Introduction

Abstract

Flexible Bodies situates the late twentieth-century emergence of British South Asian dance as a genre in relation to the parallel rise of neoliberalism and multiculturalism in Britain.1 Specifically, it tells the story of British South Asian dancers and the creative ways in which they negotiate the demands of neoliberal, multicultural dance markets through an array of flexible bodily practices, including agility, versatility, speed, mobility, adaptability, and risk-taking. Attending to pain, injury, and other restrictions on movement, it also reveals the bodily limits of flexibility. Theorizing the flexible aesthetics of British South Asian dancers as both a bodily practice and political tactic, ...