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This chapter deals with disability and performance in India. It focuses on classical dance forms, the canonical texts that describe them, and their relationship with disability. Analysing the performance of Ability Unlimited draws attention to the issue of classical dance and the question of the disabled body in it, and how the disabled body is restructured – in the extreme, in some cases – to fit in the structure of the classical performance. In Indian classical dances, as in other traditional forms of learning, knowledge transmission takes place through paradigms of guru and shishya. While devotion to the guru continues to mark the learning of classical dance in India, in the case of Ability Unlimited, the imbalances of power and position are amplified. The definition of disability In India, through the performance of Ability Unlimited or sudha Chandran, flows into the state discourses of how the nation wants to define and patronise disabled bodies.
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