In the Absence of the Dancer

In this blog article, Dr. Debanjali Biswas, Early Career Researcher in cultural anthropology and theatre, performance and dance studies shares her work on two costumes held at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Debanjali visited the collection in October 2025 as part of the Clothworkers’ Textile Project. Her work has enabled the Museum to update the collection database with context, local names and history. 

Watercolour showing people dancing and playing instruments' Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1931.38.28)

Descendants of Robert Niel Reid (1883-1964) and Thomas Hobart Ellis (1894-1981) left a few objects in the care of the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), amongst which are fragments of costumes dating back to early 20th century South Asia. At the University of Oxford, Reid graduated from the Brasenose College and Ellis was educated at the Queen’s College. Reid served as a Governor of colonial Assam during a critical period of its history between 1937 and 1942. Ellis was a jurist and served as a civil servant in various positions in Jessore, Calcutta and Dacca (Jashore, Kolkata and Dhaka), and was the Chief Justice of East Bengal High Court, and briefly the Governor of East Pakistan (1954). Originally acquired from Reid and Ellis’s sites of political service, these ceremonial costumes became collectible memorabilia or cultural artefact. Both were donated to the university’s collections by their recipients. According to the notes of provenance, Reid’s costume was a gift to Lady Reid, and Ellis gifted the green costume set to his sister Miss Sarah Ellis. Both objects are worn by dancers of the Meitei community of Manipur, a former princely state at the eastern frontier of India. The dates indicate that both sets of costume were acquired during the interwar years, but no other details of the acquisitions are mentioned.

Figure 1. 'Red silk kumin-potloi [dance skirt] embellished with sequins, glass beads, mirrors and appliqué'. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1946.5.76).

Figure 2. 'Green silk kumin-potloi [dance skirt] embellished with sequins, glass beads, mirrors and appliqué'. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1983.5.2).

Artefact acquisitions and diplomatic gifting are rooted in unequal power dynamics of transcultural encounters – in the context of the objects discussed, it is not known how the costumes were obtained, whether they played any role in gift-centered diplomacy, personal interactions, or reassurances. Reid and Ellis were influential bureaucrats; they may have witnessed these costumes being worn by dancers, or were aware that these costumes carried local aesthetic, symbolic, and spiritual meanings. In colonial South Asia, gift economy and procurement of unique objects were common practice amongst the elite ranks. Had there been more information, the journeys of personal souvenirs would have been insightful for narratives on colonial collecting. By contextualising the dance costumes from Manipur as independent, agential objects, this account is interested in unarchiving histories of performance cultures from the region of Manipur held at the Pitt Rivers Museum collections. In doing so, it aims to resurrect the dancers who have been absent from the archives. It recovers a means to locate anthropology of clothing and material culture within histories of colonial collecting in the region, especially by the civil servants who graduated from the university.

Provisionally assembling on a flattened surface while envisioning the body of an absent dancer, the costumes brim with potential to imagine centuries-old dance form come alive. The ‘dancer’s wardrobe’ in red [Reid, 1946.5.74 - 1946.5.81], and ‘woman's dance costume’ in green [Ellis, 1983.5.1 - 1983.5.5] could momentarily allow the observer to envision bodies in motion. The costumes are a diverse ensemble of textures and fabrics for a performer in Meitei rituals. Up till early 20th century, these kinds of skirts were worn in Lai Haraoba, an annual propitiatory ritual to honour Meitei lai-s, their divinities. Similarly costumed dancers appear in red and green skirts in a painting of Lai Haraoba [1931.38.28] in the museum’s collection. It is a lively depiction of a community ritual comprising several other women and priestesses in sarongs, men, balladeers, drummers and umbrella carriers in various states of motion. It was bequeathed by anthropologist John Henry Hutton (1885-1968) who was educated at the Worcester College and had spent a greater part of his career as a civil servant in the Assam-Burma region.

Figure 3. 'Watercolour showing people dancing and playing instruments' Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1931.38.28).

Figure 4. 'Group of women and girls posed for a portrait' Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1998.216.23.1).

The existence of white textiles with silvery patterns delicately stitched to the beaded and metalwork borders indicate that these costume sets were procured as artefacts worn by dancers in Raas Leela - a ritual to honour the Hindu divinity Krishna. In Raas Leela, the ensemble worn by women is called kumin-potloi. The design of the potloi was conceived by the Meitei monarch Meidingu Chingthangkhomba, also known as Maharaja Bheigya Chandra (1748-1799); some sources mention an artisan named Sanakhya Sanajaoba who crafted the ornamental costume (Chanu 2022). The monarch’s exposure to cultures beyond his kingdom, such as the ghagra (a flared skirt) from northern parts of India, may have influenced an alteration of the embroidered Meitei phanek into what became the potloi ensemble. In everyday life and other Meitei rituals, women and girls tie locally woven phanek– a colonial-era photograph show an ethnographic and amateur interest in Munipuri women & girls [Fig. 4 1998.216.23.1]. The subjects and the photographer remain unknown. Phanek of various shades with dark stripes are worn in two distinct styles; if the difference in their age does not indicate, the styles in which the fabric is worn designate their matrimonial status. The potloi for Raas Leela was designed to stand apart from a phanek, as well as erase most features that distinguish various social markers of dancer-devotees participating in the Raas Leela.

Figure 5. 'Dancer-devotees in kumin-potloi ensemble at Raas Leela at Konung, Imphal, 2015'. Photo by author.

Figure 6. 'Detail of Poshwan, overskirt of loosely woven metallic thread and cotton, with heavily embellished band of red fabric at the hem'. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1983.5.1)

Figure 7. Poshwan (1946.5.77), khaon (1946.5.79) and other fragments of Reid's gift. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

The two skirts conserved by the Pitt Rivers Museum differ in colour, craftsmanship, and materials used. Both skirts are earlier versions of cylindrical-shaped, fully sequined and stiffened skirts that are designed in the present times. They are similar to each other in cut and shape. They are slimmer towards the top edge and flare out at the bottom. From the late 18th century, the task of making these were bestowed upon Phiribi Loishang - a guild of artisans and women presided by the Meitei queen (Devi 2010). They were tasked with producing potloi-s, along with caring for other pieces of costumes worn by deities in the rituals and also oversaw the practice of the leeba – the appliqué designs that are masterfully crafted along the lower rim of the potloi. Local flora and fauna symbolism is sewn into the potloi. The Meitei deity Pakhangba often visualised as a mighty dragon-like form, or lithe serpentine pattern is also believed to be connoted in the body of potloi “divided into dorsal, ventral and stomach” of the entity; the “patterns embroidered on potloi represent the scales of the snake” (Chabungbam 2018, 67-68). The embroidered design at the lower rim with bright red swirls on the red skirt are in the pattern of khoi mayek - a traditional Meitei motif depicting bees or fishhooks, seen in other textiles of ceremonial and everyday use. One of the striking components of the other fragments of the costumes are brass sequins called kon. The edge of the green skirt is decorated with mirrors of various sizes held by brass sequins - this is a design that is not commonly seen. The white cloth stitched at the hem carry an inscription marked in pencil: MANIPURI RAS GIRL.

Figure 8. 'Detail red silk kumin-potloi (dance skirt) of a Manipuri Ras Girl (1983.5.2)'. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Figure 9. 'Close up of khaon (1946.5.79)'. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Figure 10. 'Close up kon on khaon (1983.5.4)'. Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

While consulting the kumin-potloi at the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, I analysed what the costume represents. I wrote : “A potloi is always associated with ideals of restraint, femininity, and piety. It is worn by Meitei Hindu brides at their weddings as well as by female dancers in rituals and on stage. The kumin’s length can be adjusted and must cover the wearer’s ankles; a velvet reshom-phurit is worn as a shirt above. The costume iconography signals deep ties with nature. The green kumin, representing the hue of nature herself, is worn by Radha Raaseshwori and Chandrabali—Krishna’s principal companions in Raas Leela. The other dancers, the gopi, are Krishna’s friends, lovers, messengers, mothers, and companions. They wear red and symbolise longing for divine union. The diaphanous maikhum, veiling the face, signifies unwavering devotion. The white thabakyet binding the chest conceals the figure, desexualises the body, and expresses modesty. A silvery tassel, chubarei, attached to a conical koktumbi atop the head, represents cascading rivers. The patterned, white poshwan, worn in waves around the waist, symbolises the seven seas described in Hindu mythology. Pieces of gold- hued jewellery on the neck and arms shimmer as the dancer moves. The costume can be seen as a resplendent tribute to the natural world” (Biswas 2025).

The skirt is not tailored to fit any one dancer - it’s height can be altered to fit multiple dancers while rest of the ornaments can also be used by more than one. These pieces are made by professional artisans called potloi-setpa/setpi in a craft learnt through apprenticeship as well as succession. In Manipur and amongst Meitei diaspora, the kumin-potloi remains a living, wearable heritage. Knowledge, care and respect are embedded in the artisanry. Poet Linthoi Chanu ascribes a feminist, resileint methodology to the meticulous labour of crafting a potloi for female bodies and recounts how women in her family intergenrationally sustained the artisanry to aid themselves, their kin and community (2022). The costume fragments in the collections represent the ardous labour of the dreamer, the makers, and the dancers, and the evolving relationship between a dancing body and an extraordinary object imbued with traces of old customs.

Figure 11. 'At a master artisan's workshop. Imphal, 2015'. Photo by author.

Could the costumes by themselves offer an invitation to redress the unequal power dynamics of colonialism in the region? Perhaps not. It may offer to regain an insight into how the materiality of the object is entangeld with the social, cultural and spiritual, and if dance can be unarchived from colonial collections in a meaningful way. Historically, narratives on arts practice and practitioners from this region of South Asia, i.e., Manipur and its surrounding region now termed as the Indian Northeast – have suffered from marginalisation, occlusion even exclusion in colonial and postcolonial narratives. Usually, decorative arts from this region have not been curated in any “South Asia” focussed exhibitions in the UK. Except one. In 2017, the Alford Manor House Museum in Lincolnshire displayed reproductions of royal robes from a black and white photograph of Maharaja Sir Churachand Singh (r.1885-1941) and Maharani Dhanamanjuri Devi (ca 1886-1975). The exhibition The Maharaja’s New Clothes was put together by textile historian Toolika Gupta, designer Richana Khumanthem and the Maharaja’s grandson, film and media curator L. Somi Roy. Every piece of the costume was shipped from Manipur and India. Incidentally, the Alford Manor House has been the family home of John Comyn Higgins (1882 – 1952), a Political Agent for the Manipur State (1917-1933), and also a graduate of the Brasenose College. He was known to have raised the Manipur Labour Corps to aid France during the First World War and remained an influential colonial administrator in the Assam-Burma region.

Figure 12. 2011EV9383. Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum, Asia Collections.

Figure 13. 2011EV9383 magnified. Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum, Asia Collections.

The Ras Girl is absent. Their embodied knowledge, their movements as well as the sites of performance are absent in the archive. Committed to situating dancers who came before our times as well as the intangible narratives nestled in visual and material cultures, I find them again in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in red and green, holding hands in a gouache by an anonymous artist (ca.1900). This painting of two Manipuri dancing girls, like the rest of the objects discussed here, was bequeathed by an alumnus of University of Oxford, Balliol College to be specific; he later became a chancellor – George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859 – 1925), and remains a controversial figure as the Viceroy of India. One of the ways to think about material culture in a decolonial context, as demonstrated in this strand of inquiry, is to study personal memoribilia that could de‘objecti’ify dance through museological routes. By engaging with objects and arts from the Manipur region scattered across various collections, this is a step to find new ways of recognising, thinking, and writing about performance cultures from colonial-era South Asia.

REFERENCES:

Biswas, D. 2025. ‘Unarchiving Performance, Materials, Fragilities’, Museum of Archaeology and

Anthropology Digilab, https://www.maadigitallab.org/blog/2025/09/16/unarchiving-

performance-materials-fragilities/

Chabungbam Babina Devi. 2018. Embodied Culture And Its Contestations: A Study Of Manipuri Jagoi

Raas, Unpublished MPhil diss. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University

Chanu, L. 2022. Potloi – A Legacy. https://hynews.in/article/your_story/potloi-a-legacy-by-

linthoi-chanu/3147

Devi, J. 2010. Cultural History of Manipur - Sija Laioibi and the Maharas. New Delhi: Mittal

Publications

Gupta, T. 2018. ‘Manipur Maharaja’s New Clothes at The Alford Manor House Museum,

Lincolnshire, UK’, Textiles and Clothing Research Centre e-Journal 2 (4): 32-35.

https://www.tcrc.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/v2i4-Article-6_TG.pdf

AUTHOR:

Dr. Debanjali Biswas is an Early Career Researcher in cultural anthropology and theatre, performance and dance studies. Drawing on ethnographic, archival and practice-as-research methods, her work explores performance cultures as sites of contestation, affect and agency. Besides dancing Manipuri for close to three decades, her primary area of field research has been Manipur (India). This blogpost emerges from the British Academy SRG funded project ‘Unarchiving Dance: Interpreting Colonial Visual Cultures of Manipur, 1891-1949’. She has previously worked at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (C&RD).

An unconventional flask from the Arizona desert

What makes an object ‘authentically’ Indigenous? And how can objects challenge our ideas about the history of encounters between Europeans and Indigenous peoples? In this blog article, recent graduate in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology Olly DeHerrera revisits her research into one of the Museum’s display cases, focussing on the provenance of a painted ceramic flask:

If you walk the stone steps down to the forecourt of the Pitt Rivers Museum, you will find yourself facing Case 153, containing “Pottery - North America”. On the left side of the case, you’ll find this small ceramic water flask, described in the museum’s record as a ‘flat circular pottery flask painted with katsina design’.

Figure 1. 'Flat circular pottery flask painted with katsina design'.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1913.87.54)

The flask is recorded as having been made and decorated by a woman named Paelae, with assistance from her daughters, who were members of the Tewa-Hano clan of the Hopi Pueblo Tribe. The Hopi Tribe’s villages are some of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the Americas, situated atop three Mesas (flat-top elevations), six thousand feet above the northern Arizona desert. Today, approximately seven thousand Hopi inhabit the twelve villages of the Hopi Nation. These striking elevated villages and the rich culture of the Hopis were of particular interest to anthropologists of the time. The Hopi are understood to have inspired Alfred Huxley’s depictions of the Native Americans of the ‘Savage Reservation’ in his famous novel A Brave New World.

The flask was collected by Oxford anthropologist Barbara Whitchurch Freire-Marreco. Although her legacy as an anthropologist is modest, Freire-Marreco is remembered as a remarkable, pioneering female anthropologist within Oxford’s Department for Museum Anthropology. As a Research Fellow at Somerville College, she undertook fieldwork in New Mexico and Arizona from 1911-1912, and again in 1913-1914, studying 'the Nature of the Authority of Chiefs and Kings in uncivilised society’. 

Her field notes indicate she spent a significant amount of time with Paelae and her family, purchasing multiple ceramic pieces from them, including this decorative ladle. 

Figure 2. A decorative ladle also made by Paelae and her daughters.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1913.87.26)

The Hopi Pueblo are one of the many Indigenous groups inhabiting the arid, mountainous, and rugged terrain of the Southwest (the contemporary States of Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Western Colorado). Despite being labelled ‘Pottery - North America’, Case 153 contains almost exclusively Pueblo pottery. The Pueblo's centuries-old tradition of producing iconic pottery with geometric designs has found huge popularity with archaeologists, anthropologists, art collectors, and tourists alike. If you have ever visited the American Southwest, there’s a good chance you may have seen some modern Pueblo pottery for sale in National Parks and ‘Trading Post’ gift shops.  

The flask is decorated with the symbol of a Kachina/Katsina, a broad term which describes a series of spiritual figures, or ‘icons’, associated with various natural and supernatural forces in Pueblo cosmology. The Katsina holds feathers in both hands and wears a headdress, a crude depiction of Hopi dancers.

Figure 3. 'Hopi dancers photographed by Freire-Marreco during her fieldwork'.
 Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1998.95.7)

Although the Katsina represent a legitimate feature of Pueblo culture, the inclusion of such designs on pottery only began appearing around the beginning of the twentieth century. In fact, many of the more decorative and pictographic objects in Case 153 are from this later period in the pottery tradition’s long history. A majority of the older pottery in the case is simple in form and would have had a utilitarian function in a Pueblo household, compared to the more decorative later objects, which vary greatly in form.

So, why had the Pueblo begun adapting their pottery style so dramatically by the start of the twentieth century?

By the time of Freire-Marreco’s arrival in Arizona, the market for Pueblo art was changing rapidly. For the last 150 years prior, Pueblo art had mainly been leaving the Mesas via professional ethnographers - most often associated with institutions like the Bureau of American Ethnology. The three large water vases on the top shelf of Case 153 were collected from the Pueblo by ethnographer James Stevenson in the late 1800s. They were later distributed to the Pitt Rivers Museum by the Smithsonian Institution in 1896. 

Figure 4. One of the three large water jugs displayed in Case 153.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1896.54.75)

However, the increase of permanent settlements and the construction of the Santa Fe Railway Line in the twentieth century brought the opportunity for the Pueblo to sell directly to a larger tourist market. The Fred Harvey railway company, which owned the Santa Fe Railway, brought tourists directly into contact with local Indigenous people through the Fred Harvey ‘Indian Tours’. During these tours, Pueblo people were paid to open access to their villages and perform traditional (or at least traditional-looking) ceremonies. Tourists could also purchase directly from Pueblo artists in Fred Harvey’s ‘Indian Shops’. It was during such tours that the American public became familiar with Hopi dances, which was depicted extensively on posters and in handbooks.

Figure 5. ‘Indian Detours’ travel brochure produced by the Fred Harvey Railway Company in 1890. 

The popularity of these tours was driven by romantic colonial ideas about ‘untouched’ humanity living beyond the frontier of American colonial reach. Such ideas about Indigenous societies tend to deny them the same nuanced and complex political histories that we characterise the European past by. It is exactly these romanticised ideas that Huxley invokes in literary form, intentionally contrasting his fictional Native American Society with the hyper-developed and dystopian world of the “World State”.

Objects like the katsina flask represent a form of Pueblo art that arose to appeal to the specific interests of tourists, ethnographers, and other visitors to the American Southwest. Indeed, if Palae intended to create an object appealing to outside observers of Pueblo culture, she was certainly successful. The eye-catching flask has featured in multiple showcasing projects within the Pitt Rivers Museum, including the museum's audio tour that ran throughout the 2010s.

The Katsina flask is actually one of two near-identical flasks purchased from Paelae by Freire-Marreco. If you stand on your tiptoes, you can see the other flask on the middle shelf of the ‘Pottery – Design and Decoration’ case, to the right of the museum’s forecourt. This demonstrates that the Katsina flask was actually one of many produced with this design by Paelae and her family.

A strikingly similar canteen is displayed alongside the Katsina flask, giving the mistaken impression that they are part of a set. In fact, the larger Katsina flask was collected in Arizona by the former Oxford professor, Richard Baxter Townshend, in 1903. Could this have also been made by Paelae and her family? Or could this be evidence that the Pueblo people shared designs in the emergence of a small-scale production?

Figure 6. The Katsina Flask collected by Richard Baxter Townshend.
Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (1931.60.13)

These transformations to Pueblo pottery arts were not embraced as keenly by ethnographers as they were by pottery makers. Many anthropologists felt at the time that commercial factors influencing Native American art styles across North America made these objects ‘less Indigenous’, or ‘fake’. In 1889, one American anthropologist angrily wrote, ‘the country is flooded with cheap, and scientifically speaking, worthless earthenware made by the Pueblo Indians to supply the tourist trade' (Holmes, 1889: 320).

So, how should we view our Katsina flask? Is it an example of a ‘worthless fake’, or might we understand it differently in the light of new anthropological approaches?

Despite the problematic colonial undertones of arrangements like the ‘Indian Tours’, the independence that this market afforded the Pueblo was transformative. By achieving greater economic independence, the Hopi were better able to protect their culture, beliefs, and choices about how they wanted to organise themselves as a society in the United States. The choices of Hopi people during this era laid a strong foundation for the Tribe that continues to this day. In fact, many Pueblo people today continue to identify examples of their parents' and grandparents' work stored in museums and express a deep fondness and pride for pottery from this era.

The unconventional anthropological approach that Freire-Marreco took in her fieldwork allows us to access these sorts of perspectives on colonial history.  Her choice to collect objects that her informants were currently making helps us learn more about how the Pueblo made choices to navigate the immense upheaval that colonialism brought to their way of life. These histories provide a counter-narrative to the dominant view of Indigenous people as subjects defined by their lack of intermingling with European ideas and instead highlight their agency and awareness of outside interest in aspects of their culture.

Freire-Marreco’s interactions with her Pueblo informants provide many such insights that the museum is only just beginning to explore. Her ability to see shared humanity and build friendships with Pueblo women led her to declare in a letter to Somerville that the Pueblo were more her research collaborators than ‘uncivilised’ subjects of study. Despite being unable to receive a degree at the time due to her gender, her progressive outlook was far more aligned with the basis of anthropological methodology today.

The Katsina flask offers us a story of how Indigenous people harnessed ethnographic and popular interest in their material culture. By challenging our conceptions about what makes ‘Indigenous art’, we can also challenge popular social narratives about colonial history. It is my hope that anthropologists continue to embrace these stories and seek them out within the museum archives. 

By Olly DeHerrera, Graduate in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology

Bibliography and further reading:

Dilworth, L. (1996) Imagining Indians in the Southwest : persistent visions of a primitive past. Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian Institution Press.

Fowler, D. D. (2000) A laboratory for anthropology : science and romanticism in the American Southwest, 1846-1930. 1st ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.  

Holmes, W H. 1889. 'Debasement of Pueblo Art '. American anthropologist 2(4): 320

Kinsel, R. & E, Poon (2022) Grounded in clay : the spirit of Pueblo pottery. London ; Merrell Publishers.