appear in item numbers as fleeting emotions of a bygone era. These bodies are not emanating any particular culture and aesthetics. The dancing bodies are instruments on which movements are crafted using a cut and paste techniques. Therefore, various movements are uproot from specific contexts, and remixed to produce and item number for Bollywood films or reality shows. They reflect the commodity-oriented consumption of a global Indian modernity. The classrooms in Kolkata I visited regularly are part of this new discursive field of Indian dance of fluid borders, and aspiring choreographer and dancer. They come from all walks of like, breaking all previous notions of Indian dance and middle class respectability. 
	So in conclusion, the paper has shown that Bombay cinema had played a significant role in shift the aesthetics of desire from tradition inspired mythopoetic context to a new aesthetic of commodity production, expressed usually through the narrative of romance, heightened in song and dance sequences. Representation of erotic in Hindi films had drawn mostly on classical and folk dance forms. But now, the classical dance aesthetics are relics of the past. The hybrid dance fusions that dominate the song and dances today are inspired by commodity aesthetics, driven by a lifestyle of global consumption.
	I have argued that this aesthetic transition driven by technology and global economy reach of Bollywood is articulated with the term "remix." I've also shown how the remix genre gave birth to the "item girl," or "item number" in Bollywood films. I've also shown how the music video industry and television became media outlets for circulating remix dance numbers, have located the circulation of item numbers in the ethnographic context of dance classes in Kolkata and Bombay. 
	I suggested that these new dance forms are creating new visibility for aspiring dancers and choreographers, from relatively underprivileged classes and providing them with a new kind of media citizenry. Earlier such careers in dance, in general were confined to hereditary practitioners, and men and women of elite and affluent families. The broadened of the dance context has allowed young men and women to explore new career opportunities by participating in various dance contests, such as reality television shows. However, these opportunities have also been seen as exploitative engines of a new liberal economy, leading to excessive desire and erosion of morality. 
	So this is what has actually happened with these reality shows. It's not that everybody's very happy about what has happened with these dance forms. And these spaces have become spaces of contestation in terms of middle class respectability for girls because of costumes that they are wearing and the kind of lifestyles that they're leading, because they are trying to make a career in this kind of a difficult world. So in many of them, even their college professors are kind of not rusticating them from their colleges and classroom. So it's a very volatile situation, as well as some of the public colleges and institutions striked regular women's clothing. Like. "This is not allowed, you can't wear this. You only have to wear saris." So all of this is going on, and some of it is basically argued to be an impact of this kind of popularization of you know, dance. 
	So I want to leave you with some of the images of the dancers that I have been talking to in Kolkata. So this is a actually audition that I attended in Kolkata for a reality show, "Dance India Dance" and basically it had about almost thousand dancers basically camping out in the streets overnight to participate in the eastern of India. And they were only allowed to dance for less than a minute. This was their first found of audition. So this is how competitive this world is. And this is part of the audition. 
	And anything and everything is acceptable in these dance auditions. And this is Bhashkar's studio, the person I was talking about who came late, and usually always came late for appointments. And you can see to the right that "Street, Lyrical, Modern, Hip Hop," this is a common sort of thing that all of them do, all these styles. See, he's teaching.
	And this is [Sajit Jomal 00:41:45], another person I hung out with a lot. He used to sell caps. He's from an underprivileged background from a Muslim neighborhood. He is Muslim, and he has all kinds of [inaudible 00:41:57], you know like, "This is him who dominated," and "I have trouble getting work," and all of those things. But these people with him, the men especially, the males, young males. And this is a very young world, youth culture. One or two of them have never attended school, some of them are school drop outs. One, I remember was a sweeper who somehow gotten together with this group and dancing, and hoping that one day he'll break into the reality show world. 
	And the girls on the other hand, it's interesting that they actually have more schooling in terms of, for them, their backgrounds are not as underprivileged as the males. So the more I think about it, it seems like it's more an opportunity for the young males to redefine masculinity in India, and find some kind of upward mobility through these kinds of dance performances. 
	So this is another thing that's also happening in terms of this redefinition of masculinity with the Hip Hop, and the Salsa, and all these other forms of dance coming and kind of colliding with the traditional classical dance aesthetics, where the male representation is very different. 
	So I leave you with this images and we will open it up for conversation. Thank you so much.