Manifesto draft 2.0

Cynthia and I keep working on the manifesto drafts. Here is an adjusted draft!

Yes to process.
Yes to process without product.
Yes to consensual collaboration.(1)
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 the widest possible definition of dance.
Yes to natya as a multiple-faceted performing art.(2)
Yes to “post.”
CYN: I do resonate with postmodern dance’s valuing of the pedestrian body, the multidisciplinary, of art-as-everyday-life...
BABLI: To me “post” resonates in the first place with processes that address postcolonialities. 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 above, Cynthia).
SHY: From my outpost, I send messages through the cyber-post, decentralizing and multiplying, layering and creating dialogue through art and art through dialogue.
ANJ: To me, Post allows for creation and communication across genres, traditions, and communities through the medium of dance.

Yes to a virtual Post Natyam process from which we each craft individual products.
BABLI: Together we create a treasure-box of materials and approaches
which we pass around through cyber-connections
to reveal multiple facets of a shared topic or theme.

Yes to trust.
Yes to honesty.
Yes to respect.
Yes to giving credit.
Yes to supportive feedback.
Yes to transparency.
Yes to multiple voices, multiple aesthetics, multiple authors.
CYN: If you need to create unity, coherence, a singular clarity: then make that choreography on your own, and we’ll give feedback.

Yes to trust.
No to divas.
Seriously, no to divas.

Yes to honoring, challenging, and extending our multiple traditions.
Yes to the widest possible definition of choreography.(3)
Yes to writing as choreography.(4)
Yes to choreographing the political.
Yes to open source choreography.
Yes to creative recyling and reusing.
Yes to dancing between disciplines.
Yes to breaking the fourth wall.
Yes to praxis.
Yes to theory.
Geeks
Adda

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 divisions of administrative labor according to our interests and abilities.
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.

Yes to hybridity and complexity.
Yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global.
Yes to interrogating our legacies.
Yes to queering.
Yes to sustainability.
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: I'm not sure what identity politics are, but I know that I certainly have relied on identity art making in the past and may still do so in the future.
ANJ: Much like Shy, I feel I have grappled with this in past work and that we all do incorporate the autobiographical into our own work
SHY: I just hope it's 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 postmodern 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 critiquing 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.


Footnotes:
(1)Commit to documenting your work so that it can reenter the group dialogue. Commit to the group dialogue. [cyn: not sure this needs to be included?]
(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.
(3) Choreographing can refer to any sort of thoughtful, systematic act of composition. We understand that choreography, narrowly defined, is a historical construct embedded in hierarchical Western concert dance practice, erasing the voices of the street, the club, the community, the circle, the temple, the court, the picket-line, the oral tradition, the non-west.
(4) Susan Foster talks about the linguistic root of the word choreography as referring to “writing dance.”



No mention of outreach/teaching, and writing??


note: ask anj and shy to write 1-2 sentences about what “post natyam” means to them.
Shy: (this is my response to Post not to Post natyam, did you want something different?)
Post is a tribute
a recognition
a nod
to the post modern in me
to the period after I first learned Bharata Natyam and modern dance simultaneously

Post as in after AND post as in choreographic tools to grapple and reformulate my chosen techniques.

Post as in Post colonial and the tools and approaches to grapple with my dance forms’ herstories, their legacies, their complex gender roles, and their contributions to nation-states.

Post as in a pole to ground myself locally into the earth and fly a flag with my chosen dance forms as a beacon to others who wish to engage in the critical and creative dialogue (not as a marker to exclude others or rally nationalist pride).

And from my outpost, I send messages through the cyber-post, decentralizing and multiplying, layering and creating meaning through art, dialogue, research, and becoming part of a movement.


Post (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 Indian 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




Regarding Choreography

I [we] choreograph to make connections between my [our] disparate homes and worlds.
I[we] choreograph to ask questions that I [we] usually can’t answer.
I [we] choreograph to play in possibility and to dream of new possibilities.
I[we] choreograph as a rehearsal for life. I [we] choreograph because sometimes it is easier to be brave in the studio than in life.

But choreography is also its own prison, a historical construct embedded in hierarchical Western concert dance practice, erasing the voices of the street, the club, the community, the circle, the temple, the court, the picket-line, the oral tradition, the non-west.

Hence
I [we] defy choreography that erases my ancestors. My [our] choreography is my [our] ancestors speaking through my [our] body [ies]; my [our] choreography is arguing with my [our] ancestors using the body they gave me [us].
I [we] defy choreography as dictatorship. I [we] embrace collaboration, shared ownership, multiple voices blending and clashing in dialogue.
I [we] defy choreography as product. I [we] embrace process. Resonant material transforms over time, as it alights in new contexts, as it forms relations with new audiences.
I [we] defy choreography as dance; I [we] dance through movement, sound, rhythm, film, writing, academia, but coming back, always, to the body.


Yes to innovation
No to Insisting on innovation

Yes to growth and change
Yes to rigorous artistry and craft
Yes to deep rooted understanding of Indian dance forms through our bodies and intellects...
Yes to passed down material
YES to honoring (multiple) lineages
YES to TRANSLATION
YES to Re-Using
YES to process
yes to making work that breaks boundaries and challenges norms
yes to work that matters
yes to bold, fierce and juicy!
yes to extending from traditions
yes to choreographing the face
YES to sharing (each others material)


Choreography is opening ourselves to infinite possibilites
Living large
Dreaming big
Creating the unexpected
Listening to each other and being astute observers of the world and living now



Yes to interdisciplinarity
NO to disciplinary loyalty
no to narrow definitions of dance


Yes to branching out into that which enhances our artistic vision (“SCAVENGER METHODOLOGY”- Judith Jack Halberstam)
As a way to draw upon our various talents and expertise (but not to sacrifice artistic rigor). A way to build bridges with allies/collaborators.

yes to using our whole selves to create work
yes to writing
yes to speaking and making noise with our bodies
yes to screaming at the top of our lungs or making the tiniest whisper
yes to rhythm and a-rhythm and musicality and silence
yes to theater
yes to film
yes to audience involvement and breaking walls (4th and otherwise)
yes to new things we haven’t thought of yet

Yes to “natya” as a multiple-faceted performing arts, historically inclusive of dance, music, theater; now perhaps including film, multimedia.

We create beyond borders
Artistic process opens up to inventive ways of integrating across disciplines
Visionary in how we approach and define dance making through deconstruction and translation
Not limited but limitless in how we integrate music, writing, spoken word and multi-media into our creative sunbursts

Regarding distance, ownership and geography

Creating art in a virtual world
We embrace internet as a way to facilitate our creative process, to circulate creative material to collaborators and audiences that are distant from us in time and place.

Making space for creation, community, and translation in cyberspace
Opening up our artistic process in real time

Make work that acknowledges our specific geographies and how they shape each of us!
Build the community that we need with any tools available. We embrace technology as a means to an end, as a means that may transform the end!
Build homes and alliances in multiple places!

yes to open source
yes to accessibity
yes to inclusion
yes to bounding across geographies and political divides in our communications and eventually in our bodies
yes to being rooted in the local and rocking the global
yes to community –however you choose to make it
yes to consensual sharing and translating and using and confusing
YES to CIRCULATION
YES TO RECYCLING

NO to BORDERS
NO TO CLINGING TO MATERIAL and Ideas

Circulating creative material feeds the Collective
Adds to our multiplicity and strengthens our greater philosophy and vision
Eases us into the area of Translation and opens up interesting art in terms of construction, deconstrucion, innovation

Regarding dialogue and collaboration

A Creative toss of ideas
Listening, processing, filtering, feeding, and vocalizing in constant dialogue to sustain and feed sense of community
Supportive group feedback to enhance artistic generation

YES TO DIALOGUE
YES TO DIS/AGREEMENT
YES TO CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM

yes to open source
yes to accessibility
yes to writing our own herstory
(yes to process as an important part of the product)
yes to process without product
Yes to sharing our unique visions because no one else can make work exactly like us.

yes to a consensual construct (?????) CUT?
yes to sharing material with each other REPEATED
yes to transforming and growing each other’s ideas
no to trying to be carbon copies of each other - if you’re going to use it, make it your own
yes to giving reins to the those who can run with it
yes to giving credit wherever possible (where due)
no to holding each other back
yes to inclusion
yes to complex pieces that come out of a complex process
yes to communication and transparency
yes to making things so exciting and intermixed that we don’t know who the author is
yes to taking leadership

yes to respect for each others work

yes to trust
yes to trust
yes to trust

no to divas
no to divas
no to divas

Together we create a treasure box of choreographic materials and approaches
To be passed around and reveal multiple facets of each topic/theme we approach together

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. Commit to documenting your work so that it can reenter the group dialogue. Commit to the group dialogue.

Deciding collectively what is up for grabs among us members and what is owned by individual and need permission to be used

Ask if you’re not sure. Give credit where credit is due. Recognizing each others’contributions enriches rather than diminishes your work.

When not engaged in a consensual collaboration:
yes to asking permission before using, transforming, or performing each other’s work
yes to supporting each other’s individual work
yes to feedback on the choreographer’s own terms

Initiate collaborators, introduce them to our way of working and then create a contract with them upon entering the process.
When differing from the “norm,” create a contract upon entering a new project/process.



Regarding multiple perspectives

Paolo Friere: A monologue is a colonial pedagogy; dialogue is liberatory.
A coalition as a shared context of struggle, not a shared identity.
Do we need to make work that provides “the answer”? Or can we make work that asks questions?
How can we learn from each other’s differences?

Yes to multivocality
No to aesthetic Unity
No to a single vision
no to a single artistic director

yes to diverse points of view
yes to variety
no to only one right way

yes to a whole that is bigger and better and more amazing than any of its parts could possibly be alone...
no to one truth, one vision
yes to messy, as long as it’s fulfilling!

We are stronger with a shared voice
Many perspectives instigate juicy dialogue ergo interesting art
“United we stand divided we fall”---Abe Lincoln

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

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

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


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
we value hybridity; we value humanity
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
we support the creations of the individual, the creations of the collective, and everything in-between
our open-sourced voices echo across continents in unison and sometimes in dissonance -and even that is part of our aesthetic
we are structured and skilled
informed and investigative
we create the meaningful; not carbon-copied empty form
we are “thinking bodies,” we are “dancing words,”
we are sonic images, we are projected thoughts
we are live, we are virtual
and WE ARE POST NATYAM


ORGANIZING OURSELVES

Yes, to responsibiity
yes to division of labor
yes for making consistent time
yes to rise to the occasion

Yes to limiting unpaid work hours

We need to get a lot done
And also need to
Take into account each others preferences, interests, abilities and availability

We are committed to multivocality
We try to keep moving -- lack of time and availability cannot unduly slow down the process process
Time Commitment will determine each persons involvement
Those that are most present and committed should make the (most) decisions
Larger issues that affect the Collective as a whole should be communicated to all

Yes to inclusiveness
invite others to participate in the decisions in each role

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

Our multiple voices in dialogue are the compost that makes our soil rich and fertile.
The farmer/project lead plans for the seasonal arc of the year.
Delegates the tasks of tilling, hoeing, planting, weeding, harvesting to her worker/collaborators. All commit to the timeline, to communicating, to asking for help.
We adapts for unexpected droughts, floods, and sunshine.
Throughout we continue to compost and fertilize the soil.
Sometimes we harvest something different than we planted.

We strive not to multiply work, but to lessen the administrative workload for each of us. We recognize that this is only possible when we consistently commit to doing a certain amount of work.

YES TO efficiency
YES TO smart streamlining
YES TO sharing work (in order to reduce individual work)
YES TO discipline
YES TO collectively building infrastructure
We strive to emphasize that which can be achieved collectively, but not as easily individually

We need to reflect our artistic Committment to transnationality in administrative planning

If I’m doing something for me, I might as well do a little more for us
and likewise when you do something for you, please do a little more for we

we are women, we need to make a living, the collective should be facilitating our creativity rather than drain it
should be administrative support network, rather than extra burden

yes to responsibility
yes to healthy, balanced lives
yes to the passion!
yes to communicating when we’re overwhelmed
yes to divisions of labor
yes to delegation
yes to understanding
yes to taking care of ourselves.

Honesty and transparency about what you can and are willing to commit to.
Among your different life priorities, where does PN fall?
What would you need to push it higher on the list?


POLITICS/INTERVENTION

I bite down hard into knotty histories of Hindu patriarchal nationalist clamping down into erasures of Muslim courtesan secular voices I imagine erased voices the form reenters my body with its American stride its yellow skin and short hair and postmodern leanings I spit and twist and breathe and wonder about boxes and the division of the classical image from the classical practice. I want to make room for funky butch-femme gender queer loving woman centered hard-hitting rapping rhythmic subtle virtuosic heartfelt abhinaya rasa for movement across oceans and cities and bodies.


yes to challenging gender norms
yes to inclusivity
yes to QUILTBAG
no to injustice
no to racism
no to exoticism
no to orientalism
yes to hybridity...hybrid bodies, hybrid genders, hybrid forms

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. Our process is shared between ourselves and amongst the public as it happens. We dare to enter into multi-media explorations as they interface with South Asian aesthetics and feminist politics in relation to race, gender, dance studies, and contemporary living. Our Dance Collective is on the move. Our travels take us around the world and into cyberspace, where we use the virtual world as our canvas and continue to forge community to create connections

Challenge, Refuse, Counteract:
Any Discrimination
Exoticism
Racism
Sexism
Homophobia
Communalism
Class/Caste-ism
Aesthetic and other hegemonies
Senseless Market-politics

NO to orthodoxy
Yes to Equality
Yes to equal rights, equal access, equal chances
Yes to Diversity
Yes to in-betweenness
Yes to queering
Yes to Sustainability
Yes to Openness
No to “centrisms”
Yes to continued learning
Yes to new perspectives

no need to make a unified artistic or political statement-- multiple approaches/voices/opinions can coexist