Adorning an identity and exploring gender fluidity through dance | Raheem Mir | TEDxUCLWomen

Despite judgments and assumptions, Raheem wishes to be see as a man in woman’s clothing, expressing his art in the way he sees best. In this talk, incorporating a dance performance, he explores how he personifies the strength and beauty of the women in his life through dance, what this means in terms of gender identity, fluidity and art.

Raheem Mir has been training in Kathak for 9/10 years and has been under the tutelage of Gauri Sharm Tripathi and Sujata Banerjee. Upon discovering Kathak, the art abhinaya has always been something that caught his eye and spoke to him more so than any other aspect of Kathak because of the embodiment and change in persona when performing.
This had also supported his academic background whilst studying a postgraduate degree at Royal Holloway University of London, in which he explored gender studies, cultural studies and gender in performance. The idea of combining gender performance and Kathak was almost a completely fluid process as many times one has to be many different people, so why not just embody the representation fully by also adorning appropriate clothing and so on?

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx