The presentation will focus on the impact of the Neo-Tantric Movement on the choreographic avant-gardes in Europe and India, from the 1960s onwards. Three major figures in the international landscape of dance in these years are chosen to illustrate the phenomenon. After a chronological analysis of the works of the French choreographer Maurice Béjart (1927–2007), the presentation will deal with some later stage productions by two remarkable Indian choreographers and feminist activists: Chandralekha (1928–2006) and Mallika Sarabhai (b. 1954). These three “counter-culture” choreographers expressed their own ideas, quests and struggles by exploring the “shadow and light” in the meanders of the human mind, body, sexuality and emotions, and by employing in their choreographies some Indian poems and musical compositions as well as several abstract symbols and diagrams borrowed from the Tantric traditions. Special attention will be devoted here to the authors and literary texts that deeply influenced their artistic work and struggle eloquently mirroring the con¬temporary “love and peace” ideologies of the hippies, the quests for “oriental” spirituality, sexual liberation and freedom of expression, the political contestation of conservatism, racial discrimination and military power, and the support of women's emancipation, the ecological movement and the human rights movement.

Dr. Tiziana Leucci is a senior research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, and attached to its Centre d'Etudes de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud. Her Ph.D. thesis in Social Anthropology (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris) dealt with the culture of South Indian courtesans. Dr. Leucci also studied ballet and contemporary dance at the National Academy of Dance in Rome and Indian dance (Bharat Natyam and Odissi) in India. She has authored a book and numerous chapters and articles on the anthropology and history of dance in South India and on the European perception and representation of Indian courtesans. Her further research interests are the history of the interaction between Indian and Western artists, and the anthropology of aesthetic theories and Indian choreographic practices, especially in terms of their transformations in the colonial period and on the modern stage. Since 2010, Dr. Leucci teaches Bharat Natyam at the Conservatoire “Gabriel Fauré”, Les Lilas – Est Ensemble (France).