Bollywood 2000 YEARS OF DANCE IN ART

The Akiko Yamazaki And Jerry Yang Pavilion

From the heartfelt and spontaneous moves seen at any wedding reception to the elaborately staged choreography of a Bollywood production, dance allows people around the world to communicate and connect through sheer movement. The many roles dance has played throughout human history — including its role in the realms of religion, mythology, and ceremony — speak to its ability to convey profound and manifold meanings. It is no wonder, then, that centuries of artists have been moved to try to capture the magic of dance in other art forms.

“While the expressive capacity of dance is universal, it has flourished with exceptional radiance in the arts and visual culture of South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayan region,” says exhibition curator Dr. Forrest McGill. Co-curated by McGill and Ainsley M. Cameron, Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art and Antiquities at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in Art is a celebration of dance’s enduring capacity to inspire artists from this part of the world for two millennia. A wide range of meanings are reflected through artworks from India, Nepal, Tibet, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia, as well as work by select contemporary artists who engage with performance and dance in various mediums.

McGill notes that while naturally there is plenty of dancing for fun and entertainment in the lands represented in Beyond Bollywood, the visual arts of this region also portray dance as a potent vehicle for communication and change — “conveying the profoundest religious, spiritual, and social messages, but also potentially disrupting or invigorating the world.” Certain Hindu and Buddhist deities are often depicted dancing, McGill says: “In fact, it’s hard to think of other religious traditions worldwide where the gods dance so much.” Beyond Bollywood includes numerous examples of divine beings in motion, from the grinning titular figures in a painting of the Tibetan Lords of the Cremation Ground dancing, to bronze sculptures of the Hindu deities Shiva