Dancing Ritiniti

In Dancing Ritiniti, performance scholar Munjulika Rahman Tarah investigates how centering dance in the study of Bangladesh can expand understandings of the relationship between culture, nation, language, and the body. Tarah examines the embodied ideological framework of dance practices in urban Bangladesh through the exploration of issues of morality that surface when the woman's dancing body is the focal point of inquiry. The Bangla term "ritiniti" which translates as “norms and customs,” is theorized here as the schematic structure underlying embodied practices that tells us which bodies and movements are considered “good” and acceptable, and which are considered “bad” within a particular social context. Tarah argues that, through Bangladeshi dance pedagogy and performance, women are inculcated with a framework of ritiniti or aesthetic morality that includes qualities such as shompriti (harmony and conformity), shotitto (chastity and purity), snigdhota (refreshing beauty), and shalinota (decency and respectability). These concepts are gendered, racialized, ethnicized, and class-specific, emphasizing the ways that dance mobilizes identity and works inside of social hierarchies. In using ritiniti as an ideological and structural point of reference, Dancing Ritiniticontends that dance forms, especially those from formerly colonized societies, should be analyzed within the cultural lexicon in which the practices developed, because engaging with the origin language of a dance practice allows for deeper understanding of the socio-political specificity of the form and the habitus of its practitioners.