Bollywood dance, a colloquial term used to describe choreography in, and inspired by, Hindi film song-and-dance sequences is now a global phenomenon. The ubiquitous presence of Bollywood dance as cinema and performance raises questions about why these dances emerged as key ingredients of film, how their production, dance and cinematic content has evolved over time and, finally, how these dances are reinterpreted by their audiences.

In this dissertation, I propose a theoretical framework for exploring dances in Hindi films as a foundation for understanding Bollywood dance as performance. I then focus on the Bollywood dance as performance in three sites: Bombay (India), Kathmandu (Nepal), and Los Angeles (USA). As I explore how dancers receive and perform Hindi film imagery in these cities, I interrogate Bollywood dance as performed reception inspired through the global circulation of Hindi films. I ask: Who dances? Who watches? What is included? What is omitted? Whose subjectivity matters? If dancers in Bombay, Kathmandu and Los Angeles all perform Bollywood dance, what, if anything, do they share in their interpretations? Are their performances somehow connected? Or do they remain isolated instances of performed film reception?

What initially emerges through my research in Bombay, Kathmandu, and Los Angeles is a contrast between the mobility of the filmed dances that seem to circulate freely through various digital media and the geographical rooted-ness of the dancers who perform Bollywood inspired dances. In Bombay, Bollywood dance classes are set to the latest Hindi film remixes and taught by dancers who allow students to begin to access the promises of success of India's current globalizing tendencies. In Kathmandu, Bollywood inspired dances exist on the unstable border between tradition and modernity, stigma and nation, and pollution and purity. In Los Angeles, nostalgic and hybrid definitions of Indianness collide against Orientalized preconceptions of India and Bollywood. Yet, even as they remain geographically disparate, a deeper examination of these instances of Bollywood dance begins to reveal a mapping that connects these sites in ways that comment upon globalization through performance.