In this talk, I offer play as a framework for conceiving of music as dance—and vice versa. I do so by exploring creativity in ‘kathak.’ Often described as North Indian “classical” dance, the form is most recognizable in its percussive aesthetics, in which practitioners tap and slap their feet on the floor along with accompanying musicians—one who might articulate footwork rhythms on a tabla or pakhavaj drum. These aesthetic signatures join other hallmarks, like the performance of narrative mime and quick pirouettes. Performance scholars have explicated the twentieth-century caste reinvention of kathak as part of a nationalist project toward constructing a (newly) ancient, pre-imperial Indian culture (see, e.g. Chakravorty 2008; Maciszewski 2006; Morcom 2013; Walker 2014). I build on some of this literature to argue for play as form in kathak. Drawing on ethnographic research among practitioners—which includes my own practice of kathak for twenty years, I show that the consequences of this argument are twofold: first, play as kathak dissents dominant ethnonationalist narratives that the Indian state has increasingly cast into classical dance. Second, play opens a framework for music as a danced creativity. In the study of performance, play opens pathways to a capacious methodology for designing movement from musical creativity, and music as choreography.

Ameera Nimjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at Yale University, where she also holds appointments in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and South Asian Studies. Her primary research is on the study of how bodies move aesthetically, culturally, and politically in South Asian performance traditions. Ameera is currently completing a book on creativity in Indian contemporary dance. Her essays have been published in various journals and volumes, such as South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies and Music and Dance as Everyday South Asia (Oxford, 2024). She holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Ethnomusicology and a Bachelor of Music in classical piano. Also a performer, Ameera is a kathak dancer in Toronto-based Chhandam Dance Company under the artistic direction of her teacher Joanna de Souza. She continues to play various keyboard instruments, including piano and harmonium, on which she performs in Hindustani and fusion music.