How To Document Dance?

Details

2 June 2026/१९ जेठ २०८३ (मंगलबार, दिउँसो ३ बजे)
Research Seminar Series
How To Document Dance?
Anna Stirr, Associate Professor, Asian Studies, University of Hawaii Manoa

Abstract:
Subi Shah (1929-2008) was a traditionally-trained Nepali performer and self-taught scholar who aimed to preserve the music and dance traditions of his home area, Dhading Jyamrung in central Nepal. My team and I have been translating six of his books into English, along with their music and dance notation, audio, and video recordings of performances, for multimedia volumes entitled Music and Dances of Central Nepal: The Works of Subi Shah (Open Book Publishers, 2026) This presentation engages with one of these books which will be published in Volume II of our translations: Shah’s unpublished manuscript, Basic Theory of Folk Dance, in which he attempts to document dance in several ways. He creates his own dance notation for the Pangdure (aka Maruni) dance tradition; describes the dances in detailed narratives; and includes musical scores that incorporate his dance notation. In our research and preparation for filming performances we learned much more than his book told us, about history, spiritual aspects of the tradition, and performers’ desires for the future. Here I return to Shah’s question: how to document this? I introduce what he did, plus what we did, comparing our motivations and perceived audiences, to identify and interrogate the factors that influence the apparently simple question of how to document heritage dance forms to retain their valued aspects for future generations.

About the Speaker:
Anna Stirr is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii Manoa. Her research and performance interests focus on music and dance of Nepal. She is the author of the award-winning ethnography of dohori song, Singing Across Divides: Music and Intimate Politics in Nepal (Oxford, 2017), and her recent projects examine the history of progressive and revolutionary song and dance in Nepal, and the foundational music and dance scholarship of Subi Shah, highlighting alternative theories from a Nepali scholar-practitioner's insider perspective.

Team members of the Works of Subi Shah project include: Anna Stirr (Project Director, Lead Translator, Editor, and Producer); Mason Brown (Co-Director, Musical Transcriptions Editor); Hikmat Khadka (2nd Translator); Lochan Rijal (Executive Producer, Audiovisual Media); Rajan Shrestha (Audio Production); Dinesh Raj Upadhyaya (Video Production); Rita Thapa Magar (Production Coordinator, Sankhu Sohraghar); Dhruva Shah (Production Coordinator, Jyamrung); Ram Bahadur Sundas (Production Coordinator, Jyamrung).