Beyond Uniformity: Bodily Gestures and the Resisting Gaze of Nachni s in Purulia

This paper critically examines the gestures and gaze used by nachnis to resist stigma and dominant regimes of uniformity. Critical dance scholarship has highlighted how bodies are scripted through distinctive movements and why dancing bodies must be understood beyond the classical-folk binary. Drawing on cultural labour as an analytical framework, I show how performance and performer mutually shape one another through controlled gaze and sensuality, challenging the disciplinary regimes of caste, gender and sexuality that structure dance practices. The bodily gestures of dancing bodies, such as nachnis, question codified understandings of dance and exceed ideals of uniformity. This performance tradition emerges as an improvised practice deeply embedded in caste and gender relations. The nachni’s sensuous movements sustain livelihood, negotiate stigma, engage with the male gaze and resist through a controlled gaze. Through the case of the nachni, I reconceptualise bodily gestures as a site of labour and embodied resistance.