Today is the centenary year of the first performance of Natir Puja and the 165th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore. To mark this special anniversary, I am sharing my paper “The Revolutionary Impact of Rabindranath Tagore’s Natir Puja.” I presented this paper at the International Seminar on Embodied Aesthetics: The Practice of Performing Arts through the Lens of Rabindranath Tagore at Sangit Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, held on 11–13 February 2026.
In the paper, I argue that the 1926 staging of Natir Puja was a pivotal moment in restoring dance to a respected place within Indian cultural life at a time when female performance had been deeply stigmatised by the anti-dance movement. I also trace how that production opened the way for Tagore’s later development of his own dance idiom and, ultimately, the dance-dramas Chitrangada, Chandalika and Shyama.
Read my paper
You can read and download my paper below. As you will see, I place Natir Puja within the long history of dance in the Indian subcontinent and show why the first performance in May 1926 became, in my view, “a watershed moment in the history of embodied performance practice in India.”
Watch my presentation
You can watch my 8-minute seminar presentation about the paper here:
Performing Natir Puja
At the launch of the Bengali edition of my book Rabindra NrityaShilpa in Kolkata on 31 December 2024, I performed the dance from Natir Puja. You can watch that performance in the video below, starting at 1:34:10.
Buy Rabindra NrityaShilpa
The Bengali edition of Rabindra NrityaShilpa is available in India from Boiwala Book Café here. The book will also be available in English and other languages in due course. I hope it will help make Tagore’s approach to dance accessible to many more dancers and scholars around the world.
A recent performance at Shakespeare’s birthplace for Tagore Birth anniversary
A few days ago, I had the honour of leading the dance procession at the start of the Tagore birth anniversary celebrations at Shakespeare’s Birthplace. The video of that event is about to be published by Prantik, and I will share it here once it becomes available.
Returning to this blog
I have not posted here for a long time. This centenary of Natir Puja, together with Tagore’s birth anniversary, feels like the right moment to reconnect the blog with my current research, performance practice and publications. I would be very happy if you explore the paper, the videos, and the book, and share your thoughts in the comments.
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