I spent some time fleshing out some of the parts from the last improvisation where I was dancing with Maud's projection. I incorporated some vocabulary from Babli's original abhinya to the Maud text. And I became interested to see the study that Babli, Cyn and Meena created inter-spliced with this improvisation. I also incorporated Cynthia's last audio recording exploration in part of this too. I did this improvisation in silence so to be able to take time with the movement this time, so if the sounds don't work for you, you could try muting them. Also, even though her image is still here, I would like to have it VERY slowly morph from one image to another.
password: Maud
Ghostly Desires from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
Questions:
1. What meaning/s do you get from this?
2. Are the recalling of the text and sounds in different ways working for you?
3. What are the most compelling moments for you?
4. How can you imagine all three of our live bodies being incorporated into this and where in the space might we each be? I wrote a scenario below that I brainstormed in relation to this.
5. I didn't use the footwork in this version, do you imagine it could still be incorporated here somehow?
6. Any other thoughts?
Shy's brainstorm to question #4:
Section 1: Babli is sitting in the audience doing Abhinaya toward the stage
Cyn is filming live feed which is projected somewhere on the stage
text is spoken by Cyn or by Shy offstage?
Section 2: Maud Allan's image comes up, taking over the live feed or possibly on another area of the stage. Shy enters and approaches Maud Allan to the Ruth St. Denis music. Babli and Cyn both do abhinaya toward Maud Allan and/or Shy.
Section 3: Shy is caressing Maud Allan's image, Cyn and Babli do abhinaya toward Maud Allan/Shy while speaking the text in canon.
Section 4: Shy becomes Maud Allan, Cynthia becomes parody of exotifying announcer and narrates while Shy moves with Maud Allan on body. Babli does abhinaya toward Shy or Cyn.
Section 5: Babli catches Maud Allan on her hand, Shy says text and Cyn does abhinaya toward Maud and/or Babli.
Section 6: Babli is on the stage doing abhinaya toward the audience.
Shy is filming live feed which is projected somewhere on the stage.
text is spoken by Cyn.
This idea starts to incorporate the idea of us switching roles like I wrote in one score idea from a while back and could be pushed even more in that direction if that is interesting.
1. General impressions: repetition, exotification, Orientalist imagery in text and video, two brown women, a rather demure sensuality.
ReplyDeleteI read Sandra as empowered and relaxed, grounded in her own desire. As a viewer, I feel hailed, tantalized, seduced, desired. Maud Allan’s image appears. I’m not sure what her relationship is to Sandra. Shy appears in the sari onstage with her head covered. I read her as a “conservative” Indian woman who tentatively feels a draw towards Maud Allan’s image, echoing her postures (trying to be like her) and then stroking her (desiring her); this conservative/repressed woman is gradually sexually awakened as Maud’s image is overlaid onto her body. The music is very dramatic and contrasts with the slowness and minimalism of the movement. Maud does not respond to Shy — her unmoving image seems haughty and implacable — and Shy appears subservient to her, kneeling, physically lower, acting as the one who pleasures Maud. When we hear the Lakme music return with the review, it begs the question of whom the text is talking about: Shy? Maud? When Sandra reappears in the cross-dissolve, and we briefly see all three women at once, I find myself wondering why Shy desires Maud Allan and not Sandra (who seems much more attractive to me than Maud).
The interaction between Shyamala and Maud Allan seems to reiterate a white feminist trope of white women liberating women of color, with the extra jab of the white woman embodying an Orientalist vision inspired by the brown woman and her culture. Interestingly, I never read Shy as having power over Maud Allan, as I do for Sandra.
2. For the second repetition of the “pink pearls” text, the fact that you embody gestures that Sandra performed earlier, but towards Maud’s image makes what was once suggested clear and perhaps a bit literal. Currently I find the repetition of the “pink pearls” text repetitive and sometimes distracting. I would love for any repetition of text to function more closely like traditional abhinaya: to reveal new interpretive possibilities and emotional valences of those words. I’m not quite sure how to interpret the “she is a lynx” text — I am drawn towards interpreting that section as Shyamala becoming the femme fatale performer, but I think I’d need the movement to be more active / aggressive / dance than it currently is to fully embrace that reading.
3. Seeing Maud’s body projected exactly on top of your own is quite interesting — I think this would be even more so if the projection was lowered so that her boobs and feet correspond more directly to your body.
ReplyDelete4. Good question — it feels like a lot for my brain to wrap itself around, so I’m sorry I don’t have immediate ideas. My first reaction is that I’m not sure where my body fits into this picture as an East Asian woman — right now it feels like it’s about Maud and two brown women. It might be interesting to look at our own positionalities in relation to this material and to figure out where we fit in. For instance, I personally feel very little interest in emulating or taking on Maud’s image or body myself (I’m sure I’ve been exotified and sexualized before, but it’s not something that has happened repeatedly to me as a person or performer, which may be related to my gender presentation, not being femme, as well as the mismatch between my identity/appearance and my dance practice). I feel more interested in pulling out the threads of queer desire (making something that is destabilizing and sexy in a complicated way), in claiming power (spectatorial, sexual) over Maud’s image, in claiming power over the audience.
In reading through Shy’s ideas, which are very cool, I wonder if in the sections where people do abhinaya towards someone, whether they can’t sometimes be reciprocal and interactive, like the abhinaya duet in Ranri. Do we get to have two women of color taking pleasure in each other? I’m also interested in deciding on roles in a way that where we’re not all equal or interchangeable, but where our own desires and positionalities determine what role we take — while still having a sense of fluidity and rotating roles. I’d also love to think more deeply about the audience’s positionality throughout: how are they implicated, hailed, drawn in? Do they get to see everything, or are some things hidden from them?
5. I’d actually love to see more “dancing” — I think it would make you more powerful as a performer. Perhaps in the “lynx” section?
6. In this video, I found myself watching your shadows on Maud’s image as much as your actual body — so when you catch her face on your hand, I pay more attention to the shadow of your hand blocking out her face on the back wall than her face on your hand (which I loved in your last study). This might be about the camera framing and so it’s tricky to predict how a live audience would see it.
One more thought: there is lots of sringara in the studies thus far -- do we ever have bibhatsa/disgust, which for me is my dominant emotion towards Maud Allan? Or raudra?
ReplyDeleteOooh yes, me too, I would love to bring in bibhatsa/disgust!
ReplyDelete