Here is our reading assignment #2, due on December 20!
1. All read Avanthi Meduri's “Multiple Pleasures: Improvisation in Bharatanatyam” and Ramsay Burt’s “The Performance of Unmarked Masculinity.”
2. Write short response papers: Sandra will concentrate on interpreting 29 Subversive Gestures through these theoretical lenses, while Cyn and Shy can also consider autobiographical more heavily.
3. Each come up with a few ideas about a choreographic assignment.
Here is my response paper (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wdEmCN-6y5TPOJFR77piHFCxPqX-Tjrryeacrl_UAEM/edit), and here are my choreographic ideas:
ReplyDelete1. Write a padam in which the pallavi is “not enough.” Each stanza can use a different scenario to expand on the idea of “not enough.” For instance, one stanza might be about race (“not Indian enough”), another about gender (“not feminine enough”), another about sexuality (“not straight enough”). Alternately, all the stanzas can be about one aspect like gender, but expressed through different scenarios. The language should be general enough to leave room for multiple performative interpretation. Choreograph the padam, leaving openness for improvisational variations.
2. Revisit the gender-morphing section of the first choreographic assignment. Based on the existing sequence, create a musical scale where different notes correspond to different gendered character types. (You may have more than two notes: for instance, a five-note gender scale might have a young, innocent nayika, a manipulative older courtesan, a refined Muslim nobleman, a hyper-masculine male warrior, an androgynous male yogi.) Compose a gender “raga” of moving between these characters, with particular emphasis paid to how you transition between characters. If you wish you may draw this on paper. Translate that sonic raga into a more developed choreographed sequence.
3. Using voice, movement, and costume, work with tension and contradiction in performing gender -- with putting things together that should not go together.
4. Choreograph a padam in which the protagonist and the beloved are both female.
Here is my response to Burt and Meduri,
ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_MMUtkHYfbjTGF4TUlKeXloVVk
(PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAD NOT SEEN THE STUDIES YET WHEN I WROTE THIS SINCE THE DOWNLOAD WAS SLOW. NOW THE DOWNLOAD TO DROPBOX IS DONE AND FEEDBACK WILL FOLLOW !)
And here are my choreographic ideas:
Choreographic Ideas:
Part 1: Imagine yourself in a family gathering in a public place in Taipei. Envision yourself walking across a public plaza and sitting down at an outdoor cafe to eat in the presence of senior family members. Transcribe the movements you go through into a gendered script
Part 2: Take a brief routine sequence from your daily life, such as leaving your house, walking to your car, arriving at grocery store, getting out of your car and going shopping ... and transcribe the movements you go through into a gendered script. Is there material in this gendered script for a subversive phrase?
Part 3: Take a sequence from a Padam/Thumri you have learned. Transcribe the choreography into a gendered script.
ANALYTIC ASSIGNMENT: Compare the three scripts. What kinds of femininity emerge from the scripts? How do the three differ? Do you find subversions of all three in the current incarnation of 29 Subversive Gestures?
MOVEMENT ASSIGNMENT: Find at least one iconic subversion for each script.
Choreographic Assignment ideas:
ReplyDelete1. Inspired by Burt’s interpretation of the war sounds as consequences for the effeminate transgressions, make a list of “consequences” for being “not enough”
Create a sound score that somehow reflects the consequences through sounds instead of words. Superimpose over a masculine gender sequence and a feminine one separately. Compare the differing results.
2. Make a sound score with the framing “if you don’t …” (insert gendered rule of classical Indian dance. Create a hyper feminine gesture sequence. Add these together.
3. Like Meduri’s crystal ball text idea, use “not good enough” as the basis for three short elemental phrases 1. movement 2. sound 3. percussive elements. Make 3 variations of each of the three phrases. Choose one variation of each of the three and combine them making sure at all times at least one of the elements is holding up the text/crystal ball.
and here is my response to Meduri and Burt:
ReplyDeletehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1qYXYjNU-sZmc9y-R9xYHaYqqcKUsLFsXRzLNLJ853Aw/edit