Tilt Pause Shift

Tilt Pause Shift engages the knotty question of dance in today’s India. It is an investigation of movement, and, in particular, of a ‘marked’ subset of that – ‘dance’. In its many peregrinations it seems to ask, what kind of movement is dance? Most pointedly, it performs the question: What is dance in India? And, relatedly, what is it to dance in India? In its design, the book offers the reader the opportunity to manoeuvre between the analytic registers of the essays, and the sensuous and performative choreographic portraits. Interspersed between these are curated photo-spreads and imagistic representations of the material traces of performances-in-process. The latter, which take the form of diary notes, sketches and photographs, enhance the reader’s encounter with performances by providing another experiential layer. These residues of performance highlight the significance of process, contingency and reflection to choreographic composition. They are also, importantly, archives of performance in miniature, which reference the processes of the artist and her ensemble, and also perhaps, intriguingly, await reactivation in performance or discourse at some later date. In both the essays and the choreographic portraits, the effort has been to show the diversity of practices and methodologies that comprise the movement ecosphere that we inhabit today. The contributors to the book include: Ranjana Dave, Navtej Johar, Sundar Sarukkai, Brahma Prakash, Paromita Vohra, Padmini Chettur, Abantee Dutta, Shabari Rao, Rajyashree Ramamurthy, Justin McCarthy, Arushi Singh, Veena Basavarajaiah, Rose Merin, Himalay K. Gohel, Parvathi Ramanathan, Anita E. Cherian, Gabriele Wittmann and Esther Sutter.