Nearly a week after the Oscars, the hurt and disappointment of a missed opportunity still weighs heavily on the minds of some South Asian American dancers, who are setting out to ensure it never happens again.
Many in the South Asian dance community were dismayed by the astonishing dearth of South Asian representation in the “Naatu Naatu” performance at Sunday’s Academy Awards. While singers Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava were on hand to perform their hit tune from Tollywood smash “RRR” — which made history for India that night by winning best original song — they were joined on stage by not a single dancer of South Asian heritage.
How could the Academy have gotten this so wrong? Especially when, 14 years ago, they nailed it with the staging of A.R. Rahman’s “Slumdog Millionaire” hit “Jai Ho” at the 2009 Oscars as part of a widely celebrated four-minute medley.
“[The 2009 Oscars] had Indian singers and it was a multi-racial group of dancers and musicians,” explains Shilpa Davé, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia who specializes in the history of representations of race and gender in the media. “They were really showing that music has this global force. That’s why people didn’t have an issue at that time.”
While Sunday night did mark a historic turning point for India, which also won best documentary short for Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga’s “The Elephant Whisperers,” the glaring absence of South Asian performers on Hollywood’s biggest stage was the “last straw” for dancers like Achinta S. McDaniel.
“Some people say, ‘Just be happy with what we got,’ and that’s part of [the problem] — this idea of just accepting the scraps that are thrown to you,” McDaniel, the founder and artistic director of the Los Angeles-based Blue13 Dance Company, tells Variety. “Just be happy an Indian song was nominated [and won]. Don’t be…
Read the full article here