LACMA Lucknow Exhibit and Oldenberg Talk

This Saturday, Shyamala and I went to the LA County Museum of Art to go see a new exhibition, "India's Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow," and to hear a lecture by Veena Oldenberg entitled "The Rise and Fall of Courtly Lucknow: A Courtesan's Perspective."  The array of visual, historical, and ethnographic information sparked a lot of creative thoughts about our project, SUNOH!  Tell Me, Sister for me.  I was also completely tantalized as a Lucknow-trained kathak dancer interested in critical historicization of my form.

Here are some of my thoughts inspired by the exhibition and lecture.

HYBRIDITY

I have known, for a long time, that kathak is fundamentally a syncretic form, being historically born out of the melding between secular and sacred contexts, between Hindu and Muslim cultures.  My knowledge of this fact allows me to continue feeling at home in the form when I run into diasporic identity politics (ie, "Why do you dance kathak when you're not Indian?").  Even knowing this, the hybridity of courtly Lucknow (aesthetic, racial, content-wise) as evidenced in this exhibition was still a huge eye-opener.  It made me think about how Post Natyam negotiates hybridity in so many ways, with some of our members being mixed race, with how we draw on multiple dance styles and artistic disciplines. 

Here are some illustrative examples from the exhibition:

In the watercolor below, Christ (Jesus) as a Child in the Temple by Mir Kalan Khan, we see Christian subject matter rendered in an Indo-Islamic miniature painting style:

In the following watercolor, Venus by Mihr Chand, we see standard European subject matter and techniques of modeling the human form, but decoratively framed in a way reminiscent of miniatures.

 In Mir Kalan Khan's Lovers in a Landscape, we see Lucknow's racial diversity: the two lovers appear to be of Persian ancestry, whereas the woman musician has more Indian features.

In "European Woman Seated on a Terrace Smoking a Water-Pipe," we see a European woman with a Venetian water pipe again rendered in miniature fashion.  However, the 2D graphic and decorative approach of the miniature coexists with some use of linear perspective (in the chair), a European artistic technique.  This aesthetic conjunction, which can be harmonious or create an interesting visual friction, can be seen in many of the works in the exhibition.

 And here in "Wajid Ali As A Prince," we see the last ruler of Lucknow, credited for much of the development of kathak.  Notice how he is dressed in Lucknowi style clothing but surrounded by European furniture and paintings.

Elsewhere in the exhibit were Euro-style oil painting portraits of Lucknow rulers. 

FRAMES

Given all the video being used in SUNOH, we've been talking about exploding the idea of the screen in our performance.  As one participant in a technology workshop at the recent NET MicroFest said, "You would never make one actor enormous and stick him against the back wall for the whole show.  Why would you do that with a video projection?"  The frequent use of framing in miniature paintings - surrounding the scene by highly decorative borders - suggests a possible way to rethink screens.  It also offers food for thought regarding the visual art exhibit that we've been thinking about doing in conjunction with our live performance, which could involve traces from our own process and/or material from the SAN women.

Here's an example (I like its asymmetry):  

It occurs to me that rather than having ornamental flowers as the frame, we could use a pattern of mudras in silhouette to create a 2D graphical pattern as frame for the video inside, which would have more depth and dimensionality, both visually and content-wise.  Other frames could include handwritten choreography or research notes.

We could also use architecture (a latticed window, an archway, a doorway) as a frame.  I remember Shyamala used her stairwell as a frame in her July 2010 assignment.

 

Imagine how a frame could open onto a hidden, intimate, or illicit scene of love-making:

Or there could even be an actual curtain to physically lift up (here the very old photo underneath is light-sensitive, thus the velvet cover to protect it):

Here's a higher tech example showing how one might use frames to break up and scale down video:

Also consider how frames are already used in the split screen Skype call format:

COSTUMES IN LAYERS

Much of the clothing in the paintings from that era involved multiple layers, some of them transparent.  It occurs to me that we could use this technique to layer our identities, much as Sandra does in her projection video, where a hooded sweatshirt, boots, wide pants, and dupatta are layered in an understated cultural collision.  I was chatting with Sangita on the phone the other day about techniques of making our own voices more visible in our performance work, so that we don't "become" the courtesan but instead remain ourselves trying to understand, physically embody, and imagine her, and thus understand her impact on our (dancing) bodies.  Costumes could be a tool for achieving this.  It could also be a way to indicate, mix up, or layer gender, regional dance style, geographical location, and historical time.

   

COEXISTENCE OF DIFFERENT WORLDS

It is a big challenge to figure out how to relate, thread together, and overlap our different solo material into cohesive ensemble material.  The following image reminded me that it can occasionally be okay to have multiple scenes exist onstage at the same time (I'm thinking Cunningham, Pina Bausch), without forcing them into a single visual narrative or story.

HOMOEROTICISM:
This image struck me as blatantly homoerotic: the two women gaze magnetically at each other, buttocks and hips angled towards each other, while one of them kills a snake (likely a phallic symbol?).

During Veena Oldenberg's lecture, she mentioned that 8 out of the 35 courtesans she met had other women as their primary love partners.  She also showed us a beautiful silver box, which the tawaifs had given her as a gift, whose cover had a painting of two women with their arms intimately twined around each other.  She also mentioned a volume of poetry detailing erotic women-women love that was published during the nawabi period in the rekhti genre, written in a unique women's language.  (See Carla Petievich for more on rekhti.)

"You idiot.  My partner has been sitting next to me all of these days."  

LECTURE NOTES

In a strange connection to our own transnational status, the court during this era was nomadic, a mobile camp.  The birth of Nawabi Lucknow - the period when the city's artistic, decorative, and architectural arts flourished - started after precisely after the alliance of the Nawab of Awadh, the Nawab of Bengal, and the Mughal emperor was defeated by the East India Company in 1764.  The British forbade the Lucknow court to employ military or spend money on anything political; yet Lucknow's revenue was more than twice as much as the entire GDP of the UK at the time, so there was plenty of money to spend on the arts.  Lucknow's reputation as debauched and effete was thus in large part produced by this political situation.  Oldenberg sees the courtesans as being the only people who showed any defiance, resistance, or spunk.  They were in the highest income bracket in the 1862 tax register, owning palaces, orchards, tombs; they helped fund the resistance against the British and would covertly spy by performing at the court of the British Resident, getting him drunk, asking the enemy's next move, and then reporting back; the only political letters of resistance in the archives were written by them.  Also, Wajid Ali Shah's queen, Begum Hazrat Mahal, was his courtesan before she became his queen.  She took up arms herself during the resistance.

Some delightful quotations: 

"I met them in the archives."  

On the reasons to wear a burqa in public: "We sell our wares; we don't want to give them out for free."  

On being characterized as selling their bodies for money: "So, you don't sell your body...you sell your mind."

Of Wajid Ali Shah: "This is my left nipple guy."

Reference: "Beauties of Lucknow" - black and white photography of courtesans.

My Silent Cry: 2 versions

Since first making a study out of Uma's story as a survivor of domestic violence, I have had the opportunity to perform it and grow it a few times. Here are two versions...

1. Here's the most recent version I just performed at the NET Microfest.
I'm working on the right balance of how much words to use and developing the movement more with Cynthia. Got a lot of great responses, including some interesting thoughts about the use of the breath and mouth under the fabric which I'd like to explore more...

My Silent Cry (NET Microfest) from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

2. Previously, I premiered it at the South Asian Network's Annual Banquet with Uma telling her story live! It was a very powerful experience to be a part of her sharing her story for the first time in public...

"My Silent Cry" from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

NET MicroFest

Here are the latest versions of some of our work-in-progress material, as performed at the NET MicroFest on Dec 5.

I choreographed my live dance in relation to Sandra's video, which originally integrated abhinaya and theory on exoticism.


password "NET"
Here is the latest experiment with expanding Tell Me, Sister.  I post this only for the sake of dialogue, for the footage taken this day stays zoomed out the whole time, which unfortunately means that you can't see any of the video on my back or the nuances of abhinaya, and thus lose the majority of the intent of the work.  However, several things may be useful to watch.  If you watch the end starting at 9:30, you'll get a sense of the transition from the sitting abhinaya to skin. Currently I don't think this works, as it seems to visually distract from my performance rather than undermining the courtesan by inscribing her with societal discourse or making the audience aware of their gaze upon her.  Also under debate is how I transition from widow to courtesan, which not everyone is finding believable.  To see this transition as currently stands, watch from 5:50.


At the moment I feel this solo is no longer holding together as a cohesive whole -- like it's trying to accomplish too much and exploding at the seams.  At this moment I'd like to let it explode, fragment, be blown apart and freed from the narrative structure it's currently encased in to see what might happen.  Incidentally, a friend who's experienced abuse compared the experience to being exploded apart -- fragmented -- and that as you try to put yourself together, you never quite achieve the same "wholeness" as before.  So too the histories of the courtesan are fragmented, incomplete, and irrecoverable.  I wonder if we can reflect this compositionally.


Also, here are notes I took based on the feedback session we had after the Sunday show, with respondents Carole Kim (who focuses on live video performance and performance-based video installation) and Carol McDowell (dancer, improviser, interdisciplinary artist).   

brainstorm: some imagined courtesan scenes

While in Delhi together to perform for the IGNITE festival, Sandra and I had some late night addas where we brainstormed ideas for some scenes to add to our show. Here are some of them:  

BEHIND THE SCENES (a women only space): What happens when the courtesans aren't performing? Stage a behind-the-scenes conversation between the courtesans with some fun characters - a courtesan who actually doesn’t like sex, a nymphomaniac, a lesbian couple. Textually, this scene could incorporate women’s songs (there may be material in The Prostitute in 19th Cent. Bengal or the Oldenberg article). The graphic padam with the "aunt" who turns out to be Muvva Gopala from When God is a Customer might work too (see below). As for staging ideas: are we all offstage and you just hear us? Is it on video because we need 4 characters, but not all of us will be able to perform together live? Do we do another iteration of the SKYPE call but dressed up and in character (the lesbian couple could be in the same frame...)?  

LEARNING THE TRADE: What if we have a scene with a senior courtesan teaching a greenhorn (who’s really a lesbian)? The greenhorn can’t do it initially; the senior courtesan gives up; the lesbian courtesan volunteers to try to teach her, and suddenly it becomes very viscerally erotic.  

CYBER COURTESAN PHONE CENTER: One of us would sit at a desk at the computer, doing abhinaya into the webcam. The character would be very made up from torso up (perhaps it appears as if you’re naked?), but from the waist down, very frumpy in sweatpants. We see a live feed of the courtesan’s face doing abhinaya on the back wall. At the same time we see the real live body, and the lower body is doing something very mundane and non-sexual, like turning the pages of a newspaper with one's toes. We could have a series where the rest of us are doing chores, phone calls come in (we ask, "Hey, who’s made up?"), and then each goes to a different computer and our image pops up on the back wall. See Kate Rigg’s “Phone Sex” music as reference.

A Young Woman to a Friend (Ksetrayya)

Those women, they deceived me.

They told me he was a woman,

and now my heart is troubled

by what he did.

First I thought

she was my aunt and uncle's daughter,

so I bow to her, and she blesses me:

"You'll get married soon,

don't be bashful.  I will bring you

the man of your heart."

"Those firm little breasts of yours

will soon

grow round and full," she says.

And she fondles them

and scratches them

with the edge of her nail.

"Come eat with me," she says,

as she holds me close

and feeds me as at a wedding.

Those women, they told me he was a woman!

Then she announces:

"My husband is not in town.

Come home with me."

So I go and sleep in her bed.

After a while she says,

"I'm bored.  Let's play

a kissing game, shall we?

Too bad we're both women."

Then, as she sees me falling asleep,

off my guard,

she tries some

strange things on me.

Those women, they told me he was a woman!

She says, "I can't sleep.

Let's do what men do."

Thinking 'she' was a woman,

I get on top of him.

Then he doesn't let go:

he holds me so tight

he loses himself in me.

Wicked as ever, he declares:

"I am your Muvva Gopala!"

And he touches me expertly

and makes love to me.

Those women, they told me he was a woman!

-Ksettraya (Telugu), from When God is a Customer

Uma's padam, or Rewriting Ksettraya

In August 2010, Shyamala first posted her research with AWAZ, the South Asian Network's support group for survivors of domestic violence.  In her blog posting she detailed her interview with Uma who had spent over 30 years in an abusive marriage.  One poignant episode describes Uma's refusal to tell her husband that she loves him when he comes home, drunk, and demands that she profess her love.  This episode sparked the idea of rewriting a Ksettraya padam whose pallavi (refrain) is "I didn't say a word," capitalizing on the ambiguity of a woman's silence, which can be both passivity and resistance.  Here is a raw first attempt at the rewrite:

A Woman to Her Friend

Friend, I didn’t say a word.

It would be a shame

if others were to hear.

He came with a glisten of mascara

still on his lips.

When I said it hurt me,

he made a scene.

When my friends asked me

what had happened,

I laughed it off,

covered it up.

I didn’t say a word

He wasn’t afraid to come home

with the red lac from her feet

on his forehead.

Still, he had the nerve

to ask for a hug.

I was furious

but, hiding it,

I protested gently.

I said it wasn’t right.

He raised his voice and,

fearing where it might lead,

I gave in.

As in the saying

about the thorn and the banana leaf,

it’s always the leaf that gets torn.

I didn’t say a word

Friend, he came here

with her betel juice

staining his neck

breath sweet with whiskey heaviness

and asked me for a kiss.

Tell me how much you love me,

he said, smiling uncontrollably,

tell me how much.

I didn’t say a word.

Friend, he made love to me

the same as ever,

the thorn carelessly shredding the leaf,

the monsoon rain battering the earth.

And as I lay there unmoving,

the peacocks shrieking wildly

I didn’t say a word

-Ksetrayya, rewritten by Cynthia Ling Lee

Here is the original padam as reference:

A Woman to Her Friend

Friend, I didn’t say a word.
It would be a shame
if others were to hear.

He came with a glisten of mascara
still on his lips.
When I said it hurt me,
he made a scene.

When my friends asked me
what had happened,
I laughed it off,
covered it up.


I didn’t say a word


He wasn’t afraid to come home
with the red lac from her feet
on his forehead.
Still, he had the nerve
to ask for a hug.

I was furious
but, hiding it,
I protested gently.
I said it wasn’t right.
He raised his voice and,
fearing where it might lead,
I gave in.

As in the saying
about the thorn and the banana leaf,
it’s always the leaf that gets torn. 


I didn’t say a word

Friend, he came here
with her betel juice
staining his neck
yet asked me for a kiss.
It seemed improper
to hurt a man
who had come to me.

But when he made love to me
as well as ever,
I felt obliged, and 


I didn’t say a word


-Ksetrayya, from When God is a Customer, eds. and trans. A.K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao, and David Schulman.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:

(1) How might you imagine performing or otherwise staging this poem?

(2) How do you see this poem in relation to My Silent Cry, the choreography Shyamala created based on Uma's story?  Would it layer on top?  Immediately precede or follow the dance?  Go somewhere else altogether in the show, yet link to the story?

(3) Any feedback on the writing?

(4) Mythili Prakash once performed Maya Angelou's "Phenomenal Woman" in classical Bharatanatyam abhinaya, with the American poem translated into a South Indian language and sung Carnatic style.  I am  curious whether a similar strategy of "reverse" or "hidden" translation might be interesting here.  Thoughts? 

A duet for one: dancing with virtual Sandra

Recently Sandra developed a new solo with video projection that was filmed outdoors in Munich.  The video projection intercuts footage of her dancing with academic theory about exoticism.  Sandra's solo was performed at the IGNITE! contemporary dance festival in Delhi and served as the opening section of "Tell Me, Sister" (see projection solo in progress), which I performed instead of Shyamala.

While in Delhi, Sandra and I discussed that it might be interesting to repeat her projection material throughout the course of the larger show, but with different performers doing the live dance.  So for this study I choreographed myself in relation to her, drawing on her original movement material.  For this version, I envision that rather than having the theory present, it might be nice for the sections of writing to be replaced by a simple white background.

password: "bier tent"

video: Sandra Chatterjee
live dance: Cynthia Ling Lee
direction: Shyamala Moorty

Feedback Questions:

(1) What do you see as being the relationship between myself and Sandra's projection?  How does the relationship evolve?

(2) How do you imagine that this version colors, shifts, and changes Sandra's original version?

(3) How do you think this material relates to other material from our process and to the larger show?

(4) What kind of sound/music do you think would support the piece?

(5) Is this compelling enough material to keep working on?  Suggestions for further development?

Tawaif, Interrupted, or, Theorizing the Courtesan

Since learning to perform "Tell Me, Sister," the story of the child widow who is abused by her in-laws and empowers herself by becoming a courtesan, I have been thinking about the piece's ending.  I would like to avoid romanticizing the figure of the courtesan as some sort of "proto-feminist."  Rather, I would like to recognize that she exercised her agency and power within the confines of a patriarchal structure.  I also feel that it is ultimately impossible as a contemporary woman and classically trained dancer to understand and grasp the historical courtesan in any sort of "pure" way, unmediated by society's myriad perceptions of her.

Thus I've been toying with the idea of undermining the courtesan at the height of her power by having Chakravarty's theory on how the courtesan is regarded in Indian cultural consciousness typed upon my face as I do sitting abhinaya.  This would occur during what was formerly the ending of Tell Me, Sister.  The image was inspired by one of the images from my artbook, Harassing the Sanskrit Heroine :

Shyamala and I tried this in rehearsal, and at first it seemed potentially interesting:

password "shyamalabai"

In addition, Sangita and I recently collaborated on reworking my dance-for-camera study, "skin," which uses the same theoretical text.  After reshooting it, Sangita did a beautiful job editing the footage into mysterious, organic imagery where Sumita Chakravarty's academic theory slips and melts on the not-quite-recognizable landscape of the female body.

I thought it might be interesting to transition from typing the theory on my face to a projection of "skin" that I would somehow interact with live.  However, we ran into some technical problems -- the two projections interrupt each other when the "skin" projection fills the back wall (which is why they are side by side here, rather than fading from one to another).  In addition, the typing on my face spills over to the back wall in a way I find distracting.  Here is rehearsal footage of this experiment:

password: "discursive"

Feedback Questions:
(1) Based on this footage, I'm thinking I may scrap the typing on my face altogether and instead transition straight from the sitting abhinaya into interacting with the projection on the back wall.  Do you think this is a good idea?
(2) Which movements are most effective with the video projection?  (I was just improvising ad hoc here.)
(3) What do you see as being the relationship between myself and the projection?
(4) How long do you stay interested in myself interacting with the projection?  Would you like to see less or more?
(5) Other thoughts/suggestions?

"skin" - revised version

Here is a new and improved version of skin, which Sangita reshot and edited for me.  It had its first screening at gati's IGNITE contemporary dance festival!



skin (2010)
Concept, Choreography, Performance: Cynthia Lee
Director Photography/Editing: Sangita Shresthova
Text: Sumita Chakravarty's National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, 1947-1987
Music Composition: Loren Nerell
Production Support: Carol McDowell


FEEDBACK QUESTIONS:
(1) How does the piece make you feel -- viscerally, emotionally, intellectually?
(2) Any thoughts about how to integrate into the live performance?
(3) Other thoughts?

Tell Me, Sister! Projection November 2010 (Babli)

In preparation for our presentation during IGNITE! Festival in New Delhi, I revisited the idea of exotification. I also drew on one of Anjali's early assignments working with a Varnam
Here is a link to the assignment itself

My intention was basically to create a dialogue between engaging with abhinaya and thoughts around "the exotic" which come from my contemporary reality of encountering an exotifying gaze while presenting classical dance on the (diasporic) stage.

These are a few ideas I played with for a projection. During IGNITE, this was projected onto the back wall from a projector placed in the aisle. A stark black shadow was created by my body moving with the projection. However since I was dressed in white, the projected image- while disrupted by my body- was still visible (distorted) on my white costume.

Password: tell me babli

Tell Me Sister Projection Babli, November 2010 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Here are the two versions without the text that I worked with:

tell me sister babli intro 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

password: tell me babli 2

Tell Me, Sister, Babli intro draft 1 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

password: tell me babli 1

October 2010 Creative Assignment: Adda with the Ancestors, Revisited

This multi-part creative assignment adapts improvisational structures used during the development of Carol McDowell’s score, Adda with the Ancestors, as a springboard to investigate our personal relationship to the figure of the courtesan and survivors of violence.  

Ideally these tasks would be performed in pairs over Skype so that the figure of the “witness” can be involved.  However, you may do the tasks either solo with an imagined witness or in pairs (self-organize if you’d like to pursue this option).  Please post “traces” of your investigations along with feedback questions by Oct 29, 2010.

TASK 1: AUTHENTIC MOVEMENT MEMORIES

Free-write on the three following prompts.  Take a moment to let the memory/image settle into your embodied imagination before putting pen to page.  Write continuously without correcting grammar or otherwise self-censoring for four minutes per prompt.

·      1. What is your most vivid abhinaya memory?  Where in your body do you feel it?  Can you do the dance now?  Can you do a finger dance to it?  Does it have a name?  Who is the ancestor of this dance? 

·      2. What is your most sensual/erotic dancing memory? Where in your body do you feel it?  Can you do the dance now?  Can you do a finger dance to it?  Does it have a name?  Who is the ancestor of this dance?

·      3. What is a dance you imagine a courtesan would have done?  (Be specific about what kind of courtesan.) Where in your body do you feel it?  Can you do the dance now?  Can you do a finger dance to it?  Does it have a name?  Who is the ancestor of this dance?


4. What is your most visceral physical memory of abuse?  Where in your body do you feel it?  Can you do a dance of this memory?  Does this dance have a name?  Who is the ancestor of this dance?

Choose a writing and take it into the space (or towards the webcam).  If working solo, imagine who the ideal witness/spirit guardian/rasika for this dance might be.  Setting the timer for five minutes, close your eyes and remember the dance in your body.  If you are the witness, watch with loving attentiveness and without judgment.  You may choose to videotape your movement if working solo.

If working with a live partner, the witness now physically “plays back” what she remembers of the dance. 

Now, add to your existing writing by writing about your physical memory of the dance.  Do you remember specific movement, phrasing, choreography, structure, detail, vocabulary, text, imagery, or emotions? 

If working with a live partner, write on her version of your dance as well.  If working solo, you may now wish to watch the video, then write on the video version of the dance.

Write a question for your rasika and/or for your dance’s ancestor.

Repeat the process for the remaining writings.  Be sure to switch roles if working with a partner.

TASK 2: ANCESTOR SOLO OR MAKE-YOUR-OWN

After completing TASK #1, you can choose to do (1) an ancestor solo (see directions below) and/or (2) to extend the material in whatever way you wish (whether it be through choreographing a movement study, working further on a writing, creating another improvisation score, pursuing historical research, creating a dance video using your rehearsal footage, etc.)

Score for Ancestor Solo (Trio for One):

Pick one of your writings.

(1)  1. Do a “small dance” of your memory.  (A small dance is a very brief movement citation -- perhaps just in your fingers or face – that is small in size.)

(2) 2.  Take a step back, name your ancestor, and respond to the first dance as the ancestor.

(3)  3. Take a step back, name the protector, and respond as the protector.  

(4)  4. Now you can move between the characters, putting them in physical and verbal conversation.

If working with a partner, she can ask questions throughout.  As a variation, she can also step into one of the roles, but should call the name (“Ancestor,” “Protector,” or “Protagonist”) first.  You may want to videotape as a record.

Repeat for the other two writings.