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.

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?

Cyber Chat Revisited

Here is the revised Cyberchat collaboration!





Featuring the following Post Natyam people: Sandra Chatterjee, Shyamala Moorty, Anjali Tata, Cynthia Ling Lee, Sangita Shresthova (choreographic media arrangement)

August Creative Assignment "Inhaling all the fragrance"

"…When I grow the roses I go and admire and I put my face on top of them and smell and inhaling all the fragrance….life is like that, I thought in the beginning. But it’s not always….I want to smell the rose I want to feel the dew…all those small, small details I enjoy it, but I didn’t have it.” -Uma

Loren is creating a piece of music using audio excerpts of my interview with Uma, one of women from SAN's AWAZ domestic violence survivor support group. He will be sending everyone the music by Sunday or Monday evening. Using Loren’s music and referencing my interview notes, make a dance for the stage (we have so much video material that I am challenging us to think of the live audience again). The piece should be one that is both artistic and humane, and is based on some seed or essence of Uma’s story that interests you. Whatever you make, have an awareness of the other material we have been creating for the show.

DUE: AUG. 30th

Interview of survivor from SAN support group

I interviewed one of the women from SAN’s (South Asian Network) AWAZ support group for survivors of domestic violence. Uma is currently separating from her husband and she and I spent over two hours with her story that spans 30 years of marriage. Below are several excerpts of the interview that struck me as interesting and how I feel they connect into Post Natyam’s current work:

"…One day he called me and say come here I want to talk to you…'tell me how much you love me. Tell me how much you love me, how much, how much, how much you love me?' I kept quiet and quiet. 'Tell me how much you love me.' Inside of my heart saying: 'you’re not worth it, you’re not worth it, you’re not worth it.' I could ask him the same question: How much do you love me? Did you honor that love that I gave it to you.? Did you give me that respect? Did you give me that honor?...Where is the dignity?... I didn’t say that I love him, he beat me up. He kicked me, I fell down on the floor, he kicked me up. Because I didn’t tell him I love him." - Uma

In the quotes above I am struck by Uma’s resilience and belief in her own dignity even in the face of a beating. Similarly, Veena Oldenburg’s fieldwork in her article “Lifestyle as Resistance: The case of the courtesans of Lucknow, India,” documents the story of a young widow is ill-treated by her in-laws but still finds ways to resist:

"I had no recourse to the laws, or to lawyers, only to my wits sharpened by adversity. I first tried to get back at them with sly acts of sabotage. I did the washing up indifferently, leaving a dull film on the metal platters and the pots. For this my mother-in-law thrashed me. I would sneak into the kitchen when my sister-in-law had finish-ed cooking and add a heavy dose of salt to the lentils and vegetables. I would hide my smile when I heard the yells and abuse heaped on her by the menfolk. She caught me one day and thrashed me soundly until I howled with pain."


Another connection I found in the interview was a desire for beauty and sensuality through the imagery of a flower. I am coincidentally exploring a similar idea in the end of a new piece I am working on “Tell me, Sister” based on the same story from the Oldenburg article.

"…When I grow the roses I go and admire and I put my face on top of them and smell and inhaling all the fragrance….life is like that, I thought in the beginning. But it’s not always….I want to smell the rose I want to feel the dew…all those small, small details I enjoy it, but I didn’t have it." -Uma

Here is a work in progress of “Tell me, Sister.” Since I first performed it in Post Natyam Unveiled, Cynthia and I have been working on creating the final section (after the projections). In this last section, the character explores her own flowering from within. The lovely sarengi music in the final section will replaced with a new composition by Loren.

PASSWORD: Tell me


Tell me, Sister (work in progress) from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


Finally, I was surprised in the interview that Uma's fury was more about his infidelity then for his violence:

“If he is worth it, I would put up with anything, torturing, kicking, or even pricking a needle on my fingers. I will put up with it, but he is not worth it. If he has only alcohol habit…I could put up with it, but going with the different women and coming back, isn’t worth it.” -Uma

Here is a Padam (poem that was often sung and danced to) from the Telugu courtesan repertoire that deals with infidelity from a book Post Natyam has used material from in previous creative assignments: “When God Is a Customer” Edited and translated by A.K. Ramanujan, Velcheru Narayana Rao, and David Schulman.

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 m 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


The Pallavi or repeating refrain “I didn’t say a word,” is reminiscent of one other moment in the interview:

"…That was my silent cry. I was silently crying inside, but nobody knows outside. But now I'm not crying I'm speaking…I want to be me. I’m bold I have strength, I want to keep my head up and live with dignity!"-Uma

Cyber Chat Rough Cut

Here it is. Fresh off the press (or rather the compressor), we present an initial rough cut of the Cyber Chat remake. While we are still fine-tuning crucial details (positioning, cuts, syncing and playback speeds), we thought it apt and mutually beneficial to provide an initial sneek peek to those curious about this latest installation of Post Natyam Collective's virtual collaboration process.

The composition was created through as an iterative sequence, wherein each member created their own cyber chat set to their own sub-track of the audio while watching previous members' interpretations. The piece intends to communicate the visual and virtual possibilities of cyber choreographies.

Note: An earlier version of Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat was presented as part of "Trace," a performance-installation at Sea and Space Explorations Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and as part of "Post Natyam Unveiled," a lecture-demonstration at the Khmer Arts Salon Series in Long Beach, CA.

posted by: Sangita-Bollynatyam

Cynthia's Response to June 2010 Assignment

I was the last person to add into the reworked Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat, and I admit I was a little overwhelmed by all the information contained in the other videos.  In creating my portion, I wanted to integrate some elements from the other three choreographers, to make sense of our conversation narratively, and tie up any loose ends.  





One of my techniques was to integrate props used by the other three: books, coffee cup, and costume.  Also, after chatting with Sangita, I decided that this piece was a conference call in which we were discussing our long-distance project on courtesans: that Sandra was addressing this through theory (the books), while Shyamala was doing so performatively (through costumes).  Since I regretted not being able to read the titles of Sandra's books, I revised my earlier opening, in which I had sleepily poured myself a cup of coffee, and instead opened with myself sleeping on a pile of books (as if I'd been researching all night!).  I intentionally chose books that were salient to our project, including When God is a Customer (an erotic collection of padams), Taboo! (fieldwork on the redlight district in Lahore), Abhinayadarpanam (Sanskrit treatise on abhinaya), Telling Stories to Change the World (this was a nod to our more activist work with SAN).  


I also wanted to respect the shape of my rhythmic composition, which is a chakradar (a thrice-repeating composition), and so I broke my choreography into three sections: (1) my first "small dance" sleepiness (2) my rhythmic show-and-tell with the books and (3) my reentry to engage with a discussion about the costumes.  Within this I tried to time certain gestures and actions (coffee drinking, book moving) so that they would align with the others.

Cynthia's Research Write-up for June 2010

For my research this month, I researched the ghazal form and read a chapter of my friend Emma Kalb’s thesis regarding courtesan films.  For guidance on comments, see the unanswered questions/areas for future exploration at the end of each section, as well as whatever insights occur to you.  

(1) On the Ghazal Form:

I first encountered the ghazal not as a kathak dancer, but as a poetic form translated into English.  As I was refamiliarizing myself with the form, it gave me an idea about an internet based choreographic experiment that we could try.

According to Agha Shahid Ali, the ghazal couples formal tightness with a thematic freedom verging on arbitrariness.  Composed of thematically independent couplets, every line in a ghazal must have the same number of syllables.  The first couplet sets up a rhyme scheme and a refrain that must be followed throughout the rest of the poem, but other than the opening couplet, the refrain occurs only in the second line.  The last couplet often ends with a signature couplet in which the poet mentions his/her name.

(See “The Charms of a Considered Disunity” by Agha Shahid Ali in The Practice of Poetry.  Also see http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5781 for more details and actual examples.)

Since the four of us in Post Natyam have quite different voices, it struck me that perhaps the ghazal could be formally translated into a dance-for-camera choreographic exercise whereby we are given total expressive freedom in terms of content but are locked together by having to strictly follow certain choreographic rules.  The rules might look something like this:

(1 1. One person is selected to create the opening couplet.  This couplet is composed of two 5 second phrases, each ending in the same gesture.

(2 2. All of us then create 3 phrases, each exactly 10 seconds long. 

a.    All the movement phrases should be choreographed for the camera.

b.    Each phrase should be complete in itself (like a gem); there should be no attempt to link them to each other on any emotional or narrative level.

c.     Each phrase should end with the same gesture established by the opening “couplet.” 

d.    One phrase should somehow reference your name, however obliquely.

(3 3. After creating the phrases, we edit together the footage and see what transpired!

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:

In his article, Ali does not talk much about the emotional content of the ghazal (implying any content is okay).  Nevertheless ghazals do tend to revolve around longing, the Beloved, love, and ponderings about the universe – staples of Urdu poetry and thematic anchors that might connect us more clearly to the subject matter of our long-distance project.  My question is how to make that connection without sacrificing the thematic freedom and arbitrariness made possible by the ghazal formally.

(2) Research Notes on  “The Nautch Girl, In Print and On Film: An Ambivalent History, An Ambivalent Nation” Emma Kalb, 2006, Senior Thesis in Asian Studies, Swarthmore College.

Chapter on “The Courtesan Film”:

On Bollywood Films and Social Hegemony:

“These are not open-ended films intended to guide the viewer toward rebellion or a cataclysmic rethinking of social norms. Bollywood offers a purging pleasure, in which events tie up nicely, wounds are healed, and dangerous, chaotic forces are tamed or exterminated.” (Nayar 1997)

“the structure of the film is... designed to accommodate deep fantasies belonging to an extraordinarily varied group of people, from illiterate workers to sophisticated urbanites.” (Mishra 2002)

“Such films works to delineate an “idealised moral universe” that “upholds the ‘official’ definition of femininity within the main plot, and then to provide ‘unofficial’ erotic pleasures… through the song and dance sequences.” (Pinney)

On the Figure of the Tawaif:

“The erotic, seductive, and independent tawaif writes the proscribed narrative of a fissiparous and still contingent nation.” (Poonam Arora)

“many celebrated tawai'ifs were in effect highly educated career women, often accomplished poets and musicians, who valued their financial and personal independence from male authority.” (Lutgendorf)

On Courtesan Films

-unique in their focus on Muslim communities, women protagonists

-reveal a nostalgia “arising from the decline and disappearance of courtesan culture.” (Dwyer and Patel)

-Films such as Umrao Jaan depict the “poetry-smitten world of 19th century Islamicate urban culture, in which all educated people were aspiring Urdu poets, and evenings were spent in mehfils or poetic gatherings.”

Womanhood and Morality: Domesticating the Courtesan?

-The films reveal a tension “between notions of ideal womanhood and historical as well as contemporary facts of how (at least some) women live.” (69)

-stories of “unrealizable desire” “transgressive love”

-direct quotations from films:

Pakeezah: “any whore is a dead body.”

Umrao Jaan: “a public woman who can never truly claim a man”

-Courtesans are usually portrayed as longing for respectability, wishing to be a wife and a proper woman:

-“the genre of the “courtesan film” strains to domesticate the whore and fit her into a wifely role (Virdi, 132)

-“The films could express something of the power and independence that come with being a tawaif, but in fact they render her the opposite, powerless and caged by what is written as natural for a woman to yearn for: respectability, the life of a wife or a daughter.” 

-courtesan as “a lotus in the muck”

-“the courtesan films delineate a morality at an impasse. The courtesan may be sympathized with, but she can never truly have a happy ending.”

- “The films strain to accomplish a balancing act, giving rein to transgressive love and other normally unacceptable behaviors even as they recuperate the transgressors in one way or another back into the nation, finding a resolution that does not challenge the moral bases of society.”

-“It may refuse to portray the courtesan as anything but as close to a pure Hindu wife as a Muslim prostitute living in a bordello can be, but there is a necessary ambivalence to that image.”

Works Cited:

Dwyer, Rachel and Divia Patel. Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

Lutgendorf, Philip. philip’s fil-ums: notes on Indian popular cinema.             [http://www.uiowa.edu/%7Eincinema/index.html].

Mishra, Vijay. Bollywood Cinema: Temple of Desire. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Nayar, Sheila. “The values of fantasy: Indian popular cinema through Western scripts.” Journal of Popular Culture, Summer 1997, p. 73-91.

Pinney, Christopher. “Public, Popular, and Other Cultures” in Rachel Dwyer and Christopher Pinney, eds. Pleasure and the Nation: The History, Politics, and Consumption of Public Culture in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001

Virdi, Jyotika. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.

INSIGHTS AND QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE EXPLORATION:

The contradictory tension between an ideal notion of womanhood and the lived reality of women (both historical and contemporary) seems like a possible thematic throughline in our work.  If so, I would then ask: How have these idealized notions of womanhood (particularly a Hindu nationalist patriarchal version) impacted each of us personally?  How has our dance been implicated in that? How, if at all, do you feel like breaking that mold?  Is Bollywood and its representations of women dancers implicated in this and how?

Shyamala's Response to June 2010 Assignment

Ok, here's my Cyber Chat, take 2


Cyber Chat 2 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.


Here I got only 1 part of the music so had to respond to just the one thing and my other vocals.

Some things I did differently then the last Cyber Chat:

I purposefully took actions from each of the others' pieces and hope it will tie us more together in case they use them again.

I also tried to address our larger themes of the figure of the courtesan through bringing in the costumes...not sure if it's obvious, but if you see the costumes in the live performance it might be a nice tie in. They are what I'm thinking of using for the new solo I am working on with Cynthia and Anj's videos projected on me in white (see my solo dance in progress during Post Natyam Unveiled).

Not sure if we're giving feedback this month since this may be the final version, so I'll hold off on questions.

June Creative Assignment: Reworking “Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat”

For our June Assignment, Sangita and I have hatched a plan to rework our “Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat” piece.  The structure is an experiment in how to use the internet to effectively co-choreograph a single work, using a strategy of having each choreographer build on what the previous one has created.

We’ve separated out the musical score into four layers as follows.  When choreographing your section, you will see everything that the previous members have choreographed on the video that Sangita syncs for you, but will only hear your musical track.

rhythm 1: Shyamala

ghazal/typing: Sandra

chatting/baby cry: Anjali

rhythm 2: Cynthia

Here is the timeline for the choreographic process:

May 26 Cynthia and Sangita give assignment

June 1 Shyamala finishes and sends to Sangita

June 2-3 Sangita syncs and sends to Sandra

June 4-10 Sandra finishes and sends to Sangita

June 11-12 Sangita syncs and sends to Anjali

June 13-18 Anjali finishes and sends to Sangita

June 19-20 Sangita syncs and sends to Cynthia

June 21-27 Cyn finishes and sends to Sangita

June 28-30: Sangita edit and sends out final piece to all

Also, please follow the following rules when choreographing your section:

1    1. single shot/no cuts or editing

      2. webcam style (no one moves the camera for you)

3.   3. In choreographing your part, please (1) stay attuned to your musical layer and also (2) be in relation to the others’ choreography.

If you wish, you may also keep Shyamala’s original "Cyber Padam" assignment in mind.  Be sure to send your video file to Sangita in the following format: mov file, 4:3 format.  You may send your file to Sangita via yousendit.com.  Please cc me on any correspondence so that I know we're keeping to the timeline!

Researching the Figure of the Courtesan

In keeping with Post Natyam’s mission to support our creative investigations with critical inquiry, we have decided to try researching the figure of the courtesan in the Indian subcontinent in a more formalized way. This research will run parallel to our creative assignments, and its intention is to give weight to and deepen our individual investment in the subject matter.

Each of us will engage in research through the lens of our own personal interest. Currently our individual interests are as follows:

Sandra – courtesans and Bollywood

Anjali – devadasis and the blurring of sacred and secular

Cynthia – Muslim influences and the Urdu ghazal tradition

Shyamala – alternative models of womanhood and connections to SAN

Each month, we will post monthly reports on our individual research to this blog. To encourage cross-dialogue, we plan to read each other's reports and make comments within a week.

Reports may include:

(1) research notes

(2) juicy insights, facts, revelations gleaned through your research

(3) ways in which you might imagine the research affecting our creative process or clarifying the artistic vision of our project

(4) a complete list of references that you consulted (with links when possible)

(5) unanswered questions and thoughts about what you want to investigate further

For this first go-around, we plan to post our reports by June 14 and give comments by June 20.

Post Natyam Unveiled: a lecture-demonstration and performance

On May 15, 2010, Cynthia and Shyamala presented Post Natyam Unveiled at the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach, California as part of the Khmer Arts Salon series curated by Prumsodun Ok.  This performance and lecture-demonstration allowed us to articulate and share our long-distance collaborative process with a group of warm and engaged artistic colleagues, friends, and supporters.  The discussion of our long-distance process was bracketed by live performances of finished choreographic works reflective of our individual choreography and smaller scale local collaborations.

The following is a condensed, online version of Post Natyam Unveiled that allows our audiences further afield to experience some of the richness of the evening.

--------------------------------

Cynthia: We’ll begin the evening with “dreaming in taal,” a duet that draws on the North Indian classical traditions of kathak and tabla in a contemporary framework.  This sinuous, meditative piece takes an unconventional approach to taal (time) by exploring cross-rhythms that allow dancer and musician to be in rhythmic relationships other than unison.  

choreography: Cynthia Lee

original music: Lenny Seidman, adapted by Ravindra Deo

performance: Cynthia Lee and Ravindra Deo

Material for dreaming in taal was developed at The Swarthmore Project, a residency program for choreographers and dancers sponsored by Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.

Shyamala: The Post Natyam Collective creates contemporary approaches to South Asian dance.  While each of us is trained differently, we all have training in at least one South Asian dance form, including Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathak, and Charya Nritya.  These forms share a focus on rhythm, facial expression, hand gestures, and story-telling.  We make these forms relevant to our contemporary realities by investigating them through scholarship, activism, and artistic innovation.  As a collective, we rotate our roles as directors, choreographers, and performers.  We also workshop each other’s individual works and engage in small-scale local collaborations with each other.

One unusual aspect of the Post Natyam Collective is that we are multinational, with members are based in Kansas, Munich/New Delhi, and Los Angeles.  We’d like to introduce you to our other two members through “Cyber Chat, Cyber Spat.”  This work-in-progress video is an artistic version of our long distance administrative meetings via SKYPE and our first attempt to make something together online from our separate geographic locations.

Cyber Chat from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.
video editorial arrangement: Sangita Shresthova

music composition: Cynthia Lee, drawing on kathak rhythmic compositions from Bandana Sen and a ghazal by Begum Akhtar

sound manipulation: Loren Nerell

Cynthia: Because we are physically scattered across continents and are not often able to gather in a studio, the Post Natyam Collective decided to experiment with using the internet to collaborate artistically towards the end of 2008.  This online collaborative process, which has included giving each other assignments, posting videos, and providing each other feedback, is centralized on this blog in the hopes of inviting a larger public dialogue into our process.

Our online collaboration has become geared towards a central project that contains three major threads: (1) our use of internet age technologies (2) the figure of the courtesan in the Indian subcontinent and (3) our community work with survivors of domestic violence.  For the time being we are defining "courtesan" as broadly as possible to include the devadasis, South Indian temple dancers who were involved in systems of sexual and economic patronage, the high class tawaifs and baijis of North India and Pakistan, and even modern-day sex workers.  Our interest in the courtesans stems in part from the fact that historically they contributed deeply to Indian classical dance, particularly in abhinaya, a form of acting in which the performer interprets love poetry with gesture and facial expression.  But aside from their aesthetic legacy, we are interested in the stories of the courtesans' lived realities and how those stories might explode the poetic surface of what we’ve learned as classical dancers. 

As we started investigating the figure of the courtesan together, we found that the online medium encouraged a technique of “translating” each other's material, so that choreography became an ongoing series of transformations instead of the co-creation of a single product.  I’ll illustrate this for you now by walking you through one such a series of transformations.

thumri

why[                        ]beloved

                       

                        quarreling[

riverbank don’t[

]wrist[                                                                                                  

please[

bindadin says                       

grab[                        ]shame

i will[                                                ]i will go[            

This poem is part of a larger artbook, Harassing the Sanskrit Heroine, that incorporates poetry and photographic image to interrogate the light classical North Indian song form of thumri.  Thumri was widely performed by North Indian courtesans and continues to be danced by modern-day kathak dancers.  My poem is a translation by erasure.  I took a rough English translation of “Kahe Rukata,” the first thumri I ever learned from my guru Bandana Sen in Kolkata, and removed many of the phrases to create a different poem, using empty spaces and brackets to suggest that something had been erased.  This compositional method was inspired by Anne Carson’s translations of the Greek poet Sappho, whose work only exists in fragments today.  When writing the poem, I was thinking about how evocative a fragment can be, but also about how much is lost to history, particularly in an oral tradition, and about the incompleteness of our knowledge when situated in the diaspora, for we are often not fully fluent in the language of the songs we perform.

On the flip side, fragmented knowledge also allows room for us to move in the empty spaces, to fill in the blanks with our imaginations.  So next, I wrote a translation through expansion, taking a single word in this poem, wrist, and riffing off it.  The style of this poem was influenced by American experimental language poets Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons) and Harryette Mullen (Trimmings).  Written through a female-centered lens, their writings refract an object in a multi-faceted, nonlinear fashion that has been compared to Cubism.
Click below to hear Cynthia read ]wrist[:

 ]wrist[ by cynthialinglee

This poem later inspired our Kansas-based member, Anjali, to translate the text into a dance-for-camera piece.  Much like my poem zoomed in on a particular word, Anjali’s piece used the camera to zoom in on her hands. 

]wrist[ from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

After Anjali made her video, Shyamala transformed the material further by making a live performance in which Anjali’s video is projected on her body.  This work-in-progress is a response to an assignment that asked us to depict the real-life story of a child widow who escaped the familial abuse of her in-laws by becoming a courtesan and also includes an excerpt from my video, “bitter salt.”  

Tell Me, Sister (in progress) from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

choreography and performance: Shyamala Moorty

direction: Cynthia Lee

recorded music: Zakir Hussain and Loren Nerell

live music: Ravindra Deo

video: Cynthia Lee and Anjali Tata

story taken from Veena Talwar Oldenberg’s “Lifestyle as Resistance: the case of the courtesans of Lucknow, India” 

Shyamala: I asked the audience for their impressions of my performance, and they had many fascinating interpretations:

“After she lost her husband, she is showing her inner feeling....It’s in silence, not with words; she is not speaking with anything other than her actions.  She is feeling that she lost her husband, that she needs that passion, that love, that breath that she felt, that love that she shared with him that she doesn’t have anymore.”

“I didn’t see any love but more being trapped by the institution of marriage and the woman’s or the wife’s dependency on a male to define her role.  You know, with having to hoe the field and then being trapped and marked by her status as a widow.  Seeing that text [a widow in white] repeated twice reiterated her identity as a widow.  But then at the end she releases that white and she’s sort like, “Hey, I’m a sexy woman, I’m not just this widow in white.”  She leaves us like...where are you going?  Come back, I want to see more.  In a provocative way.”

“I was thinking about the color of white and how to some people that’s the color of mourning and to some people it is a bride....I remember the words...“one child bride,” and when it said that it connected a whole other series of correlations for me because I was remembering how in many cultures the young child is exploited and sent into marriage without the child having any idea what is happening.  So then my mind went into that whole scenario, and the combination of the video with the hands and the movements of the body were like trying to release that bondage that had been created.  And then it was beautiful the manner in which you ended because when you went so coyly away I wanted to say, “Wait a minute, I want to see more of that!”

“I just loved how dynamic it was to see, first of all, this projection, which is something coming from outside onto your body, but then that the hands – looking at one’s hands is a perspective that we only get of ourselves or someone that you’d be so intimate with, to see hands close up like that.  So there was this interesting thing of standing outside and you becoming a screen and yet the image being so intimate, and so there was this bouncing back and forth.  And to have seen the video first of Anjali’s hands and to see that undulation which is so bodily and then where you brought it...it felt like you really took the energy of her film and brought it into your body.”

Shyamala: While we're interested in the courtesans of the past, we're also interested in the stories of real women today, especially stories of resistance and healing.  Cynthia and I have been honored to be a part of such women's experiences through the South Asian Network (SAN).  I have been facilitating workshops for their support group for women who have faced emotional and physical violence or sexual abuse.  In these workshops I have concentrated on stress relief through yoga and self-expression through writing. 

In one exercise, I asked the participants to visualize being reborn as a male as a way to explore gender roles and expectations.  One of the women realized that if she had been born as a male, she would have fallen in love with herself.  The following poem was the result of that beautiful realization: 

password: gender
Once we realized how charged and powerful the writing of this group was, we realized that we could incorporate it into Post Natyam's creative process.  I'd like to share an in-progress study, “Mesmerized,” that Anjali created to the poem I read.  Inspired by a single line of this poem, “Mesmerized” explores the masculine that resides within the feminine as a strength attempting to emerge from the cocoon self.  The pregnant belly reflects these dual genders that reside within one body.
Anj study_3_16_2010 from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.

Cynthia: We're very excited that TeAda Productions has agreed to support us in physically bringing together the material generated through our online collaboration process as an evening-length performance including all four collective members in early 2011 in Los Angeles. 

We're going to conclude with another live performance that reflects the smaller scale local collaborations in which Post Natyam members also engage.  This duet, called "not two not one," collides two very different dance-forms, kathak and contact improvisation, to depict a relationship so intimate that it's not always clear where one person starts and the other ends. 

choreography and performance: Cynthia Lee and Shyamala Moorty

original music: Paul Livingstone

The evening culminated with an energetic and engaged question and answer session with the audience, facilitated by Prumsodun Ok.