About
The Menaka Archive is a network of different research projects in the context of the tour of the “Indian Ballet Menaka” in Germany and Europe 1936-38. The archive collects materials, reflects its collection process and contextualises it with artistic elaborations and scientific research.
So far, neither a Menaka archive nor a private estate existed. Leila Roy died childless in 1947 – the year of independence and division of India. Menaka’s contribution to a dance-like modernity that was interwoven between Asia and Europe was therefore largely forgotten and is only recently being rediscovered in Indian dance research. From today’s perspective, Menaka’s tour in Europe therefore represents an archive in which structures have been documented that complete the image of an internationally interwoven dance modernity.
Authors
Markus Schlaffke
Markus Schlaffke studied visual communication and fine arts at the Bauhaus University Weimar and works as a documentary filmmaker and cultural historian. (recent documentary films: Songs without a Place – Music from Afghanistan; Documentary, Afghanistan/Germany 2015; The Albatross around my Neck, Documentary, India/Germany 2019). Since 2016 PHD-at the Bauhaus University Weimar. Markus Schlaffke examines the traces of Menakas Indian Ballet in Europe from a perspective of archival-aesthetics.
Dr. Isabella Schwaderer
Dr. Isabella Schwaderer is a research associate at the Chair of Comparative Religion at Erfurt University. She studied classical philology and philosophy in Würzburg, Thessaloniki and Padua and received her doctorate 2014 in Erfurt in Religious Studies for Orthodox Christianity.
She studies the Menaka Indian Ballet as a part of her habilitation project: Dance and Religion in the Nazi-Era: Press Reviews on the Tour of the Menaka Indian Ballet 1936-1938.
ISSN: 2701-4681