Dramaturgical Questions; Listening and Retelling

DRAMATURGICAL QUESTIONS

Mona, the dramaturg with whom Shy and Cyn worked with at NET MicroFest, offered us the following questions to mull over:

"1. What question, or set of questions, are you exploring with each sequence? This is not something you should be able to answer, but I have found it useful to think about it. I like to generate lists of questions and then compare them, see how the scene works toward confronting the audience with questions. It's in keeping with Mira Rafalowicz's process of dramaturgical questioning (attached), which I've found a useful tool . . .

It might be interesting to write these questions down.

It also might be instructive to create titles for each scene that evoke the essence of what happens, is evoked, communicated in each scene. One can make these titles anything from very straightforward and clear (i.e. "courtesan cliches") to more poetic and visceral ("silent cry").

2. Think through the whole piece in terms of what your relationship is to the audience moment-to-moment. I understand why you decided not to worry about audience placement at this point. At the same time, where the audience is in relation to the piece is crucial. Physical placement determines in many ways emotional and intellectual engagement. Your discoveries as you generate the questions under (1) will influence audience placement. The "courtesan cliches" scene, for instance, is successful because it engages/confronts the audience in a very direct way. What is the nature of our engagement scene-to-scene?

Maybe each of you can write down/articulate somehow what you want each scene to do in that regard.

This issue seems especially important as your story engages individuals who are professional performers. When I was watching the videos in the exhibit I was struck by how the dancers control their audience, how this power/control is in many ways a central attraction of the performance (one of them manages to control the spectator merely through her voice, compelling him to stop his carriage and enter the performance space . . .). Perhaps you can help each other by very consciously putting on the hat of audience at certain moments in rehearsal?

3. I think there could be great possibilities in using your working process even more as a guiding principle throughout the piece: When you work across geographical distance, through skyping etc., you observe each other (and your selves). You have to continuously find ways to "write yourself into each other's processes / creations." Heiner Müller talked about this in a public letter to Robert Wilson, explaining why he (Heiner) couldn't write the text for Death Destruction & Detroit II. He couldn't find a way to "write himself into Bob's process." Each of you continuously does. There is something in this communal and at the same time very individual process that relates to the courtesan culture (at least as I understood it from Veena's lecture). At the same time, it relates to the community of women (and other) survivors who have found a way to tell their stories. The telling can happen because there are listeners. How do you listen to each other, observe each other, invite each other to comment, play with your work/stories? The opening scene sets up this structure / idea, but I lost it as the piece went on. It re-surfaces periodically, but more peripherally. When Cynthia was dressing while Anjali was doing her piece and we talked about the screen, this issue became more clear to me. I thought her presence created a compelling tension. Not that this should be the choice, but investigating presence of other performers/on-stage observers/mirrors at certain moments might be of value.

In this context, you could play with the Brechtian device of the re-play (just for rehearsal purposes, although it might find its way into performance . . .). What would happen, for instance, if each of the performers did an improvisation (perhaps guided by Anjali) on her voice, the loss/recovery of her voice? It's such a central moment/reversal in the survivor's journey. It will gain power through rep&rev (repetition and revision/variation).

This connects to the mirroring: I think some motifs could be mirrored more extensively. At the moment nothing is 'over-worked.' Perhaps make a list of motifs (face, hands, marks, tracks, wounds, mouth/voice/ eyes, frames/doorways, borders, cloth, etc. etc.) and see how they are present in each scene. Then ask how else they could be present? How is each of these charged with different meanings as the piece progresses? Try out choices. Examine impact."

In response to this, we've given ourselves the tasks of (1) giving TITLES to each piece, (2) articulating the central intent/questions/audience relationship of each piece and (3) examining when the MOTIFS of performers, video, text, movement/gesture are present and absent in each piece, and what the function of that presence and absence are.

Cyn:

(1) Cyber Communications: An Introduction

intention: introduces us to ensemble, internet/Skype mediated process, how art-making sits inside everyday home life, and central themes of the show
motifs: performers (4 on video, Shy live), video (single rear projection), text (rhythmic, spoken, sung), movement (gestural storytelling/communication)
(2) Leather and Snow
function: brings courtesan cliche into contemporary times, fragmenting of body, showing geographical context

motifs: performers (Sandra only - would need to be integrated with others), video (single rear projection), text (none), movement (gestural and imagistic)
(3) the tears went running, running... (or "dry mouth, salt water")
function: a minimalist abstraction of loneliness and subtle despair. Based on Uma's story but could attain other valences if concrete connections are made to other material (ravi suggests working with "kahe rukata" thumri as sound).
motifs: performers (Shy, both live and live feed), video (frames plus 2 live feeds), text (none, needs sound support), movement (facial expression). Tension between solitariness of live body and the intimacy of live feed close-up on face (allowing involvement with abhinaya in theatrical setting)

(4) EAT ME

function: a humorous commentary on the exoticizing gaze
motifs: performers (Sandra on video, but not identifiable, Shy and Cyn live), video (small on front scrim), text (Madonna's Om Shanti lyrics and lascivious audience comments), movement (full-bodied dance)
(5) The Pleasure of Longing

(6) Ranri (Note: "ranri" is a bengali word that means both widow and courtesan)
function: tells/embodies the story of a child widow turned courtesan. covert resistance, longing for sweetness, and suffering of physical violence connect to the SAN women. still need to pull out her positionality and strength as courtesan.
motifs: performers (Cyn live and on initial video, Anj on video). video (projected onto body and ceiling). text: in projection - gives context/history to the character. monologue - expresses the character's resistance, bitterness, sensuality, longing in the present. during wrist: clarifies that the woman is being subjected to violence. movement: stillness, gesture, stretching cloth, footwork, angsty ripping and collapse.

(7) Losing My Tonsils, Finding My Voice

(8) Composite Courtesan (stolen from Carole)

(9) viva-la-vulva (from Sandra Cisneros' "Loose Woman")
function: the bold, the audacious, the super sexual, desiring, too-much woman
motifs: performers (Cyn and Anj), video (none), text (none), movement (Bharatnatyam, pseudo hip hop)

(10) Learning to Walk like Radha
function: the story of a misfit in the classical Indian dance world.
motifs: performer (Cyn live), video (none), text (improvised spoken text, rhythmic syllables, song), movement (pedestrian, manipulation of cloth, task-based, related to spoken word, kathak)

(11) The Thorn, the Leaf, and the Butterfly
function: Variations on Uma's story
motifs: perfomers (Shy, Anj, Cyn), video (live feed of Anj's face, frame), text (poem spoken aloud), movement (face and hands, full bodied struggle with cloth, task-based)

(12) Shringar/Getting Dressed

(13) s k i n remix
function: How are cliches/conceptions of women written on our dancing bodies? How do we pass through, resist, critique and interact with those projections?
motifs: performers (all live performers, Cyn on "skin"), video ("skin" on rear wall, projected words on floor/dancers' body, live feed of dancers on scrim), text (recaps/fragments of all text in show), movement (mostly centered around interacting with text physically, needs to be deepened)

SUNOH! TELL ME, SISTER PHRASES
We also continued to work on our "SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister" phrases:

Anj's phrases (abhinaya, Bharatnatayam, creative), password "listen"

Anj Sunoh phrases from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Cyn: Listening for the Tawaif's Trace (abhinaya)
shot through the window: (password "murky")

Listening for the Trace of the Tawaif from Cynthia Ling Lee 2 on Vimeo.

shot in the studio, password "listen"

Listening to the Trace of the Tawaif (studio) from Cynthia Ling Lee 2 on Vimeo.


LISTENING AND RETELLING

In addition, we decided to expand on Cyn's response to Hari's Sunoh phrase assignment ("I listen, I take you into my body") by having each of us respond to each other's stories through our own personal lens.

Shy's listening/retelling of Cyn's logomotion/cloth solo:
Password: logomotion

shy logomotion from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Note from Shy: I meant to do a section about Cynthia teaching me to walk when she was directing me in the widow to courtesan piece that would parallel her walk section with her teacher. Because it was an improvisation I forgot that part but have done some writing on it and think it would have gone in the part when I cross the river to become the courtesan. Would be interesting to go between the character being surprised that she has to learn to walk, and me finding the specificities of kathak hard on my BharataNatyam trained body.

Shy's Retelling of Cyber Chat
Password: "cyber"

Cyber Re-Miss from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Note from Shy: This may be a part of my listening to Sandra...it started out that way but became it's own thing...I'm still working on the rest of listing/retelling Sandra.


Mona also pointed out that our material seemed to fall into two categories: (1) intense involvement with a personal story and (2) ironic reflection on a (courtesan) cliche, with the latter less investigated. In an attempt to bridge the two worlds, Cyn did a quick choreographic study of a pseudo-kavita I wrote for my artbook, Harassing the Sanskrit Heroine. She was imagining it might go into my Logomotion improv somewhere, since her personal story might lend itself to dealing with cliches, insofar as it speaks about the collision of trying to fit into the mold of a classical Indian dancer.

password "kavita"

Harassing the Sanskrit Heroine from Cynthia Ling Lee 2 on Vimeo.

Taking Stock/Sunoh phrases

TAKING STOCK
We arrived at rehearsal pretty exhausted after yesterday's showing. Halfway through the residency, having produced a lot of material, we started to take stock and to discuss how to move forward with the work. Under discussion: the modularity of the show, whether Shy, Cyn, and Anj talked about what studies we found the strongest. We were basically in agreement that we found the following work compelling (knowing that some of these would be switched in or out depending on who's performing):
1. skype call/email
2. Shy face dance
3. Tell Me, Sister
4. Anj's story/jathi
5. Courtesan Cliches (metaphrase)
6. Cyn's Logomotion
7. Silent Cry
8. skin remix

SUNOH PHRASES
We also started work on our Sunoh! Tell Me, Sister phrases. Here is Hari's original assignment:

Create 3 different phrases based on the title, “SUNOH! Tell Me, Sister”. The three phrases should be as follows: (1) solely through abhinaya; (2) through your respective classical dance style; and (3) through your own creative improvisational style. The phrases should be around 1 minute each. Please create your phrases in isolation and not show them to each other. Please remember the phrasing and be prepared to show me when I arrive.

Cynthia did part 3 of the assignment with the following, very raw speaking-moving improvisation: "I listen - I take what I hear into my own body." The assignment also took into consideration one of Mona's questions:

"I think there could be great possibilities in using your working process even more as a guiding principle throughout the piece: When you work across geographical distance, through skyping etc., you observe each other (and your selves). You have to continuously find ways to "write yourself into each other's processes / creations." Heiner Müller talked about this in a public letter to Robert Wilson, explaining why he (Heiner) couldn't write the text for Death Destruction & Detroit II. He couldn't find a way to "write himself into Bob's process." Each of you continuously does. There is something in this communal and at the same time very individual process that relates to the courtesan culture (at least as I understood it from Veena's lecture). At the same time, it relates to the community of women (and other) survivors who have found a way to tell their stories. The telling can happen because there are listeners. How do you listen to each other, observe each other, invite each other to comment, play with your work/stories?

In this context, you could play with the Brechtian device of the re-play (just for rehearsal purposes, although it might find its way into performance . . .). What would happen, for instance, if each of the performers did an improvisation (perhaps guided by Anjali) on her voice, the loss/recovery of her voice? It's such a central moment/reversal in the survivor's journey. It will gain power through rep&rev (repetition and revision/variation)."

password "rasika"

I listen; I take what I hear into my own body from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Shy's assignments: password for all is "sunoh"
abhinaya:

Shy Sunoh phrase abhinaya from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
After I showed the Abhinaya one to Cyn and Anj they saw connections to both Hidden Tamarind and Uma's love of the fragrance of roses and feeling she is a flower blooming. Perhaps there is a bridge between the two worlds here. Cyn also saw a gesture from "cyber chat" and thought I might be able to incorporate a few more gestures from it. She also wondered who is the other person? is it a figure 8 live feed or a voice over?


Bharata Natyam:

Shy Sunoh Tell Me Sister, Bharata Natyam from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
I made this to the rhythm of the words "Su-noh, Tell me, Sister" in different configurations. Cyn and Anj were interested to hear these vocalized. Cyn also had a fun idea which I really like....that some of us are the courtesans and one of us is Veena Oldenburg asking them about their stories. They teasingly encourage one who is reluctant to tell her story with this material...and she finally does, which could be the "Tell me, Sister" piece with Cyn's new monologue in it.

own style:

Shy Sunoh phrase, creative from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.
I made this to the rhythm of the words like the last one...but it goes beyond the Bharata Natyam a little bit. I was confused when I was making it whether I was doing Bharata Natyam or my own creative thing. Cyn and Anj thought it was more celebratory. I think maybe a part or two could be combined with the Bharata Natyam phrase above and the rest could be cut.

Retreat Open Rehearsal

This was a chance to share with our collaborators everything we were interested in from the first week. Thanks to Carole Kim for creating and running most of the multimedia, to Loren Nerell for creating and running the sound with Ravi Deo, to Kedar Lawrence for rigging and running the lights, and to Iyatunde Dixon for documenting the pieces. Also present were our collaborators Mona Heinze and Uma.

Cyber Chat/Shy's email, password "sunoh"

Cyber Chat with Shy from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Fetish, password "cliche"

Babli Cliche 1- draft from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Silent Cry Face Dance (Shy), password "silent"

Silent Cry Face Dance from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Diss embodied, password "7 chakras"

diss embodied from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Varnam, password "longing"

Anj's Varnam from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Tell Me, Sister, password "ranri"

Tell Me, Sister from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Anj's story/jathi, password "Anj"

Anj Silence Jathi from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Courtesan Cliches Metaphrase, password "cliche"

Courtesan Metaphrase from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Crass/Shurpanaka, password "bold"

Crass/Shurpanaka from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Cyn's Logomotion Improv, password "logomotion"
Sadly, the video camera's memory card ran out halfway through Cynthia's improv, so only about half of it is documented here:

Cyn Logomotion, open showing from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Crystal Ball Padam (My Silent Cry/I didn't say a word), password "silent"

My Silent Cry/I didn't say a word from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Anj's Beautiful + Sandra's Past, password "beautiful"

Anj's Beautiful_Sandra's Past from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

skin - password "skin"

skin with live feed from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Retreat Day 5: improv, crystal ball, and diss embodied

"diss embodied"
This study layers a bunch of courtesan cliches: Sandra's "commercially sexualized" video, Shy's Oriental doll, Shy's loose woman (danced by Cyn), lecherous voices from the "exotic temple dancers." Ravi picked out some fun music to go along with it, and we even found a way to integrate Shy's clear plastic half-manikin that was lying around the studio.  In performance Shy's face would need to be lit better behind the scrim so that she could be seen.
diss embodied password: cliche

diss-embodied from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Anj story improvisation
Anjali wrote a freewrite yesterday about the experience of feeling silenced and her dance serving as an alternative outlet for expression.  The content was exciting because it integrated her personal relationship to the dance form and the notion of abuse, thus tying together some thematic threads usefully and extending the notion of "I didn't say a word" further.  This morning she came up with a few movements based on it.  Cyn and Shy directed her in an improv to include the story and movements. Here are two versions. We're thinking that the end "dancey" section will actually be a fierce version of the rhythmic (jati) section of her study "Tell me how much you love me" from the other day.

Anj 1 password is "story"

Anj improvised story 1 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Anj 2 password is "story"

Anj improvised story 2 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Crystal Ball
This is actually "I didn't say a word" (English translation of a Ksettraya padam adapted and read by Cyn, abhinaya with live feed by Anj) and "My Silent Cry" (dance by Shy), but all done live.  We had previously done it with a recorded version of Cyn speaking the poem.  In this new live version, the three of us could improvise and respond to each other in much the same way theorized by Avanthi Meduri in her article, "Multiple Pleasures: Improvisation in Bharatanatyam."  Meduri speaks about three different elements - the poetic text, the singer (replaced here by a reader), and the dancer - which refract off each other through improvisation much like a crystal ball reflecting different facets of light, with only the text staying constant.  Taking into account Sandra's feedback that she would like to see more variations, we played with repeating verses in the way a padam might be done to emphasize Anj's and Cyn's ability to interpret the same line differently.

Crystal Ball Password: "padam"

Crystal Ball Padam from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Tell me, Sister
Cyn worked more on her new Tell me, Sister monologue, borrowing gestures from some of the other material produced this week.  Shy directed her and worked with her on integrating it into the original piece.

-no video

We spent the rest of the time reflecting back on our week and figuring out which nuggets are the most interesting to share with Hari and our collaborators on Monday!

Retreat Day 4: writing and multimedia

Unedited letter to collaborators
Shyamala wrote a freewrite that we thought might give context to the piece. We were brainstorming that Cyber chat would be projected with Shyamala live (or ideally with everyone who's performing live in the show performing a section, either isolated by lights or all popping up and down from behind a table whenever there's a switch of frame in the video). After the call ends, Shyamala would be alone and frustrated and write an email to everyone....

Hi Dears,

I’m feeling confused about the fact that we’ve just chosen as a group to use the courtesan texts as the basis for our next project. I’m interested in the legacy of our dance forms as something that’s been inherited from courtesan communities but I never really felt connected to the courtesan texts or to recreating old material over and over. Of course there are some juicy padams but I still want to relate to now. If I wanted to do that I would have stayed being a Bharata Natyam dancer. But I always felt like a fake when I was all dolled up with the jewelry and telling stories from a religion that I don’t belong to or fully understand. I'm interested in the here and now and using my dance to express what is pertinent to our social and political times…

One interesting thing about them though I found in Veena Talwar Oldenburg’s field work in the 70s (double check dates) where she actually stumbles upon a courtesan community of 30 or so women while doing archival research She asks them about the stereotype of them stealing young girls to become courtesans and they instantly dispel the rumor by telling her their real stories….none were kidnapped, one loved dance so much but couldn’t do it unless she left her Brahmin family and chose a different way of life, but many left abusive husbands or families to find an alternative life.

In my work with the abuse survivor support group, I feel so many women who are emotionally and sometimes physically abusive situations didn’t leave because there’s so much shame involved and they really have many other alternatives within the South Asian society. That is until they find groups like the South Asian Network, or Sahara that can give them a safe woman’s space to see what other women have done.

The courtesan community seems that it offered a different model for women to live that was intertwined with but also in many ways resisting the typical patriarchal model of society. In Oldenburg’s article, it sounds as if they created a woman-centric society that had its own rules. The way she found the courtesans in the first place was because she found translator to work with who said he didn’t have a name, and when she asked why he said it was because he was a boy born into the courtesan community where females are celebrated, are the bread earners, and the inheritors of land. Because he was a boy he was considered worthless. I remember reading an article by ? Srinivasan about the devadasi’s in South India who also had similar powerful roles as the heads of their household and businesswomen. It’s so confusing to me though because the idea of a courtesan is shown in the Bollywood movies as something so tragic rather then powerful, as shameful and something to be hidden, rather then a possible option for a new way of life! And I’m confused too if these women were really selling bodies, or selling their dance, or did it depend on which level of a courtesan you were?

Anyway, I find it fascinating to know that there always have been alternatives, even though it still seems that our lives as South Asian women are still so dictated today in the 20^th century by the expectations of the same patriarchal roles. I have met women in their mid-20s thinking their lives are over because they are divorcing an abusive mate and that no one else will marry them, or a woman who waited 30 years to leave so that her children would be grown up and not have to deal with the divorce. Why is it that we still see such narrow possibilities for ourselves as women? Even I am constantly struggling with feeling some obligation to be solely a mother and homemaker because my husband has a more lucrative job….. (to be continued or to be edited down)

Anjali Freewrite:
Anjali also did a free-write of the experience of feeling silenced and finding expression through dance.
(to be posted later)

In the afternoon, Carole and Sangita came, and we worked more on layering studies through multimedia.

Sandra "past" silhouette + Anjali's "beautiful"
We tried layering Sandra's shadow with Anjali's beautiful cliche.  We also experimented with layering those two with Shyamala speaking her letter in front and Cynthia behind Sandra's shadow video dancing classical kathak, also as a shadow.  (no video documentation)

"I didn't Say A Word" (Anj Abhinaya) layered with "My Silent Cry" (Shy dance)
We put the live feed of Anj's face with "My Silent Cry." Note: the last movement of Shy running with the cloth as wings wasn't possible because of the lack of space so she just runs off.  Password: "silent"


I Didn't Say a Word/My Silent Cry from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.


Skin
This experiment takes inspiration from Sangita and Cynthia's collaboration "skin."  Carole used 3 projections: "skin," white words projected on Cynthia's body, and a live feed of the words on Cynthia's body operated by a live camera-person.  Perhaps this could include all the live dancers? Also, there was an interesting idea to cross out the words that are on the body with eye liners or markers and then leave the body all marked up with lines afterward.  We were also thinking of replacing the white words, currently from Sumita Chakravarty's text, with the words/phrases from our courtesan cliches.
password "skin"

Skin from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Skin live feed
direct footage from the live feed (from yesterday).
password "skin"

Skin Live Feed from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Retreat Day 3: Story Telling and Multimedia Madness!

Today we each worked on a loose interpretation of an assignment from Hari:
"Based on your research, choose a potent story..." "Solely through abhinaya (using both the face and body), recreate the story you have chosen. The length should be between 3-5 mins. Pay attention to all the juicy details of your story, making sure your depiction is lush, descriptive and colourful."

Shy took a few phrases from Uma's story and put them in her face. Password: "Uma" Note: the video is about 5 minutes, but there is additional black afterwards

My Silent Cry Abhinaya version from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

Cyn edited her logomotion improvisations into a short storytelling study with the cloth, also incorporating her courtesan cliche, on "veil." Password: "logomotion" Note: the study is around 5:30 minutes, but there is a bunch of black at the end.

Feedback Questions:
(1) What were the parts that pulled you in?  The parts where you were less interested?
(2) What do you imagine me wearing in this piece?
(3) Thoughts about my various uses of the cloth?  Were there ways that you found effective, ways you wanted to see extended, ways that you didn't like?
(4) Do you like the even, pedestrian, remembering/storytelling quality that predominates?  Would you like to see more variation, for instance by sometimes being in the moment rather than narrating something that happened in the past, or through more emotional/dynamic/movement variation?
(5) Compare this more choreographed version to the improvisations I did yesterday.  Which do you like better?  Are there parts you found more effective in the improvs that you'd like to see brought in here?

Sandra's abhinaya phrase draft. Feedback wanted. Its not where I want it to be. Password "dont"

Babli Abhinaya phrase draft 1 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Anj had already been working on the courtesan padam adapted by Cynthia yesterday, so today she decided to take another idea from it and put it to rhythm. Note, the actual video is only 2min but for some reason vimeo added 17 min of black afterwards! Password: "tell me"



later Ravi joined us and we experimented putting Anj's "I didn't say a word" padam with a live feed (see yesterday's post) with Shyamala's "My Silent Cry" -no video
He helped us brainstorm a soundscore for this piece, as well as for the layered Temple Dancers studies.

We also got his help to add a little from Sandra's cliches to the courtesan cliche phrase - no video


And in the evening we did lots of multimedia trials with Carole:

]wrist[
figure 8 live-feed of Cynthia's wrist poem and Shy improvising based on poem and Anj's wrist.  Password: "writing"

wrist_writing

Teaching Courtesan Cliches
over figure 8 live-feed. Based on Carole feedback will try again later with signs instead of words. Password: "meta"

My Silent Cry Abhinaya in Window
Shy sits upstage on chair facing away from audience. Downstage her face is projected into a frame.
Password: "frame"

My Silent Cry face dance, framed

Skin Experiment: live feed. 
Password: "skin"

Retreat Day 2: Courtesan cliches and I didn't say a word padam

We thought it would be interesting to layer a few of the courtesan cliches together:

password for all of them is "cliche"

"Oriental doll" with "loose woman"



"Temple Dancers": The sound was added afterwards. note: video is only 1 1/2 min. The black afterwards is an error.



"Crass" with "Shurpanaka"



Megaphrase
Following Hari's assignment, we also made a megaphrase of the cliches:

password is also "cliche"



I Didn't Say a Word: Anjali created an abhinaya section to a courtesan padam that had been rewritten by Cynthia to tie into Uma's story. Password is "padam"



I Didn't Say a Word 2: We tried the live feed that Carole set up to get the intimacy of Anj's expressions for the audience. Password is "padam"


Also, Cyn started working on her abhinaya study for Hari by doing a couple of Logomotion improvs with the long white cloth while talking about learning from her kathak guru. Password for both: "Calcutta"

Logmotion #1 from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Retreat Day 1: Courtesan Cliche studies

Hari Krishnan, our director gave us an assignment to each come up with 5 cliche of courtesans and then make short studies of each stereotypes.

The password for them all is "cliche"

Anj's cliches in the following order: seductress, servant of god, cheap prostitute whore, beautiful, Man’s servant

Cynthia's cliches in the following order: STD, crass, Gungat/veil, powerful, money hungry


Shyamala's cliches in the following order: exotic temple dancer, Shameful, innocent victim of society, Oriental fantasy, loose woman


Sandra's cliches in the following order: fetishized; commercially sexualized; past; attitude

Sandra's study 1:

Babli Cliche 1- draft from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

Sandra's other cliche studies:

Sandra other cliche studies from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.



And Cynthia made a monologue that might insert into "Tell me, Sister" after the sand video is projected on her sari and before the wrist video is projected on her back.

password is "tell me"

Tawaif Inscribed: hidden tamarind to skin

After performing at NET, I decided to return to the idea of inscribing societal discourse on the tawaif's performing body (or on my body doing sitting abhinaya).   Carole Kim had advised using white words on a black background to minimize spillage, and Sangita had advised that I use fewer words from Sumita Chakravarty's text to make them more readable, knowing that if this served as a transition into the "skin" video, that the full text would soon be visible in "skin."  Sangita also suggested taking off my blouse to transition into skin.  [As reference, see Tawaif, Interrupted for my earlier unsuccessful experiment.]

Here is a close-up view of myself doing abhinaya with the words.


password: "scribblebai"

A few caveats: (1) Because of how the camera picks up light, the words often blow out and become blindingly white here.  In real life they stand out nicely on my skin as well as my shirt.  (2) I did not perform the abhinaya very well, since I had no music to cue me and was mostly concerned with where the words were falling on my body rather than my inner motivation.  (3) I laid this music on afterwards.  If I were to keep working with this idea, I would want to have something with a distinct semi-classical sound that references the kotha, such as the sarengi here, but to have it become gradually more and more electronically distorted until the "skin" video comes on at the end.

Here is a wide-angle view, which allows you to see the transition from the abhinaya to skin more clearly.  In performance someone else would douse the front projector, so you wouldn't see the funny adjustment in the video.

password: "scribbleskin"

I skipped the first image of the video, where it is a little hard to tell that it is a body, and started with the second image, which looks clearly like a back, so as to make a direct correspondence between my live back and the back on the video.  I also didn't play the skin video the whole way through here -- I just let it run enough to get a sense of how the transition would feel.

QUESTIONS:
1. Is the sitting abhinaya + text compelling, or should the idea be retired for good?
2. Are the particular words being projected on me effective?  What about the text-movement relationship?  I chose movements from "hidden tamarind" that allow the text to be seen visually (or otherwise interact with it), such as "sexual" emerging from my mouth, but generally the meaning of the words are unrelated to my abhinaya, which has a different internal dialogue informing it.  Would you like to see a more direct relationship between the movement and the words' meaning?
3. Would you rather see me dressed as a courtesan, as myself (as I am here), or as some odd mixture of the two?
4. Would you like to see this vignette as the conclusion of Tell Me, Sister (as performed at NET), or in another context?  If the latter, what do you imagine might precede it?

Lots of thanks to Loren for his technical help in executing this experiment!

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).