Crossings between Regional and National Culture in the work of Imphal-based choreographer, Surjit Nongmeikapam

Abstract

I analyze the regional and national cultural crossings in the pedagogical and choreographic practice of Imphal-based artist, Surjit Nongmeikapam—member of the Meitei community. Through ethnographic observations, qualitative interviews, and “thick descriptions” (Geertz 1973), I suggest that Nongmeikapam’s choreosomatic practice is a methodology for deep resistance towards the forced Hinduization and Indianization of the region. I show how his conception of the “natural body” empowers a culturally embodied regional identity that is contemporary, and his improvisation-based pedagogical practice, Yangshak Movement, fosters harmonious, equitable, and reciprocal relations between the body and the land rooted in regional philosophy and movement traditions. Making multiple crossings between internal and external, regional and national, religious and indigenous, and local and global borders, form, and culture, I argue, Nongmeikapam not only reclaims but also reproduces a new framework for regional and ethnic autonomy, representation, and freedom through a process that could usefully be called resistive hybridity.