Queering masculinity: engaging the performance and meaning among Nagara dancers in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal.

Abstract

This thesis explores Nagara dancing as a site of ritual embodiment, gender negotiation, and spiritual expression within the South African Indian Hindu diaspora. Grounded in lived experience and guided by phenomenology, interpretative analysis, and reflexive thematic analysis, the research interrogates how male dancers perform and reconfigure masculinity through devotional enactments of the Hindu Goddess Saraswati. Drawing from focus groups and interviews with four experienced Nagara dancers, the study reveals that ritual choreography challenges binary gender norms, allowing for a fluid interplay between masculine and feminine expression. The findings present Nagara as a queer form of dance, where the performance of sacred femininity becomes a pathway to masculine expansion rather than contradiction. Within this ritual framework, dancers experience emotional safety, relational care, and generational mentorship, positioning the temple stage as a sacred refuge for contested identities. Ultimately, the study affirms that Nagara is not simply inherited; it is reimagined through embodied labour, aesthetic translation, and spiritual resilience. Masculinity, here, is not static; it moves.