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<p>This study employs phenomenological literary analysis to investigate how acquired disability alters the embodied experience in classical Indian dance. The research focuses on Padma Venkatraman’s young adult novel, <i>A Time to Dance</i> (2014), and its protagonist—Veda—a Bharatanatyam dancer who undergoes a below-knee amputation. This fiction represents an understudied intersection of disability and traditional performing arts. Existing scholarship has explored disability in literature and dance separately. However, there remains insufficient scholarly attention to how acquired physical disability intersects with culturally specific traditional dance forms. The research addresses how disability can generate new aesthetic possibilities rather than merely impose performative limitations. The study applies Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of ‘perception’ and ‘lived body experience,’ Toombs’ framework of ‘disruption of the lived body,’ Carel’s concept of ‘health in wellness,’ and Crenshaw’s concept of ‘intersectionality.’ This analysis explores how disability reconstructs embodied consciousness within Bharatanatyam traditions. The analysis reveals three key findings. First, the phenomenological literary analysis provides a unique methodological access to the internal process of becoming disabled. This approach reveals how consciousness evolves over narrative time, unlike empirical studies that capture discrete moments in time. Second, intersectionality theory illustrates how Veda’s multiple identities present unique challenges within the Bharatanatyam tradition. Her identities as a teenage Hindu female from a middle-class Brahmin family show that disability must be examined through interaction with other social categories. Third, prosthetic integration generates new movement vocabularies and teaching approaches. Veda’s transformation from an excluded student to an innovative teacher catalyses broader cultural change toward inclusive dance practices. These findings have practical implications for inclusive dance pedagogy and support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-3) and (SDG-10) by promoting disability as a form of human diversity and challenging discrimination in performing arts. This research contributes to literary disability studies by establishing disability as a catalyst for aesthetic innovation.</p>

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Dancing with disruption: a phenomenology of disability in Padma Venkatraman’s A Time to Dance

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年2月11日

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  • Gowri Shankari Mohan,
  • Manali Karmakar

摘要

This study employs phenomenological literary analysis to investigate how acquired disability alters the embodied experience in classical Indian dance. The research focuses on Padma Venkatraman’s young adult novel, A Time to Dance (2014), and its protagonist—Veda—a Bharatanatyam dancer who undergoes a below-knee amputation. This fiction represents an understudied intersection of disability and traditional performing arts. Existing scholarship has explored disability in literature and dance separately. However, there remains insufficient scholarly attention to how acquired physical disability intersects with culturally specific traditional dance forms. The research addresses how disability can generate new aesthetic possibilities rather than merely impose performative limitations. The study applies Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of ‘perception’ and ‘lived body experience,’ Toombs’ framework of ‘disruption of the lived body,’ Carel’s concept of ‘health in wellness,’ and Crenshaw’s concept of ‘intersectionality.’ This analysis explores how disability reconstructs embodied consciousness within Bharatanatyam traditions. The analysis reveals three key findings. First, the phenomenological literary analysis provides a unique methodological access to the internal process of becoming disabled. This approach reveals how consciousness evolves over narrative time, unlike empirical studies that capture discrete moments in time. Second, intersectionality theory illustrates how Veda’s multiple identities present unique challenges within the Bharatanatyam tradition. Her identities as a teenage Hindu female from a middle-class Brahmin family show that disability must be examined through interaction with other social categories. Third, prosthetic integration generates new movement vocabularies and teaching approaches. Veda’s transformation from an excluded student to an innovative teacher catalyses broader cultural change toward inclusive dance practices. These findings have practical implications for inclusive dance pedagogy and support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-3) and (SDG-10) by promoting disability as a form of human diversity and challenging discrimination in performing arts. This research contributes to literary disability studies by establishing disability as a catalyst for aesthetic innovation.