Cyber Manifesto Music: DONE!

Here it is, y'all, our final soundtrack for the Cyber Manifesto!  Super huge thanks to Loren for all his meticulous sound engineering on this last go-round...

Cyber Manifesto5 by cynthialinglee

Cyber Manifesto: updated soundtrack

Here's the almost-finished version of the Cyber Manifesto soundtrack!  It still needs to be cleaned up a bit in terms of balancing levels, etc, and Sandra wants to replace her solo to tighten the rhythmic alignment, but the content is all laid down.  Thanks to Loren and Ravi for their amazing musical and technical help putting this together.

Cyber Manifesto: Cynthia's face and feet

I had been making my background consistent for all of my videos to maintain the illusion of a Skype call, but since Sandra filmed her solo outdoors (quite beautifully!) and Shyamala has been using varied backgrounds, I tried varying the background this time.  I see this as visual material that Prum can cut in as he likes rather than being specifically choreographed with a clear arc.

Here's my face video of listening to Sandra's solo (audio will likely be stripped out).  I thought the contrast of the painting of the couple, who look like Radha and Krishna, with my gay shirt was funny.

password: "sandra"

And I filmed a different shot of my feet in the garden (to connect with the use of outdoor settings) in case we don't use my tatkar.  Clearly the music won't be there, but I was having fun.  :)

Manifesto audio draft 2

Here's the second draft! Text is at the bottom of the post.

-We will be adding skype rings, maybe a few more yeses peppered throughout, maybe Cyn's foot rhythms....and anything else that inspires our magical music men (Loren and Ravi) :-)

-Can it be tightened anywhere? Shy cut her solo already. Cyn is contemplating cutting hers too.

-What about the order it unfolds? Should Babli and Anj's solos be switched cause Anj's will have lots of feet? or do Shy, Cyn, Babli and Anj? Only problem is that someone's yes solo will be right next to their solo....

Video still needed:

Anj: Redo solo music, solo video, and solo face, torso and feet, and new video assignment below

Babli: record composite body face and new assignment below

Cyn: record composite body face and new assignment below

Shy: record composite body torso and feet and new assignment below

NEW VIDEO ASSIGNMENT:

-I'm interested in everyone doing a little skype-like waving, gesturing, listening with headphones to reference the skype call and to create more interaction. Cyn had neat idea of recording her responses as she watches someone else's solo. So I'd like to add assignment if you want to change the person you're watching swap with someone and let me know!

1. Video yourself smiling and greeting everyone with a gesture (like a wave or a nod)

2. video yourself while watching the person's solo you are assigned to with headphones on.

-Respond with face, hands, torso and maybe voicing an occasional yes or uh-huh or some kind of affirmation or encouragement.

-Anj watch Cyn, Cyn watch Babli, Babli watch Shy, Shy watch Anj

TEXT REVISION 2:

SHY SOLO: “Shysolo” grey material is cut out (can use other material from solo that’s cut out if want)

WE ARE A COLLECTIVE
we are not a company
we are not about one monolithic vision, position, or approach...(cut 2 lines)
our open-sourced voices echo across continents in harmony and sometimes in dissonance
we embrace change and our roots are deep
in sharing our responsibilities we multiply our reach, our resources, our enthusiasm, our possibilities
to create... change

Yes Section 1: Video = PNC composite body

CYN YES: “yes to process face” 1^st take, and if want composite body of any sort
Yes.
Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Rooted in the local --

Rocking the global.

ANJ SOLO: “Anjsolofeet” and “Anjsolonew” (she also has Anjsoloskype, Anjsolohead, Anjsolotorso)

We collect our many voices to create and translate choreography,writings, and art across distant boundaries, overseas, here and there, everywhere that dance happens in the “liminal” space between Classical andContemporary. Constructing, reconstructing, and deconstructing, we grapple withSouth Asian aesthetics, in dialogue with each other and informed by the spacewhere our lives and art intersect.

SANDRA YES: “Babli Solo Part II Yes to Interrogating” hand section plus PNC composite body
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.
CYN SOLO: “cyn_solo”

Cyn:
Bite down hard into our naughty knotty histories
How nation-state clamped down
domesticating our bodies
Remember the unthinkable
the intimate erotic exchange between women
powerfully sacred and profane
bending borders of caste class religion and culture
Their songs reenter my body with its American stride its yellow skin its postmodern leanings
I spit and twist and breathe and say,
Make room for the funky
for the butch-femme genderqueer
woman lovin’ hard-hitting rhythm-rappin’
rasa as you ain’t never felt it before.
SANDRA SOLO: “BabliSolo2” can mix with “BabliSolo3”

Yes to coalition.
Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to consensual collaboration.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

OVERLAPPING YES ENDING: Video: Can put faces and/or composite body or any material from whole thing below, (could use old skype call material?)

everyone: yeses

Shy: Yes to performing across disciplines.

Babli: Yes to each other.

Anj: Yes to community. Yes to Post Natyam

Cyn: Yes.
Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.

Shy: Yes to natyam. Yes to “post”

Babli: Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Shy: Yes to multiplying energy

Babli: Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.

END: Shy “end yes”

Babli's Manifesto Solo

Here are three versions of my solo for the Manifesto video-- camera: Peter Arun Pfaff

1.
password: bablisolo2


2:
password: bablisolo3



3.
password: bablisolo4

Cyber Manifesto Soundtrack (in progress)

Yesterday Shyamala, Ravi, Loren and I met to mix the sound for our Cyber Manifesto soundtrack.  It took quite awhile to align the backbeat, so we didn't quite finish laying down everything - the group dialogue after Shy's solo, ending with the multiplicity of yes's, is not there, which means it sounds like there is extra backbeat at the end.  We also haven't started adding additional sounds -- something Ravi plays/creates, the sound of my tatkar, the Skype ring throughout.  There's also a lot of clean-up - lessening background noise, balancing the mix, and tweaking Sandra's solo to make it align better -  that has not been done yet.

Hope this is useful as we record our additional video footage!  The sound file is also in our Dropbox folder, should you wish to download it.

 FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
1. What do you feel about the musical arc of the soundtrack?  What would you like to change, if anything?
2. How do you feel about the current order of the sections?  Would you change anything?
3. What additional sounds would you like, if any, and when?
4. Currently we've laid in the different solos taking into consideration the pulse but not always being true to the taal structure.  Does this bother you?  What adjustments, if any, would you make?
5. Other comments or ideas? 

Next steps for Cyber Chat Manifesto

Based on an on-line meeting PNC had today on google plus hang out, a music meeting in LA with Ravi and Loren, and individual conversations with Prum we are modifying the Cyber Chat.

New ideas:

1. We reduced and redistributed Sandra's Yeses, to cut some of the text and reflect that they are more about the group then one individual. One of the yes sections will become Sandra's solo which she will dance to her pre-recorded voice similar to the other solos. The other 3 of them will be said by different people while the visual will be a changing composite body of different dancing body parts (we will each make a new torso solo, a head solo and a feet solo like the background rhythms but expanded vocab, not necessarily rhythmic).

2. We thought the end "yes to Post Natyam" was a little corny and like Ravi pointed out, like a political ad....so we removed the line and are trying a cacophany of "yeses" instead, so each of us will record several different yeses.

3. Tone: overall light and fun twist on traditions with moments of tongue-in-cheek humor, and moments of in-your-face political.

4. skype call: would be good to reference more of the cyber chat and thus help situate us in different places with different looking and sounding rooms and maybe play with frozen, degraded, or warped image for humor and reality check.

Because of the new ideas we need to:
1. PNC re-videoing some aspects 2. PNC adding a few new video aspects 3. Ravi n Loren editing the sound score and 4. Prum editing the video.

Here are the assignments and proposed deadlines. I know they work for PNC and am hoping they work for Ravi, Loren and Prum?

Sound (and video) elements: (if possible, use an external mike and try to maintain the same distance to the mike the whole time.)

By Oct 28, Friday:
1. Anj and Sandra re-record audio for solos (if you use video camera you can get face too skype style, might be useful to get a feeling of the skype call for a moment simultaneous to the dance?)
2. Shy and Cyn record Yes sections (Babli, we can record yours too, but we do already have audio from your previous one we can use. Please video face too with earphones skype style in case we want to establish skype feeling momentarily here and there)
3. Anj, Sandra, Cyn, Shy: video of self saying "yes" 4 different ways and 1 "no" (just in case that's useful)

4. Cyn: record kathak feet for composite body

Oct 29, Saturday:
1. Loren, Ravi, Shyamala and Cynthia meet to finalize the timing of the sound score
2. Shy will drop box draft of sound score to group for video recording

By Nov 6, Sunday: Loren draft of music

Nov 6, Sunday:

1. Loren, Ravi, Shyamala and Cynthia meet to finalize music and foley in sounds (can u all meet this day?)

2. Shy will drop box music to all

Video elements: (please try to avoid: night shots or low light shots, use still frame like skype call)

by Nov 7: Drop box the following

Anj: reshoot solo

Babli: reshoot solo (you will do on 8th which will still get to us 8th morning because of time difference)

all: each video 1-min solos of the body parts dancing (whichever parts didn't already do in backbeat: head, torso, or feet) These cannot have sound elements unless you do them by Oct 28

by Nov 10: Prum posts draft 1

by Nov 17: Prum posts final draft (Prum is this possible?)

Possible showings:

Nov 19: Highways?

Nov 25: Dance Your Revolution, Vienna?


REVISED SCRIPT

I. Yes Section 1: Video = Post Natyam composite body

Cyn:
Yes.
Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Rooted in the local --

Rocking the global.

II. ANJ SOLO

Anj:

We collect our many voices to create and translate choreography,writings, and art across distant boundaries, overseas, here and there,everywhere that dance happens in the “liminal” space between Classical andContemporary. Constructing, reconstructing, and deconstructing, we grapple withSouth Asian aesthetics, in dialogue with each other and informed by the spacewhere our lives and art intersect.

III. Yes Section 2: Video = PNC composite body

Babli:
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.

IV. CYN SOLO

Cyn:
Bite down hard into our naughty knotty histories
How nation-state clamped down
domesticating our bodies
Remember the unthinkable
the intimate erotic exchange between women
powerfully sacred and profane
bending borders of caste class religion and culture
Their songs reenter my body with its American stride its yellow skin its postmodern leanings
I spit and twist and breathe and say,
Make room for the funky
for the butch-femme genderqueer
woman lovin’ hard-hitting rhythm-rappin’
rasa as you ain’t never felt it before.

V. BABLI SOLO (she may choose not to say all the words but may fill in the blank with her body)
Yes to coalition.
Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to consensual collaboration.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

VI. SHY SOLO:
WE ARE A COLLECTIVE
we are not a company
we are not about one monolithic vision, position, or approach
we listen with care, we dream wild, we live process, and we create.... magic
we create that unique magic that comes from the unexpected unity of our virtual variety
we share, we learn, we grapple with difference –and we don’t gloss it over
our open-sourced voices echo across continents in harmony and sometimes in dissonance
we embrace change and our roots are deep
in sharing our responsibilities we multiply our reach, our resources, our enthusiasm, our possibilities
to create... change

VII.

Anj: Yes to community.
Cyn: Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Babli: Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Shy: Yes to multiplying energy.

VIII. Yes Section 3

Shy:
Yes to performing across disciplines.
Yes to natyam.
Yes to “post”:

Cyn: post-modern,

Babli: post-colonial, post-structuralist,

Shy: communicating through the cyber-”post”

Anj: across genres, traditions, and communities.

Babli: Yes to each other.

All: different yeses mixed in above backbeat (Video: composite body)

Cyber Manifesto, Draft 2

Mostly Prum just added in all the endings and played with Sandra's first solo.
We realized that as he does more fun editing like the intro and Sandra's solo that it will be harder to move stuff around later, so we decided that Prum and I will finalize the timing together next week before doing any more editing....we'll put it up for feedback then and after timing is finalized Prum will do more of his wild n fun stuff!

Love,
Shy

Password: post

Cyber Manifesto title?

Please comment if you like one of these titles or brainstorm some new ones in your comments:

Cyber Chat 3.0: A Manifesto
Cyber Chat 3.0: A Manifest OH!
Cyber Chat 3.0: Let's all Manifest OH!
Cyber Chat 3.0: Post Natyam Manifesto
Cyber Yes, Manifest
Cyber Natyam Manifesto

Cyber Manifesto draft 1

Please give your feedback by Wednesday Oct 12!

Here are things Prum is planning to do still:

1. balance the sound levels
2. put in a skype ring at the beginning and perhaps as a reoccurring theme throughout.
3. put in the ending section
4. make the solos more interesting with either bits of the background beat showing or multiplying our image.


note: Rather then put our solos in relation to the music where we had planned, he put them directly after each other with no backbeat in-between. This serves to drive forward the whole manifesto and keep the whole thing concise which is already 5 1/2 min without the end. He said he could try it differently if we desire so let us know. This does mean that he can't use our live sound so the body may be synched to sound a bit differently and that I'll have to foley in our body sounds in a separate audio recording. Please let us know your thoughts on this.


Password "manifesto"



Text:

CYBER - MANIFEST - OH

Babli:
Yes.
Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Yes to hybridity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.


Anj:

We collect our many voices to create and translate choreography, writings, and art across distant boundaries, overseas, here and there, everywhere that dance happens in the “liminal” space between Classical and Contemporary. Constructing, reconstructing, and deconstructing, we grapple with South Asian aesthetics, in dialogue with each other and informed by the space where our lives and art intersect.


Babli: Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies and to resisting market ideology.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.

Cyn:
Bite down hard into our naughty knotty histories
How nation-state clamped down
domesticating our bodies
Remember the unthinkable
the intimate erotic exchange between women
powerfully sacred and profane
bending borders of caste class religion and culture
Their songs reenter my body with its American stride its yellow skin its postmodern leanings
I spit and twist and breathe and say,
Make room for the funky
for the butch-femme genderqueer
woman lovin’ hard-hitting rhythm-rappin’
rasa as you ain’t never felt it before.

Babli:
Yes to coalition.
Yes to consensual collaboration.
Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

Shy:
WE ARE A COLLECTIVE
we are not a company
we are not about one monolithic vision, position, or approach
we listen with care, we dream wild, we live process, and we create.... magic
we create that unique magic that comes from the unexpected unity of our virtual variety
we share, we learn, we grapple with difference –and we don’t gloss it over
our open-sourced voices echo across continents in harmony and sometimes in dissonance
we embrace change and our roots are deep
in sharing our responsibilities we multiply our reach, our resources, our enthusiasm, our possibilities
to create... change

Anj: Yes to community.
Cyn: Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Babli: Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Shy: Yes to multiplying energy.

Babli:
Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art.
Yes to “post”:

CYN: post-modern,

BABLI: post-colonial, post-structuralist,

SHY: communicating through the cyber-”post”

ANJ: across genres, traditions, and communities.

Babli: Yes to each other.
All: Yes to Post Natyam.

Post Natyam Collective Manifesto 2.2

Yes to process.
Yes to complexity.
Yes to hybridity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies.
Yes to resisting market ideology.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.
No to identity politics.

SHY: Wait a minute! What do we mean by identity politics? I have made work in the past about my identity and certainly don't wish to erase acknowledging my identity in future work.

ANJ: Much like Shy, I feel I have grappled with this in past work and that we all incorporate the autobiographical into our own work.

SHY: I just hope we’re not saying no to identification at all?

CYN: Well, my discomfort with identity politics is how it often requires a flattening of our complexities -- to be only Taiwanese, or only a feminist, or only a kathak dancer - in order to achieve solidarity.

CYN and BABLI: And what brings the four of us together is not a shared identity but a shared interest in critically and creatively expanding South Asian performance tradition.

BABLI: So, broken down it might be: we don’t say NO to identity, autobiography, and community - but we say YES to going beyond the politics of self-interest groups and enforcing borders around identitarian constructions.

CYN: Exactly.

Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Yes to coalition. [1]

Yes to consensual collaboration.

CYN: Be generous. Be a thief. Encourage each other to borrow, steal, appropriate, translate.

Do so fearlessly rather than tiptoeing on eggshells. Trust each other as artists and human beings.

Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to an online collective process from which we each craft individual products.

BABLI: Create a virtual treasure-box of materials and approaches that circulates to reveal multiple facets of a shared topic.

CYN: As we translate each other, ideas manifest multiply as dance films, scholarly writing, live performance, artbooks, lecture-demonstrations, installations, workshops...

Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source.

BABLI: But wait, exactly what are we saying yes to? Do we understand the implications of it? And will we really be ok with anyone just taking our work and remixing it without telling us?

SHY: I meant open-source methodology, not open-source choreography.

CYN: You know, I think we’re open-source within the collective, but not necessarily with the outside world. The term connotes creative commons, decentralization of authorship, invitation for re-appropriation, and crowd-sourcing - which do resonate with our creative process.

BABLI: After all, we do make our choreographic assignments, process, and in-progress drafts available online at no cost for the public.

CYN: It's like they have access to the source code and blueprints...

BABLI: ...but not always the final products (if there even are any).

Yes to giving credit.
Yes to supportive feedback.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

CYN: If you need to create unity, coherence, a singular clarity, then make that work on your own, and we’ll give feedback.

Yes to multiplying energy.

ANJ: A creative toss of ideas. Listening, processing, filtering, feeding, and vocalizing in constant dialogue to sustain and feed our sense of community.

Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Yes to intelligent divisions of administrative labor.

BABLI: Sharing responsibility instead of multiplying work. Freeing up time and energy for creativity.

Yes to responsibility.
Yes to healthy, balanced lives.
Yes to shared decision making. Yes to moving forward.

SHY: If you aren’t present, you can’t be heard. If you don’t communicate or contribute, you can’t expect to be included.

No to divas.
Seriously, no to divas.

ANJ: But when the shit hits the fan, we can all turn into divas. There is one living in each of us...she comes out under pressure. I've seen her.

Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art. [2]
Yes to “post.”

CYN: I do resonate with postmodern dance’s valuing of the pedestrian body, of the interdisciplinary, of art-as-everyday-life...as well as its critique of the mainstream.

BABLI: To me “post” resonates in the first place with inquiries that address post-colonialities. I do draw from post-structuralist thinkers. I do not really resonate with postmodern dance as a “genre” (though I like to play with some of the aspects you mentioned, Cynthia).

SHY: From my out-”post”, I send messages through the cyber-”post,” decentralizing and multiplying, layering and creating dialogue through art, and art through dialogue.

ANJ: Post is the invention and creativity that develops and takes flight from the roots

Post happens after the solid foundation has been established

Post is the subversive

Post is engaging in the present informed by what has come before

Post followed by Natyam is the infinite possibilities that open up after years and years of training in a traditional South Asian dance form

Post is the ability to think outside the box

Post is the meeting of modernity and tradition

Post allows for creation across genres, traditions, and communities

Post is cool

Post is open to learning

Post is not afraid

Post is experimental

Post is anything is possible

Yes to honoring, challenging, and extending our multiple traditions.
Yes to each other.
Yes to Post Natyam.

[1] In “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty utilizes Benedict Anderson’s notion of an “imagined community” to think of communities of women apart from essentialized notions of race, class and gender, but as “political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (Mohanty 2003, 46). Mohanty emphasizes a coalition between women of color in the following way: a “viable oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications” (49).
[2] "Natya” or “natyam” is a Sanskrit word that refers to the inseparable conjunction of drama, dance, and music in Indian performance tradition. In contemporary times, this concept could also include film and multimedia.

Post Natyam Collective Manifesto 2.2

Yes to process.

Yes to complexity.
Yes to hybridity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to challenging aesthetic hegemonies.
Yes to resisting market ideology.
Yes to combating exoticism orientalism colonialism racism sexism classism casteism communalism.
No to identity politics.

SHY: Wait a minute! What do we mean by identity politics? I have made work in the past about my identity and certainly don't wish to erase acknowledging my identity in future work.

ANJ: Much like Shy, I feel I have grappled with this in past work and that we all incorporate the autobiographical into our own work.

SHY: I just hope we’re not saying no to identification at all?

CYN: Well, my discomfort with identity politics is how it often requires a flattening of our complexities -- to be only Taiwanese, or only a feminist, or only a kathak dancer - in order to achieve solidarity.

CYN and BABLI: And what brings the four of us together is not a shared identity but a shared interest in critically and creatively expanding South Asian performance tradition.

BABLI: So, broken down it might be: we don’t say NO to identity, autobiography, and community - but we say YES to going beyond the politics of self-interest groups and enforcing borders around identitarian constructions.

CYN: Exactly.

Yes to radical dis/agreement.
Yes to coalition. [1]

Yes to consensual collaboration.

CYN: Be generous. Be a thief. Encourage each other to borrow, steal, appropriate, translate.

Do so fearlessly rather than tiptoeing on eggshells. Trust each other as artists and human beings.

Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to an online collective process from which we each craft individual products.

BABLI: Create a virtual treasure-box of materials and approaches that circulates to reveal multiple facets of a shared topic.

CYN: As we translate each other, ideas manifest multiply as dance films, scholarly writing, live performance, artbooks, lecture-demonstrations, installations, workshops...

Yes to creative recycling and reusing.
Yes to open-source. 

BABLI: But wait, exactly what are we saying yes to? Do we understand the implications of it? And will we really be ok with anyone just taking our work and remixing it without telling us?

SHY: I meant open-source methodology, not open-source choreography.

CYN: You know, I think we’re open-source within the collective, but not necessarily with the outside world. The term connotes creative commons, decentralization of authorship, invitation for re-appropriation, and crowd-sourcing - which do resonate with our creative process.

BABLI: After all, we do make our choreographic assignments, process, and in-progress drafts available online at no cost for the public.

CYN: It's like they have access to the source code and blueprints...

BABLI: ...but not always the final products (if there even are any).

Yes to giving credit.
Yes to supportive feedback.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.

CYN: If you need to create unity, coherence, a singular clarity, then make that work on your own, and we’ll give feedback.

Yes to multiplying energy.

ANJ: A creative toss of ideas. Listening, processing, filtering, feeding, and vocalizing in constant dialogue to sustain and feed our sense of community.

Yes to collectively building infrastructure.
Yes to intelligent divisions of administrative labor.

BABLI: Sharing responsibility instead of multiplying work. Freeing up time and energy for creativity.

Yes to responsibility.
Yes to healthy, balanced lives.
Yes to shared decision making. Yes to moving forward.

SHY: If you aren’t present, you can’t be heard. If you don’t communicate or contribute, you can’t expect to be included.

No to divas.
Seriously, no to divas.

ANJ: But when the shit hits the fan, we can all turn into divas. There is one living in each of us...she comes out under pressure. I've seen her.

Yes to the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to “natyam” as a multiple-faceted performing art. [2]
Yes to “post.”

CYN: I do resonate with postmodern dance’s valuing of the pedestrian body, of the interdisciplinary, of art-as-everyday-life...as well as its critique of the mainstream.

BABLI: To me “post” resonates in the first place with inquiries that address post-colonialities. I do draw from post-structuralist thinkers. I do not really resonate with postmodern dance as a “genre” (though I like to play with some of the aspects you mentioned, Cynthia).

SHY: From my out-”post”, I send messages through the cyber-”post,” decentralizing and multiplying, layering and creating dialogue through art, and art through dialogue.

ANJ: Post is the invention and creativity that develops and takes flight from the roots

Post happens after the solid foundation has been established

Post is the subversive

Post is engaging in the present informed by what has come before

Post followed by Natyam is the infinite possibilities that open up after years and years of training in a traditional South Asian dance form

Post is the ability to think outside the box

Post is the meeting of modernity and tradition

Post allows for creation across genres, traditions, and communities

Post is cool

Post is open to learning

Post is not afraid

Post is experimental

Post is anything is possible

Yes to honoring, challenging, and extending our multiple traditions. 
Yes to each other.
Yes to Post Natyam.

[1] In “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty utilizes Benedict Anderson’s notion of an “imagined community” to think of communities of women apart from essentialized notions of race, class and gender, but as “political links we choose to make among and between struggles” (Mohanty 2003, 46). Mohanty emphasizes a coalition between women of color in the following way: a “viable oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications” (49).
[2] "Natya” or “natyam” is a Sanskrit word that refers to the inseparable conjunction of drama, dance, and music in Indian performance tradition. In contemporary times, this concept could also include film and multimedia.