Tapasya Dance Studio is a Kathak Studio located in Dubai, UAE. Situated in a modern hub in the Global South, home to two generations of female dancers, and led by Mumbai-born guru Vaishali ji, the studio has played an important role in my life, contributing to much of my lived experience in the diaspora, as a dancer, woman, and scholar. In this thesis, I turn to autoethnographic and narrative approaches of ethnography to unpack the studio as it has been observed and experienced through me, exploring the political possibilities of the studio and the subversive work that dance in homosocial, diasporic spaces can do for sociopolitical subject-making and the coming together of South Asians in the diaspora. The thesis is organized in four chapters: “Space”, “Guru”, “Relation”, and “Body” and tells the story through these four registers, inviting readers to understand creative spaces in the diaspora as potent feminist and political sites for future generations of South Asians, dancers, and scholars

June 2023 - February 2024

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Department of Anthropology, Middlebury College

Advisor: Dr. Kristin Bright

Second Reader: Dr. Jennifer Ortegren

Kathak, Diaspora, Identity, Women, Autoethnography