rapture/rupture (rehearsal footage)

Here's is the latest version of the padam/ghazal/thumri from the Subversive Gestures Loop process, which is now titled "rapture/rupture."


password: "mirror"

29 Subversive Gestures Loop, Padam complete Draft

After discussing the three studies in the last post, we felt the Padam was the most incomplete and needed to be explored before writing about them all. So here is a competed draft of the Padam.
 
The assignment again was to create a critical, gender-subverting padam that uses repeating lines of poetic text and abhinaya.  Incorporate non-Indian, autobiographical material.

Not Enough Padam Complete Draft from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


password:  loop


Feedback Questions:
1.  What parts are the most interesting to you and why?
2.  What parts do you lose attention and why?
3.  What do you feel about the relationship of the text to the movement? 
4.  What music, if any, could you imagine with the piece?  Are there ways the existing text could become more musical?
5. Comment on the relation between autobiography and abhinaya in the work.  How is each mobilized?  How are the boundaries of each tested, expanded, or broken, if at all?  
6. Track the performance of gender throughout the work.  You might look at how the physical movement (angika), the costumes (aharya), the text (vachika) shift and change.  I'm also curious what gender the "beloved" reads as.  Do you assume it is a woman or man?  Does your understanding shift throughout the piece?
7.  Comment particularly on the costuming and costume changes -- sequence, timing, and performance.  Are there any changes you would suggest?  Parts that work particularly well?
8. Title ideas?

29 Subversive Gestures, final loop compilations

We decided to flesh out 3 avenues to complete our theory-choreography loop investigations.  

1. deconstruction, Goode-style.  
Repeat same movement phrase (femme) several times, changing the sound/text each time.
2. gat bhav
Create a pantomimed story to a rhythmic background about an intersex nayika
3. padam/thumri
Create a critical, gender-subverting padam that uses repeating lines of poetic text and abhinaya.  Incorporate non-Indian, autobiographical material.

1. Deconstruction, Goode-style:
We spent the longest time on creating various variations for this.
Below are 3 versions of this with differing orders.

a. includes all 6 of our variations.  Password "loop"
Password "loop"
29 loop 6 variations from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


b. includes only the variations that directly relate to Joe Goode's 5 variations.  Password "loop"
29 loop 5 goode variations from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


c.  Shy remixed the order of almost all of the variations for a different feeling.  Password "loop"

29 loop padam first from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

2.  Gat Bhav, intersex nayika
We felt we had already explored this one sufficiently in our last study.  Here it is again.
note, we realized the this stragy doesn't acknowledge or address Cyn’s body/identity as non-India.

Password: "loop" 
  Gender morphing study take 2 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

3.  Padam/thumri
Create a critical, gender-subverting padam that uses repeating lines of poetic text and abhinaya.  Incorporate non-Indian, autobiographical material.
Password: loop 
Not Enough Padam from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.



QUESTIONS:  
1.  which elements from any of the three studies stand out to you the most?
2.  what is the main concept and/or feeling you get from each study?
3.  do you imagine any of the three studies intersecting or combinging in any way or do you feel they are three distinct approaches?

29 Subversive Gestures Choreography Assignment 3: Not Enough Padam

This is Cyn's choreographic idea 2:

Judith Butler postulates that hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity can be attributed to a melancholic incorporation by heterosexuals of early childhood homosexual attachments:

“she incorporates them as parts of herself, modes of identification, and this means that they come to survive for her as her own character traits. She incorporates them -- makes them, in a way, into her own body, her own bodily sense and comportment, and this incorporation is precisely the opposite of -- and the consequence of -- unacknowledged loss” (121).

Create a melancholic padam about a lost love, in which the beloved is an Indian woman. Start the padam in hyperfeminine Indian garb and physicality. As the lost love is increasingly acknowledged through poetic mourning, have your body language and physicality shift towards being more androgynous and incorporating the physicality of cultures outside of India.

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In addition add a Pallavi (repeating phrase) of "not enough"
( based on  earlier assignment idea from the second reading loop)
and maybe play with rhythmic and verbal variations (as in the optional portion of Choreographic Assignment 2)