The Rani of Sirmur is a work-in-progress kathak piece that is a response to the colonial archive. Inspired by Gayatri Spivak’s essay of the same name, the piece explores absences in the archive through affect and narrative.

The Rani of Sirmur has been performed at as part of the keynote performance at the New Directions in Active History Conference at Huron College, University of Western Ontario, London in October 2015, and at ‘Some Pages Are Missing: Performances from the Archives’ at The Jamun, Bangalore, in September 2016.

Featured image credit: Vaishnavi Newaskar, 2016