In "Trace," Los Angeles met South Asian courtesan poetry met Skype in a combination of art installation, live performance, and audience participation structures. We were blessed to have a warm, curious, and diverse cross-section of the visual/performance art, dance, theater, and music communities, along with loved ones attend.
First, these were the artworks:
Make Your Own Padam - The love poetry performed by courtesans and by Indian classical dancers is part of a living oral tradition that changes and adapts to new contexts and historical circumstances. We invite you to create your own poem out of the fragments of courtesan poetry scattered on the floor, which includes works by Ghalib, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Bindadin Maharaj, Ksetrayya, and Annamaya. Mixed among the fragments are blank pieces of paper that may be filled in with your own word(s). Please tape your poem to the wall when finished!
Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat - This dance-for-camera work, which sprang out of our long-distance collaboration process, is an artistic version of the Post Natyam Collective’s administrative meetings, which are held via webcam conference calls on Skype - complete with dropped calls, baby cries and kathak rhythms. The work was filmed in four separate geographic locales - Munich, Kansas City, Long Beach and Santa Monica - with video editorial arrangement by Sangita Shresthova and additional sound engineering by Loren Nerell.
]wrist[ - Cynthia Lee’s poem imaginatively expands upon a single word, “wrist,” from the thumri, “Kahe Rukata,” in a writing style inspired by experimental language poets Harryette Mullen and Gertrude Stein. Anjali Tata’s video translates the poem into a dance composed of close-ups on the wrist (caressing animal-like choking wrist/neck suddenly wild, clean us off, dirty girl) and is a product of the Post Natyam Collective’s long distance collaborations, where members translate each other’s work into their own artistic products.
Harassing the Sanskrit Heroine - This artbook, written and designed by Cynthia Lee with photography by Shyamala Moorty, combines poetic text and photographic image to explode the North Indian light classical song form of thumri. Thumri was performed by high-class North Indian courtesans and is danced by modern-day kathak dancers. These imaginative contemporary translations reveal the historical layers, erasures, and troubled eroticism embedded in the thumri form.
And then, of course, there was the live performance, which unfolded as follows.
The audience started outside on the sidewalk, where they watched me (Cynthia) perform hidden tamarind, an abhinaya piece inspired by a fragment from an Annamaya padam, while sitting in the storefront window.
I then invited the audience inside, where they took their seats to see Shyamala perform When We're Alone, a poignant and powerful solo incorporating inverted Bharata Natyam, rhythm, and voice to express the emotional crisis of a young South Asian woman struggling to untangle herself from cultural and familial webs.
Shyamala and I then performed Adda with the Ancestors, an improvisational score created by Carol McDowell. The score enacts an “adda” or conversation between two dancers with hybrid histories, the real and imagined ancestors of their dance memories, a guardian, and a curious friend. The audience was encouraged to ask us questions during the performance, and it was wonderful to have some of the actual ancestors of our dance memories in the audience itself.
Then we gave the audience a short break to make more poems (Make Your Own Padam), which provided the material for the next performance piece. The above poem was actually used in performance on the second day.
(Sara Kumar and Gayle Fekete in Rasa Re-routed)
(Sara Kumar and Prumsodum Ok in Rasa Re-routed)
A remarkable group of guest artists hailing from theater, performance art, post/modern dance, and Cambodian dance backgrounds made the final piece, Rasa Re-routed, come alive. The performers (four on each day) were Rebekah Davidson, Latrice Dixon, Gayle Fekete, Carmela Hermann, Carol McDowell, Prumsodun Ok, Sara Kumar, and Lailye Weidman. Working together in duets of one reader and one mover, the same poem, selected from the poetry created by the audience that day, was interpreted nine times through the nine rasas (emotions) of Indian classical aesthetic theory: sringara (love), hasya (laughter), raudra (anger), karuna (compassion), bibhatsa (disgust), bhayanaka (fear), vira (courage), adbhuta (wonder), and shanta (peace). It was a gift to see the tradition of abhinaya reinterpreted boldly, rigorously, and in such radically diverse ways according to the individual sensibilities and training of the performers.
love all of it...especially cyber chat which is my favorite!
ReplyDeleteSystemic and artistic works with lovely integrity! Hope you keep it movin' forward!
ReplyDeletei loved the blend of the various art forms and particularly learned a lot about the navrasas, which i will utilize in my own work...emotions are such powerful forces and as arists we are constantly investigating their causes and aftershocks, whether it be through writing, dance, acting, or visual art. you did this with this show on so many levels...congrats....keep up the great work!
ReplyDeleteCynthia Lee’s opening piece “Hidden Tamarind” was a perfect way to introduce this show of ancient storytelling re-interpreted in the modern world. While we stood on the sunny sidewalk she enticed us from the window liked a courtesan of an ancient culture. With infinite and crystal expression in her eyes and hands she beckons, “Please come in. Find respite here in this dwelling.”
ReplyDelete“Make your Own Padam” was probably one of my favorites. At first the simple premise is intimidating. Making new phrases from already constructed love poems scattered like leaves around the room. The idea of deconstructing established love poems was frightening, yet liberating. Deconstructing the words of courtesan poems to reconstruct with new voice and new view.
I also enjoyed the “Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat” installation. With the audio being constantly looped I picked up new snatches of conversation while interacting with the other installations. I don’t think I saw the whole video, but the parts I did see provided a whole new dimension to the art of movement with its use of Skype.
“Wrists” was also fascinating because of its use of technology as a medium. I was also intrigued by how one person would interpret into movement the words of another. She uses only her hands to interpret “wrist” and the poem is situated just below the video so that one may be able to read the poem as the visual is being performed. It doesn’t include sound, but the absence of it isn’t detrimental as one can almost hear the sliding of her skin as the hands are first slow and caressing and then quick and flurried. Using only the hands is both limited and infinite. Limited in the sense that we don’t see the reactions of the face as that is how humanity is able to interpret the feelings of another, or the movement of the body which is how we interpret the energy in a traditional dance. It is infinite in that the shapes or movements that hands can make are limitless. We can make our hands do anything we want. And I loved how only her hands were made to interpret Cynthia Lee’s poem.
This whole collaboration managed to utilize not only the passive senses, but engaged the audience and encouraged reaction. The use of modern technologies added depth and new avenues. We could feel the connection of the ancient culture in “Sweet Tamarind” and “Make Your Own Padam” and feel the closeness of space in “Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat”. In a small space one was made to feel the connection of time and distance. Time and space are illusions in some schools of thoughts and “Trace” as a whole, as an artwork, is evidence of that to me.