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In evaluating our long-distance process, we realize that there have been many outcomes of our work together. We all felt the process was extremely rewarding, despite the fact that we did not achieve an evening length show with all four of us as live performers. So that we are able to best assess what came out of it, here is a list of the many outcomes so far, along with production history and some ideas for future expansion:
I. LIVE PERFORMANCE WORKS
EVENING-LENGTH:
An evening-length work combining multimedia storytelling and contemporary Indian dance theater to embody women’s stories of being silenced, finding voice, and the importance of sisterly community. Created by the Post Natyam Collective with Carole Kim (multimedia design), Loren Nerell (music), Ravindra Deo (music), Mona Heinze (dramaturgy), and Sangita Shresthova (dance-media collaboration). The piece currently may be performed as a duet (Cynthia and Shyamala) or a trio (Cynthia, Shyamala, and Anjali).
Trio version performed at:
-National Asian American Theater Festival, Inner-City Arts, 6/24/11 and 6/26/11
Duet version performed at:
-University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI, 4/30/11
-University of Georgia, Athens GA, 4/21/11
-University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Champaign IL, 4/17/11
-Miles Memorial Playhouse, Santa Monica CA, 4/1/11-4/3/11
In-progress showings:
-Bootleg Dance Festival, Bootleg Theater, Los Angeles CA, 3/11. Cyn/Shy.
-NET Micro-Fest: LA, Atwater Village Theatre, Los Angeles CA, 12/10. Cyn/Shy.
-TeAda Works, Nate Holden Performing Arts Center, Los Angeles CA, 11/10. Cyn/Shy.
-IGNITE Festival of Contemporary Dance, Little Theatre Group, New Delhi India, 11/11/10. Cyn/Sandra.
Ideas for further expansion:
-Create and perform other duet/trio versions of the show.
-Curate a related show (maybe of shorter works) that includes some PN material and some material contributed by local collaborators.
SHORTER WORKS:
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Combining
contemporary abhinaya (emotional expression in Indian dance), intimate video
projections, poetic text, and haunting electro-Hindustani music, Ranri (widow/courtesan) evokes the story
of Rasulanbai, a child widow from the 1960s who resisted abuse by her in-laws
by escaping to become a courtesan. Sensual, poignant, and filled with unexpected twists of
expectation, the courtesan’s world is unexpectedly revealed as a place of
female power and queer female-female love. Rasulanbai’s story was taken from Oldenburg’s fieldwork on
the last remaining courtesan communities of Lucknow, India. Lucknow, famous for its singing and
dancing courtesans, was one of the historical centers of North Indian classical
music and kathak dance. Currently a duet by Cynthia and Shyamala, earlier versions of the piece include a solo by Shyamala, a solo by Cynthia, and a duet by Cynthia and Sandra.
Performed in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister and at:
-Re-tracing Histories, Re-dancing the Past, Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica CA, 2/11. Cyn solo.
-Post Natyam Unveiled, Khmer Arts Salon Series, Khmer Arts Academy, Long Beach CA, 5/10. Shy solo.
-IGNITE Festival of Contemporary Dance, Little Theatre Group, New Delhi India, 11/11/10. Cyn/Sandra duet.
-DISHA, Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Kolkata India, 8/10. Shy solo.
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improvised choreography and performance: Cynthia Ling Lee
inspired by Simone Forti’s improvisation structures
traditional kathak material learned from Bandana Sen
In this semi-autobiographical solo performance, a talking dancer negotiates a really
long piece of cloth while humorously commenting on the conflicts she experienced
as a Taiwanese-American feminist attempting to learn classical kathak in
Calcutta.
The cloth transforms
from a braid of long hair, to the walls of her dance guru’s house, to the holy river
Yamuna, to a dupatta tied across her chest, twisting and tripping her as she
butts up against the overwhelming love and expectations of her guru and
tradition. Faced with the
requirement to perform gender – to walk like Radha – in ways that she cannot
quite grasp or agree with, she finds herself torn between competing impulses to
act as obedient disciple, earnest anthropologist, and stubborn feminist.
Performed in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister and at Re-tracing Histories, Re-dancing the Past, Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica CA, 2/11/11-2/12/11.
My Silent Cry/The Thorn, the Leaf, and the Butterfly: Based on the story of a domestic violence survivor, The Thorn, The Leaf, and the Butterfly takes
a decidedly contemporary look at the tradition of abhinaya (emotional
expression in Indian dance). Gripping, visceral movement images of
choking, struggle, and freedom combine with live improvised poetry
inspired by the 18th century Indian poet, Ksettraya.
ADD PERFORMANCE HISTORY
Idea for further expansion: Tour with Uma to women’s shelters.
Lost and Found
Inspired
by Simone Forti’s method of Logomotion (improvised talking while
dancing), in this piece, a woman reclaims her voice. She revisits the
innocent optimism of her childhood and takes us on a journey of loss and
rediscovery.
Performed in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister.
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Oriental dolls, dominatrix gurus, helpless victims, and
mail-order brides duke it out in a satirical world where nothing is sacred and
identities/costumes can be changed at the drop of a hat. Mixed Bag collides contemporary Indian
dance with political performance art, as the performers explode sexualized, exotified
stereotypes of women. Their tools?
Black leather, audience lap
dances, bad accents, plastic mannikins, classical Indian rhythms, and an extra-large
dose of belly laughter.
Performed in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister and as part of the following lec-dems:
-“Gender, Sexuality, and Performance.” Women’s Studies class. UW-Madison, Madison WI, 4/11.
-Dance Appreciation Class. U. Georgia, Athens GA, 4/11.
In a poetic layering of live camera feed, projected text, pre-recorded video, and live bodies, Marks creates a mysterious landscape in which women’s bodies are written upon; where labels are negotiated, toyed with, and evaded. Developed by Carole Kim and inspired by s k i n.
Performed in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister.
Idea for future expansion: Create a durational performance installation of Marks, perhaps with audience participation.
This improvisational duet enacts an “adda” or conversation between two dancers with hybrid histories, the real and imagined ancestors of their dance memories, a guardian, and a curious friend. Score by Carol McDowell; performance by Cynthia Ling Lee and Shyamala Moorty.
Performed in Trace, Instruments of Risk Series, Sea and Space Explorations Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 11/09.
This solo incorporates inverted Bharata Natyam, rhythm, and voice to express the emotional crisis of a young South Asian woman struggling to untangle herself from cultural and familial webs. Created and performed by Shyamala Moorty.
Performed as part of Carrie’s Web and at:
-Trace, Instruments of Risk Series, Sea and Space Explorations Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 11/09.
-Moving Beyond Form, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia PA, 2/10.
II. DANCE FOR CAMERA
A hand tracing patterns in the sand, poetic text, and haunting music evoke the story of Rasulanbai, a child widow from the 1960s who resisted abuse by her in-laws by escaping to become a courtesan. Rasulanbai’s story was taken from Oldenberg’s fieldwork on the last remaining courtesan communities of Lucknow, India. By Cynthia Ling Lee.
Screened as part of Ranri and SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister.
Idea for future expansion: Make into a stand-alone dance video.
Cyber Chat Series
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Created by Anjali, Sandra, Cynthia, and Shyamala in collaboration with Sangita Shresthova, this series of dance-for-camera shorts takes inspiration from Post Natyam’s extensive use of SKYPE to connect administratively, creatively, and as friends across distance.
An artistic version of the Post Natyam Collective’s administrative meetings, which are held via SKYPE conference call - complete with dropped calls, baby cries and kathak rhythms.
Screened in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister and at:
-NET Micro-Fest: LA, Atwater Village Theatre, Los Angeles CA, 12/10
-IGNITE Festival of Contemporary Dance, Little Theatre Group, New Delhi India, 11/11/10
Cyber Chat 1.0: An earlier version of Cyber Chat 1.1 that was edited as a loop of solos, duets, and a quartet. video coming... (duet version of Shy and Cyn, solo version of Anj as examples)
Screened at:
-Trace, Instruments of Risk Series, Sea and Space Explorations Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 11/09.
-home is where, Natya/STEM, Bangalore India, 12/09
Rhythmic syllables give rise to English as four classical dancers express sisterly sympathy for each other’s shared difficulties via SKYPE. Screened in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister.
Idea for future expansion: Create more Cyber-Chats to add to the series, including a Cyber-Chat PN Manifesto.
This dance-for-camera work ponders on the conflicted image of India's dancer-courtesan through the literal and imagined inscription of post-colonial theory on her eroticized and yet vulnerable body. By Sangita Shresthova and Cynthia Ling Lee.
Screened as a layer of Marks in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister and as a stand-alone work at:
-Re-tracing Histories, Re-dancing the Past, Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica CA, 2/11/11-2/12/11.
-TOO MUCH! Queer Marathon, Dance Mission, San Francisco CA, 1/23/11
-IGNITE Festival of Contemporary Dance, Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi India, 11/11/10
Snow and Leather (NAME?)
by Sandra Chatterjee
ADD DESCRIPTION and ideas for future expansion, if any
Anjali Tata’s dance-for-camera short is composed of close-ups on the hands (caressing animal-like choking wrist/neck suddenly wild, clean us off, dirty girl). It has been screened as a stand-alone piece, been projected on a live dancer in Ranri, and been integrated into performance as a live feed in the Thorn, the Leaf, and the Butterfly:
Screened at:
-Trace, Instruments of Risk Series, Sea and Space Explorations Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 11/09. Black and white video installation with poem stenciled in graphite and paint.
Idea for future expansion: Create a video installation of various recordings of live feeds.
III. ART INSTALLATION
How do our bodies remember, dismember, and reshape the traces of the past? Trace grapples with a fragmented South Asian aesthetic legacy through a contemporary lens, combining live performance, interactive installation, video, and poetic documentation. By Cynthia and Shyamala, with long-distance contributions from Sandra and Anjali and performances by local collaborators. Includes traces from Post Natyam’s transnational creative project.
Performed at Instruments of Risk Series, Sea and Space Explorations Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 11/09.
Idea for future expansion: Create other versions of Trace in different locales, eg by Sandra with Johanna in Munich.
IV. ARTBOOK
Harassing the Sanskrit Heroine
This book interrogates the North Indian light classical song form of thumri, revealing the form's historical layers, erasures, and troubled eroticism by combining poetic text and photographic image. By Cynthia Ling Lee with photography by Shyamala Moorty.
Exhibited at Trace, Instruments of Risk Series, Sea and Space Explorations Gallery, Los Angeles CA, 11/09.
V. SOCIAL/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Post Natyam's blog, is an online creative workspace for the collective. It also serves to document our process and invites outside collaborators and the wider public to dialogue about our work-in-process. The work shown here is raw, the questions about process are being grappled with constantly, and we give each other feedback while inviting the public to do so as well.
VI. SCHOLARSHIP/EDUCATION
ARTICLE
"Blogging Choreography: Collective Long-Distance Choreographic Practice." Unpublished article by Cynthia Ling Lee, Sandra Chatterjee, Shyamala Moorty, and Anjali Tata. 2010.
This paper discusses the unconventional choreographic methodology the Post Natyam Collective has developed to collaborate on South Asian aesthetic forms and concepts across geographical distance. Our long-distance collaboration uses internet technology to traverse multiple time-zones, disciplines, cultural contexts, geographic locales, and movement forms. We have created a blog to facilitate this process among the collective members, as well as to enable dialogue about our process, our in-progress work, and the issues underpinning our work in the public sphere. The paper intersperses selected excerpts of thae blog with italicized theoretical commentary, reflection, and contextualization.
Idea for future expansion: Rewrite the paper and submit to journals.
TALKS/LECTURE-DEMONSTRATIONS
“SUNOH! Tell me, Sister: Feminist Approaches, Collective Choreography and Long Distance Collaboration.”
In collaboration with her colleagues from the Post Natyam Collective, Sandra Chatterjee
has been working on the project Sunoh! Tell Me, Sister. The choreographic project was developed via a long-distance process by choreographers who are geographically dispersed and brings together their different aesthetic approaches as well as their distinct feminist approaches. Starting from the artistic legacy of South Asian courtesans, the contemporary South Asian dance and video project also brings together autobiographical narration and outcomes of activist work with survivors of domestic violence. This paper will reflect the negotiation of those different feminist approaches, historical, autobiographical,
and community activist, as the collective members strive to bring them together in one choreographic project. Ppresented by Sandra at Civilmedia 11: Community Media For Social Change: Low Threshold - High Impact, Salzburg, 14 March 2011.
“Gender, Sexuality, and Performance: The Female Body in South Asian Performance.”
A lec-dem tracing gender and sensuality in SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister, combining lecture on courtesan history with teaching abhinaya (hidden tamarind) and demonstration of Mixed Bag.
Presented by Cynthia and Shyamala at Christine Garlough’s women’s studies class. UW-Madison, Madison WI, 4/11.
Idea for future expansion: Create an online scholarly conference on courtesans or other issues relevant to SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister or PN in general.
“Cliches, the Internet, and Contemporary Indian Dance?”
A lec-dem giving a general introduction to Post Natyam and SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister. Included lecture, screening Cyber Chat 1, teaching BN basics, and performing Mixed Bag.
Presented by Cynthia and Shyamala for dance appreciation classes. U. Georgia, Athens GA, 4/11.
„Blogging Choreography: Long-Distance Choreographie und das künstlerische Vermächtnis indischer Kurtisanentraditionen.”
In Zusammenarbeit mit ihren Kolleginnen von der Post Natyam Collective arbeitet Sandra Chatterjee im Moment an einem Projekt mit dem Titel Sunoh! Tell Me, Sister, welches sich im südasiatischen Tanz mit der Hinterlassenschaft einer Kurtisanentradition auseinandersetzt. Das Projekt wird in einem long-distance-Prozess entwickelt, durch welchen sich die Choreografinnen, die sich in verschiedenen Ländern befinden, einbringen können. Sandra Chatterjee führt derzeit in Salzburg ihre Forschungstätigkeit am Projekt weiter und wird in ihrem Vortrag vor allem auf die “long-distance” choreographische Arbeitsweise des Kollektivs eingehen.
Contemporary Artist Talk by Sandra given at Interuniversitärer Schwerpunkt Wissenschaft und Kunst (Paris-Lodron Universität und Universität Mozarteum), Contemporary arts & cultural production. 15.12.2010; Atelier, Wissenschaft und Kunst.
„Rasa Re-routed: Choreographische Übersetzung und das künstlerische Vermächtnis indischer Kurtisanentraditionen.” Getanzte (Liebes)Lieder aus dem Repertoire der Kurtisanentraditionen sind aktiver Teil der klassischen und populären indischen Tänze. Von Bharatanatyam bis Bollywood zirkulieren sie, in re-interpretierten Versionen, in- und außerhalb des Subkontinents. Der Vortrag, angelehnt an ein konkretes choreographisches Projekt, widmet sich einer kritischen Betrachtung der (re-interpretierten) künstlerischen Vermächtnisse im Kontext eines transnationalen, zeitgenössischen, choreographischen Prozesses.
Given by Sandra as part of the Scientist in Residence program. 25. November 2010; Gendup, Zentrum für Gender Studies und Frauenförderung, Universität Salzburg
"Post Natyam Unveiled"
This lec-dem articulated Post Natyam’s long-distance collaborative process through words and video. It was bracketed by performance of choreographic works reflective of our individual choreography and smaller scale local collaborations.
Presented by Cynthia and Shyamala as part of the Khmer Arts Salon Series. Khmer Arts Academy, Long Beach CA, 5/22/10.
Idea for future expansion: Create a low tech, lec-dem version of SUNOH suitable for academic conferences.
MASTER CLASSES
Contemporary Indian Dance
This workshop combined a yoga-based release warm-up with kathak fundamentals and demo of a phrase from Mixed Bag.
Co-taught by Cynthia and Shyamala for:
-Beginning Modern, U. Illinois, 4/11
-Intermediate/Advanced Modern, U. Illinois, 4/11
-Contemporary Dance III, U. Georgia, 4/11
Idea for future expansion: Document more fully and add to curriculum.
