Cynthia's Creative Response #4: Borders Resurfacing

For my creative response, I created a water ritual score, which could be done by an audience member or another artist.

Water Ritual Score: Confluence

(1) Gather some water from a local body of water, preferably one that has personal, geopolitical, or historical resonance.
(2) Hold your bottle of Salaach river water in your hands.  As you hold it, notice what images come up -- of natural beauty, personal memories, news images, etc.
(3) Hold your container of local water in your hands, again noticing what images come up.
(4) Pour the two vessels of waters into one container.  As you do so, imagine the histories, memories, and images of the two bodies of water mixing, meeting, blending, and submerging in each other.
(5) Use the mixed waters to nourish a plant, either indigenous to this soil or a migrant plant (transplant).
(6) Watch the plant grow and continue to care for it.


I did this score myself with water from the San Lorenzo River, which as you all know, was formerly the site for the last Chinatown in Santa Cruz, and water from the Salaach, the border between Austria and Germany in Salzburg.  

(1) Gathering Water

 (2) Salaach

I remember dipping an amber Nalgene bottle into your waters, the icicle-like sheaths of water falling fast from the dam, algae slipping between toes. Round smooth river rocks, sunlit skies, waters meandering green and blue, feet teasing, talking, fighting with each other. How close the other side of the border, how seemingly effortless the crossing, un-policed. Stones gathered in rings, charred stone. Blackened vestiges of campfires lit by refugees, small fires of hope, re-homing, unbelonging.

(3) San Lorenzo

today you were sandy, summery, overgrown with yellow flowering fennel, pink spires, the bees crazy with heat and pollen.  a redfaced man asked me for a quarter, blessed me when I said no.  the river was higher today, the stones of the riverbed all underwater.  I remembered the swollen brown winter floods, tree trunks drifting fast and dangerous, onlookers gaping from the concrete bridge.  across the way, a group of latino men lounge on blankets.  I think of the working class Chinese who lived and played on the riverbanks in the early 1900s, of who is seen as suspicious, now vs. then. 

(4) Mixing Waters
 

password: lorenzo

Water Ritual - Confluence

(5) Nourishing Life
I used the Salaach and San Lorenzo waters to nourish a small bunch of wildflowers gathered from the banks of the San Lorenzo.  They included California golden poppies, flowering fennel, and more. The water and the bouquet smell of licorice.

Intermixed Poem (as per Shy's suggestion in the comments):

Open Round 2: Embodying Ethnography

Here is a movement study that I did for "blood run":


Qing Imperial Tribute Illustrations from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password: "ethnographic"

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. What emotions, visceral responses, and/or meaning does the movement evoke for you?
2. What might you like to see as accompanying sound, if anything?*
3. What do you think about the current arc of the study?  Are there sections that you might like to reorder?  Are there moments you would like to see further fleshed out?**
4. Do you see any connections to other "blood run" material?  How might you imagine this movement living with the other material?
5. Other thoughts or suggestions?

CONTEXT
This movement was developed from some of the visual iconography of the Qing Imperial Tribute Illustrations (1751), which Emma Jinhua Teng discusses in her chapter on "Picturing Savagery" from her book, Taiwan's Imagined Geography.  According to Teng, this work, which took over a decade to complete, was an ambitious project to catalog various non-Han "barbarians" by the Qing.  Over two thirds of the illustrations were of non-Han ethnic minorities living within the empire, including Taiwanese indigenous peoples, though it also included people from other Asian countries and Europeans (163).  They are depicted in pairs of male and female like representative "specimens."  I attempted to embody the different energies, bodily positions, actions conveyed by the illustrations, and to move into and through the different characters with a somatic awareness.

*Some ideas I had for sound included (a) voicing my internal imagery -- "heavy silk," "floating feather," "daikon offering," "chin forward,", (b) visual projection or voiceover of the characters as listed in the original illustrations -- "Korean gentleman," "raw savage of Zhanghua county," (3) music that references the places these characters are from.

**I just realized that I forgot one pair of characters ("Cooked Savages of Fengshan County"), who appear to be the most "refined" of the Taiwanese indigenes represented, so I can add them in if you think it would be interesting.

Open Round 1: To Ask Pardon

This study continues my investigations of my indigenous and Han colonizer heritages, this time using a text written by PingPu (plains indigenous) people, "Declaration of the PingPu Peoples of Taiwan," which I found in Jolan Hsieh's book, Collective Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Identity-Based Movement of Plains Indigenous in Taiwan.  My other studies, "blood run" and "colonial mapping," have used my own writings and travel writings by Qing-era Chinese colonizers, respectively.

Version 1:

To Ask Pardon (Mandarin) from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.
password "pingpu"


Version 2

To Ask Pardon from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password: "pingpu"

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
(1) What intrigues or draws you in about this study politically, emotionally, aesthetically or intellectually?  What does not?
(2) How might you imagine any of this content being used in performance?  Do you want a more embodied approach, and if so, what would you suggest?  (My original vision for this text was to either find original audio of the declaration or to record the original text in Mandarin as a voice-over.  My performance would consist of attempting to translate -- eyes closed and with difficulty -- the voice-over into English, with the same messing of we/you pronouns that I do here.  Since I just got the Chinese text, I haven't had time to do a recording.)
(3) CONTEXT: This declaration was ultimately not successful, and while PingPu (plains aborigine) peoples are recognized by the UN as an indigenous tribe, they are not recognized by the government of Taiwan.  My father informs me that the PingPu search for official recognition by the government of Taiwan is very controversial and opposed by most other Taiwanese indigenous tribes.  This is because (a) the PingPu people were historically coerced into killing other indigenous tribes and (b) indigenous nations in Taiwan are given special privileges and resources (such as a certain quota of Legislative Yuan -- Taiwan's equivalent of Congress -- representation).  Since many PingPu peoples have been deeply assimilated into Han Chinese culture for generations, they (we?) don't necessarily suffer from the same systemic social disadvantages as other indigenous tribes.  Originally, alongside this declaration the PingPu people stated that they sought only recognition in name without any of these special privileges, but this has not proved to be true over time.  My dad also mentioned that a hematologist did a study in which he found that an incredibly high percentage (90%?) of Hoklo Taiwanese, which is the largest ethno-linguistic group in Taiwan and the one that my family belongs to, has aboriginal blood.  How does this information change your reception of the study, if at all?  Do you want more of this information, and if so, how could I share it in performance without being overly didactic?
(4) What do you make of my costume choices?
(5) Any other thoughts, suggestions, or useful connections to my previous studies?

Queering Abhinaya Assignment 7: Colonial Mapping

For this cycle of queering abhinaya, I was paired with Shyamala.  She helped me brainstorm ways to bring performative life to the Chinese colonial travel accounts of Taiwan from "triple-weave."


colonial mapping I (in-progress study) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "confucian"

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
1) What draws you in; what do you find compelling?  Are there parts where you're bored, confused, or otherwise not engaged?
2) I'm thinking of giving the Chinese language a greater presence in the piece.  I can do this by adding Chinese to the labels and/or possibly finding the original travelogue texts and getting a native Mandarin speaker to read them before the English translations (this will be much more work).  Are you interested in this possibility, and if so, how much Chinese would you like to be present?
3) How might you imagine this being translated into live performance?
4) What relationship do you see with "blood-run"?
5) Other thoughts?

BACKGROUND/CONTEXT:
I've been continuing to read Emma Jinhua Teng's Taiwan's Imagined Geography, which has shed some light on the nuances of the particular colonial writings excerpted in triple-weave.  According to Teng, there are two main colonial perspectives on Taiwan during this era of Qing expansionism: (a) a "rhetoric of privation" that constructs the Taiwanese aborigine as a brutish savage and (b) a "rhetoric of primitivism" that romanticizes the aborigine as a sort of "noble savage" (62).  The rhetoric of privation is deeply informed by classical Confucian texts, while the rhetoric of primitivism is very much the product of Taoist philosophy and imagery.  This study draws more on the texts written from the "rhetoric of privation" perspective.

Teng also describes the changing cartography in the Ming (the Han Chinese dynasty preceding the Qing dynasty) and Qing dynasties.  Whereas Ming maps portray China as a naturally bounded territory (Taiwan being a terra incognita far away beyond the seas), Qing maps include Taiwan as a peripheral part of China at the very edge of the world/map.  I was particularly fascinated that some maps were not drawn from a bird's eye view, but instead as if standing on the south-eastern coast of China in the Fujian province looking across the roiling waves at Taiwan.  This perspective positions Taiwan as separate from the Qing empire and informs the camera angle that I used in my study.  Many of the labels on the rocks (country of women, dogs, two-bodied people, hairy people, etc.) are from actual maps from the late Ming period (40).

I was planning to create two more approaches to mapping: one reflecting the Taoist-primitivist-bird's eye view map, and one highlighting Taiwan as part of Austronesia, but did not manage for this round.

REFERENCES
Teng, Emma Jinhua.  2004.  Taiwan's Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895.  Harvard East Asian Monographs: Cambridge.

Queering Abhinaya Assignment 6: blood-run

For this cycle of queering abhinaya, I was paired with Meena.  We identified common theoretical-artistic interests in further investigating the queer desiring female gaze in a way that positions the camera as performer and the person on camera as a viewer.  We also talked about simultaneously occupying the position of colonized and colonizer.  She expressed interest in continuing to work on her blueberry piece, while I was interested in bringing some performative aspect to the ideas in my writing, "triple-weave."

I did a little more reading from Taiwan's Imagined Geography, and I ended up making a video called "blood-run," which Meena shot for me.  Below are two versions of the video: one with text and one without.  The password for both is "aborigine".


blood-run (no text) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.


blood-run (with text) from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

After Shy's feedback, I did a quick re-edit with slightly less text -- most of it cut from the end.

blood-run (less text) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

 FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
(1) How does the two different videos affect you differently?  Do you prefer one or the other, and why?  Would you prefer less text?  If so, what would you recommend cutting, and what would you like to keep?  Other thoughts about sound?
(2) Any imagery that you find particularly striking?  Any parts where you are less interested?
(3) How might you imagine any aspect of this video and/or the original text being brought into live performance?

I'm also sharing the abstract for the paper that I'm writing about Queering Abhinaya.  I wrote it while thinking about the blueberry piece, the Maud Allan video, the Sher-Gil writings, and triple-weave when reading it.  I welcome any feedback or theory/reading recommendations that you might have.

Rerouting the Gaze: the Post Natyam Collective’s

Choreographies of Queer Affect

Cynthia Ling Lee

This performative paper looks at emergent choreographies of queer affect by analyzing selected aspects of Queering Abhinaya, an ongoing collaboration of the Post Natyam Collective.  The Post Natyam Collective is a transnational, web-based coalition of women dance artists critically and creatively interrogating South Asian dance.  Queering Abhinaya engages in praxis-based research on queering, queerness, and abhinaya through an open-ended, dialogical, and collective process mediated by internet technologies.  We examine notions of queering beyond the borders of North American identity politics to include German notions of quer (“oblique,” or going against the grain) and South Asian embodiments of gender fluidity and erotic possibility that are distinct from performing western LGBT identities.  As our primary aesthetic technique, we draw on an expanded notion of abhinaya, usually associated with Indian classical dancers interpreting love poetry through gesture and facial expression.  

The raw, in-progress studies emerging from the Queering Abhinaya process reimagine classical Indian affective techniques of embodied performance while rerouting dominant colonial, male, and heterosexual mechanisms of the gaze through dance, video, and poetic text.  They ask: how can racialized, hybrid, (post)colonial female subjects gaze back at the masculinist and Orientalizing gaze of the colonizer?  How do the colonizer and colonized live together inside one body?  How might we choreograph an emergent queer female gaze that overturns the western camera’s male gaze and the hetero-patriarchal narratives of love and desire that inform Indian abhinaya viewing conventions?  How might we perform from the position of a postcolonial, queer, desiring female viewer of color?

Cynthia's Cabaret Assignment 2: "Love and Theft"

Please watch the video before reading my contextual information below -- I'd like to know your gut response.

Love and Theft from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "otherness"

"Love and Theft," or "the detour through the other defines the self"
While the gender-subverting politics of my earlier study seemed clear enough, I was inspired to take a self-reflexive, critical look at myself and dig deeper into the politics of embodying racial others.  On one level, this exploration stems from my discomfort with appropriating the queer women-loving blues in my first study, particularly because this strand of the blues springs out of the lived experience of black American working class women in a post-Emancipation era.  It was also informed by my analysis of the German Kabarett readings, where I perceived that -- once again -- white middle-class women were empowering themselves by appropriating an exotic, racialized, and classed other, in particular through the Orientalism of their naked Salome-inspired dances.  Thus the twin legacies of blackface minstrelsy and Orientalism inform my study, which correspond to the two movement traditions (jazz and kathak) referenced in my first study.

The title of the study, "Love and Theft," is taken from Eric Lott's book, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, which looks at white working class males' appropriation of blackness.  "The detour through the other defines the self" is from psychoanalytical theorist Diana Fuss' Identification Papers.  I understand the quotation as suggesting how the very process of identification -- brimming over with desire for the other -- destabilizes identity.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. What is your reaction to the racial and gendered identity theft performed in this study by my East Asian female body?  Does it read as simple appropriation, or do you feel it has a critical edge?  If the latter, how might I deepen and clarify that critique further?
2. What parts of the study do you find compelling aesthetically, if any?
3. How might you imagine this study and my earlier one connecting?  (Initially I imagined this video would be intercut with phrases from my original study; however, once I started editing, I found this hard to do.)
4. Any other thoughts or suggestions for further development?

PS - Aditee imagined this study as a prequel to my earlier one, so I've cut the two together here.  Please answer Feedback Question 3 before watching!

love and theft_prove it on me blues from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "make-up"

Babli's Cabaret Assignment 2

Hey all, here is my assignment 2. Its a continuation of Assignment 1, and I just tagged it on. I did not re-shoot to make the location consistent.

Also, it's a super rough draft.

Cabaret Babli Assignment 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

password: vamp

Feedback questions:

1) Which parts are particularly interesting and worth developing more, on a movement, meaning or visual level?

2) What relationship do you see between part 1 and 2?

3) Where do you see the connections to the German Kabarett readings (besides the song)?

4) Any other thoughts, observations?

Cabaret Travels: Shy's Creative Assignment #2 - Inside Outside

I'm traveling so decided to play with audio instead of trying to video anything new.  So here is my last study with a different audio score to it created from Ulka's and my voices and my feet on garage band (a bit rough, but you will get the idea).

Here is the link: https://vimeo.com/72153069
Password is: Cabaret

Outside Cabaret Creative 2 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

By the way, all the text is from the written assignment 2 research.

Questions:

1.  How do you interpret the piece with this new sound-score?
2.  How might this be political in a similar or different way then my first version of the movement with the "magic to do" soundtrack? Here's the first version in case you'd like to reference it: http://www.postnatyam.blogspot.com/2013/06/cabaret-travels-creative-response-1.html
3.  Does the new sound track inspire any ideas for you as to how the mirror might be used more?
4.  If I were to work with a sound designer or composer, any suggestions on what to add/remove/enhance etc.
5.  Any other ideas or thoughts?

Cabaret Travels: Cyn's Creative Assignment #1

While reading about queer female blues singers, I became interested in the connections and differences between them and the courtesans of the subcontinent (unconventional sexuality, strong women, the prevalence of love and emotion in the lyrics -- but very different class and racial backgrounds -- anyway, I should write more about this in the future).  As creative follow-up to my research, I did a quick and dirty abhinaya/Indian dance inflected interpretation of the first few stanzas of Ma Rainey's "Prove it on Me Blues."

prove it on me blues from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password: "prove it"

Here are the lyrics in case you can't understand them:
Went out last night, had a great big fight
Everything seemed to go on wrong
I looked up, to my surprise
The gal I was with was gone.

Where she went, I don't know
I mean to follow everywhere she goes;
Folks say I'm crooked. I didn't know where she took it
I want the whole world to know.

They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me;
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
1. How is the vocabulary of abhinaya and kathak transformed through engagement with the blues song?  Do you find the transformation promising or simply out of place? Do you feel the piece is able to access the emotional layers and depth of more "traditional" abhinaya? 
2.  Do you find it problematic that I'm appropriating cultural material produced from a working class black American female experience?
3. What moments and movement vocabulary stand out to you as promising directions?  What would you like to see developed further?  What parts would you throw out?
4. Discuss the text-movement relationship.  What does the movement add to the lyrics in terms of meaning, emotion, etc?

Cabaret Travels: Shy's Creative Response 1 - Magic hastas

So following my interest in Minai's alapadma (or maybe Kathakali or Balanese dance hands) to jazz hands theory, I primarily worked on exploring alapadma developing in and out of jazz hands.  Following descriptions of Bob Fosse, I also tried emphasizing a few other isolations in eyes and even eyebrows (I had heard of Fosse using those!)    In my research one of his dancers explained how "We've Got Magic To Do" from Pippin, which is the same song I used, often is performed without the correct intention.  Thus, I also became interested in how Fosse keeps movements and emotions small and understated and likes to create a darker, often sexual tension under the surface. 

Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/68277114
password: Cabaret
Cabaret Travels 1: Magic To Do from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Feedback questions:
1.  Do you find anything interesting in terms of the movement choices?  Please point out any moments that stand out to you, or that you could imagine developing or exploring further.

2. I am interested in Bob Fosse's tactics of creating sexual tension because it relates to our previous work on courtesans and how the classical Indian dance forms that they practiced have often been de-sexualized.  It seems the opposite of the stereotype I have of the jazz dancing that evolved out of Fosse's work as an over-sexualized, unsubtle commercial form.  I was working on tapping into what I feel Fosse's original intent was here, but am not sure what purpose I might serve by doing so.  When reading about Cabaret I was very interested in the possibility for satire and political commentary but couldn't come up with a clear idea to make this study take that route.  What, if anything, could this study be accomplishing?  Does it comment on alapadma and jazz hands or anything else in any meaningful way?  If not, how could I modify it to contain some sort of subversion, satire, or political commentary? 

3.  Any other comments, ideas, and/or connections to cabaret or others' creative responses?

29 Subversive gestures, choreography response 3: padam

We did some free writing about a woman to woman love, and love between teacher and student.  Cynthia  turned hers into a Padam.

We each embodied the first and third stanza's of the padam.

Here are the videos and below is the padam.  All of the passwords are "loop"

Stanza 1: Cyn

29 padam stanza 1 Cyn from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Stanza 3: Cyn

29 padam stanza 3 cyn from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Stanza 1: Shy
29 padam stanza 1 Shy from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


Stanza 3: Shy
29 padam stanza 3 Shy from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.




PADAM: (Pallavi is "not enough"
We did not perform the greyed out part of stanza 1:


I.
Beloved, I brought you into my body
the ghost of your voice
high tinny reciting bols
your peacock proud chest
your kohl-lined eyes

I lost myself touching your feet
my body soft like a sponge
swimming in unknowing
eyes zero in: your hands moving softly
the breath opening of your chest

my hawk’s eye my vulnerable heart
you were my mirror
the precise tilt of your head
your negotiation of soft and sharp
when you moved i moved
me an imperfect copy
you opening up inside of me
but as much as i tried, i was not enough


II.
i was drawn to you as moth to flame
as a parched traveler to water
but i could not fit in your world
filled with laughing housewives and hilsa and mustard oil
i was not [bengali] enough.


III.
one day you said,
you have become very soft,
cynthia, like a bengali woman.
like you.

but i could not be you
my body would erupt with otherness
the stride too large the eyes too small
the questions unasked

and as much as i loved kathak
its hair-prickling rhythms and mathematical precision
its subtle micromovements and emotional transformation
it was still not enough for me
pishi, kathak was not enough
 
IV.
you did not know how to love me and give me my freedom
how to treasure my devotion without giving into 3rd world greed
you did not know that perhaps I would exceed your imagination
and perhaps, pishi, you were not enough


V.
i imagine us in a room together
just you and i
love an open channel between two hearts
counting bols
dancing like and unlike each other

but there is never just a room
there is always the world outside
and in the end, pishi,
our love was not enough.

Response to Choreographic assignment 2: 29 subversive gestures: sound

1.  Below is our response to the Sound part of the assignment, where we assigned sound consequences to the feminine movement gesture sequence from assignment 1.

password: loop

fem gestures n consequences sounds from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
a) How do these sounds shift your understanding of and feeling about the original phrase?
b) What do you think the consequences are?
c) Which parts do you find compelling; which parts confusing?

2. Below is the gendered script for the morphing sequence from Assignment 1.
We noticed that Babli didn't see the parallel intersecting stories of the masculine and feminine characters previously, and so we investigated this more fully here.  Our intention is to subvert conventional abhinaya practice by having the same character switch genders rather than one performer showing two different gendered characters interacting.   This script more or less follows the previous video, except we imagined some clarified transitions and removed the section with the mirror and lipstick so we could have a clearer narrative.

But first, here is the video of the gender morphing story, hopefully clarified now that we've written the script more clearly with intentions for transitions etc.  Watch before reading. We just added this on 1/12/13 so the first two comments below are referring to part 1 above, not to this. 
 password: loop
  Gender morphing study take 2 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


S/he
The mature, beautiful and rich courtesan (who is well established in her field) emerges languorously from her bath, her skin still moist as servants wave peacock fans at her.  S(he) braids her luxuriously thick, black, long, wavy tresses.

And then s(he) strokes her well groomed beard. (blurred)
and braids her hair and strokes her beard.
braids and strokes, strokes and braids
and strokes

(s)he puts on his yellow silk dhoti and assuredly wraps his princely turban around his well shaped head.

A melodious ghazal drifts in through the window and fills his body with longing. (S)he melts
and s(he) wonders “is my beloved out there, singing to me?” 

“But wait, my beloved thinks I’m a man.”
transition f to m: “I must be a man, I must be a real man.  There must be no doubt about it.”

(s)he: “I am ready!  I will go forth into the world.  Where is he? Ah! Come here my little baklava.”

transition m to f: “here you are, I forgot how beautiful you are!  I can’t look at you, I feel my whole being dissolve into a river of desire.”

s(he): “What? you would like to play a game of dice?  
(s)he: “This is my specialty!”

“What!  I lost? What will you have? An earring? I will give you a small one.”
 S(he) takes off her earring.

S(he): “Is it my turn? I’ve never played dice before. Do you shake it like this?

Transition f to m: “ooh it feels good! harder, faster!  
(s)he “I won!”

s(he): “So, maybe we should go up to my place now?”

Transition back and forth: “oh shit, he thinks I have a penis! how should I act?  What will I do?  Should I act female or male?  I don’t know what to do! etc...” fade out

Response to Choreography Assignment 1: Gender Morphing and 29 Subversive Gestures

Here are 4 little video studies 1-2 min each and some comments about things we discovered while in the process.

The passwords for all are: "loop"

1. Take a section of the existing kathak sequence and slowly morph it on a gender spectrum from ultra-femme to super butch.

Feminine sequence:
Fem phrase from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Femme to butch:
Femme to Butch from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

2. create a  series of masculine gestures (approx same number/length as part 1) in classical Kathak (If need, may also make non Kathak gestures influenced by rules of masculinity as noted by Gere on p. 351, 365 and Shah on p 4.)

Masculine sequence:
Masc sequenc from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

3. Switch back and forth between the feminine and masculine gestures in part 1 and 2. Try different transitions: once "blurring" the transition, another time making it fluid, and once emphasizing the rupture between the two characters.

Gender Morphing Sequence:
  fem to mas sequence from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. Babli noted in her theory assignment 1 response that 29 Effeminate Gestures works from a "single-mindedness" whereas 29 Subversive Gestures works from multiple/fluid positions. How do our new explorations deal with the idea of multiplicity vs. singularity of positions? Is the multiplicity or singularity confusing or effective?
2. Do these explorations deal with abhinaya as methodology or as signifier of Indian-ness, and how? 3. Compare and contrast these explorations with our previous Highways draft.
4. Note moments that you find satisfying or pleasurable. Note moments that you find confusing or boring.
5. Any other thoughts?

NOTE: CYN AND SHY WILL POST REFLECTIONS ON OUR PROCESS

Shyamala's response to August Assignment

I thought a lot about Uma's story living through 30 years with an abusive husband while I was listening over and over again to the music that Loren created from her recorded voice. I knew I wanted to explore the white fabric and was also thinking a lot about a Window Between World's workshop for domestic violence survivors called Journey Butterflies.

During the process I discovered a way to use the cloth that reminded me of Anj's Aprill 2009 study and of the sculptures of Simeen Ishaque Farhatfeel. I actually feel like I am one of her sculptures come to life: http://www.simeen.net/

After I made it, while watching it on video, I did feel the need to have one other kind of music at the end, so I added in an excerpt of a track by Deuter.

My first audience was the support group, I shared it with them yesterday and was really amazed by all their interpretations and the connections they made to their own experiences.

I look forward to hearing responses from those that have not shared her experience as well. So please comment!

PASSWORD: Uma


Silent Cry from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.



Questions:
1. What do you see and experience?
2. Are there images or movements that you think could be explored more?
3. Is there anything that distracts you from being in the experience?
4. Do the breath and/or laughter sounds I make towards the end distract from or enhance the experience? Perhaps they could be developed a bit rhythmically?
5. Do you want to hear more of Uma's actual story or do you like it more abstract?
6. Any other comments, questions, thoughts?