Shyamala wrote a freewrite that we thought might give context to the piece. We were brainstorming that Cyber chat would be projected with Shyamala live (or ideally with everyone who's performing live in the show performing a section, either isolated by lights or all popping up and down from behind a table whenever there's a switch of frame in the video). After the call ends, Shyamala would be alone and frustrated and write an email to everyone....
Hi Dears,
I’m feeling confused about the fact that we’ve just chosen as a group to use the courtesan texts as the basis for our next project. I’m interested in the legacy of our dance forms as something that’s been inherited from courtesan communities but I never really felt connected to the courtesan texts or to recreating old material over and over. Of course there are some juicy padams but I still want to relate to now. If I wanted to do that I would have stayed being a Bharata Natyam dancer. But I always felt like a fake when I was all dolled up with the jewelry and telling stories from a religion that I don’t belong to or fully understand. I'm interested in the here and now and using my dance to express what is pertinent to our social and political times…
One interesting thing about them though I found in Veena Talwar Oldenburg’s field work in the 70s (double check dates) where she actually stumbles upon a courtesan community of 30 or so women while doing archival research She asks them about the stereotype of them stealing young girls to become courtesans and they instantly dispel the rumor by telling her their real stories….none were kidnapped, one loved dance so much but couldn’t do it unless she left her Brahmin family and chose a different way of life, but many left abusive husbands or families to find an alternative life.
In my work with the abuse survivor support group, I feel so many women who are emotionally and sometimes physically abusive situations didn’t leave because there’s so much shame involved and they really have many other alternatives within the South Asian society. That is until they find groups like the South Asian Network, or Sahara that can give them a safe woman’s space to see what other women have done.
The courtesan community seems that it offered a different model for women to live that was intertwined with but also in many ways resisting the typical patriarchal model of society. In Oldenburg’s article, it sounds as if they created a woman-centric society that had its own rules. The way she found the courtesans in the first place was because she found translator to work with who said he didn’t have a name, and when she asked why he said it was because he was a boy born into the courtesan community where females are celebrated, are the bread earners, and the inheritors of land. Because he was a boy he was considered worthless. I remember reading an article by ? Srinivasan about the devadasi’s in South India who also had similar powerful roles as the heads of their household and businesswomen. It’s so confusing to me though because the idea of a courtesan is shown in the Bollywood movies as something so tragic rather then powerful, as shameful and something to be hidden, rather then a possible option for a new way of life! And I’m confused too if these women were really selling bodies, or selling their dance, or did it depend on which level of a courtesan you were?
Anyway, I find it fascinating to know that there always have been alternatives, even though it still seems that our lives as South Asian women are still so dictated today in the 20th century by the expectations of the same patriarchal roles. I have met women in their mid-20s thinking their lives are over because they are divorcing an abusive mate and that no one else will marry them, or a woman who waited 30 years to leave so that her children would be grown up and not have to deal with the divorce. Why is it that we still see such narrow possibilities for ourselves as women? Even I am constantly struggling with feeling some obligation to be solely a mother and homemaker because my husband has a more lucrative job….. (to be continued or to be edited down)
Anjali Freewrite:
Anjali also did a free-write of the experience of feeling silenced and finding expression through dance.
(to be posted later)
In the afternoon, Carole and Sangita came, and we worked more on layering studies through multimedia.
Sandra "past" silhouette + Anjali's "beautiful"
We tried layering Sandra's shadow with Anjali's beautiful cliche. We also experimented with layering those two with Shyamala speaking her letter in front and Cynthia behind Sandra's shadow video dancing classical kathak, also as a shadow. (no video documentation)
"I didn't Say A Word" (Anj Abhinaya) layered with "My Silent Cry" (Shy dance)
We put the live feed of Anj's face with "My Silent Cry." Note: the last movement of Shy running with the cloth as wings wasn't possible because of the lack of space so she just runs off. Password: "silent"
I Didn't Say a Word/My Silent Cry from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
Skin
This experiment takes inspiration from Sangita and Cynthia's collaboration "skin." Carole used 3 projections: "skin," white words projected on Cynthia's body, and a live feed of the words on Cynthia's body operated by a live camera-person. Perhaps this could include all the live dancers? Also, there was an interesting idea to cross out the words that are on the body with eye liners or markers and then leave the body all marked up with lines afterward. We were also thinking of replacing the white words, currently from Sumita Chakravarty's text, with the words/phrases from our courtesan cliches.
password "skin"
Skin from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
Skin live feed
direct footage from the live feed (from yesterday).
password "skin"
Skin Live Feed from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
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