“Dance like a Man beyond the Discourse of Gender”: Relocating the tragedy of Jairaj in the circumscribed world of politics and power

Abstract

Mahesh Dattani’s play Dance like a Man (1989) speculate the tragedy of an ageing Bharatanatyam Dancer, Jairaj and his shattering dancing dream owing to an authoritarian patriarch’s resistance and manipulation. Amritalal who is authoritarian, martinet; led by material values is agitated by his son’s liberal and modernist sensibility and initiated to curtail his dream. In the play Jairaj is personified as the epitome of the victim of gender rigidity, who attempts to subvert the subversion of hegemonic patriarchy but end up as an emblem of gender tragedy. The play is not solely about gender as it seems on the bare eye - it is a brutal reprehension of the existing power dynamics that encompass wealth, social status and reputation. In Amritalal’s rise as a prominent businessman, and as an influential social worker, in Jai and Ratna’s marriage of convenience, in their abandonment and return in their parental house, in the tragic death of infant child Shankar, in Lata’s rise as a “shinning star” in Bharatanatyam, the play showcases how the politics of power, wealth and social status deeply engraved in the structural dimension of the society and influence the normal day to day life of the masses. My paper tries to reanalyze Dattani’s seminal work Dance like a Man going beyond gender oriented approach and aimed at a detailed critical study of Jairaj, leading to his tragedy, as a subject and victim of a plethora of different social apparatus along with his own incompetency in a world of fundamentalism.