Questioning Maud Allan

For my new role as creative process facilitator, I have been guiding the group to open up the possibilities around the collaborative study "the sins of such wonderful flesh" using the Question Formulation Technique, which I was recently trained in at the Music Center's Education Division.  While the context was to use it to guide our work in arts education in schools, I was immediately struck how it could be used in creative processes as well.  Thus, we watched the original study "sins of such wonderful flesh", and followed the Question Formulation Technique Process as detailed below:

PROCESS:

A. Watch group study:   "sins of such wonderful flesh"

B. Brainstorm as many questions as can related to the video
-don’t stop to answer or discuss any questions

1. -write down every question exactly as it was stated
   -change any statement into a question

C. identify which questions are open and which are closed

D. change one closed question to an open one and vice versa

E. each choose top 3 questions

F.  Discuss 

We found the process stimulating and so we decided to categorize all 
of our questions, see below where I have also highlighted ones that 
are "red hot" because many, if not all of us, were the most interested 
in each categ
ry.  The orange ones are still "hot" because at least two 
of us was most interested in them.  The yellow categories are "warm"
because at least one of us was most interested in them. We created 
categories as we went and so there is some duplication of questions 
that fit in more than one category.

CATEGORIES:

RECIPRICOL GAZE THEORY (GAZE/SPECTATOR, 
SUBJECT/OBJECT, COMMUNICATION/RECEPTION 
THEORY)
-how are we asking the audience to participate in desire? -can we ask
 the audience to participate in desire? 
-who is the subject and who is the object? 
-does the audience have a voice?
-what can the audience take home? (pearls?) 
-do the participants ever change roles? Does dancer become camera 
person etc.? 
-who is the performer?(How much is the audience also the performer?  
What does that mean for the audience? How to make that the 
gaze of the audience?  Is Maude Allen the performer and all of 
us are the audience? Is it all of our gaze reacting to her?  
Are we all spectators of her?)
-why is the camera moving? 
-who is the voice? 
-(Who is Cynthia representing when reading the text?)
-is the voice the viewer/camera or is the voice the person we are 
seeing?
-how does live audience fit into this? 
-how does this piece negotiate visibility and invisibility/who is seen 
and not seen?
-who will interact with the audience?
-If live, would camera be on stage or in the audience?
-where would the performer be seated?  On stage or in the audience?
-who is the performer? Sandra or the camera person? is everyone 
the performer?
-how would the piece change if another body was being filmed by the 
camera?
-what costume could further help contextualize?
-what is the relationship between the digital and the live?
-does Maude Allen have a voice? 
-are we objectifying Maude Allen (-yes we are and what else are we 
doing?)
-if we are objectifying Maude Allen, what else are we doing?

LOCATION/SITE
-how does Maude Allen’s trans`national trajectory between Canada, 
Europe and the US relate to the PNC process? 
-what context would this piece want to be performed in?  
theater/gallery/livingroom/woods/academic, conference/museum? 
-where does this happen?
-why is there sunshine?
-If live, would camera be on stage or in the audience?
-where would the performer be seated?  On stage or in the audience?
-what is the relationship between the digital and the live?
-does the performer ever move in space?

VOICE/AUTHORSHIP
-would the dancer ever speak? Would the speaker ever dance? 
-does the audience have a voice?  
-are we dancing with ghosts?  
-who is the author?  
-who is the voice?-(Who is Cynthia representing when reading the text?)
-who wrote the text? (-Authorship, gender, point of view, which text?)
-how could we make the voice sound better?
-does Maude Allen have a voice?
-are we authenticating Maude allen/providing her with cultural authority?

DRAMATURGY/PROCESS

CREATIVE METHODOLOGY
-how does Maude Allen’s trans`national trajectory between Canada, 
Europe and the US relate to the PNC process?  
-what can we do with pearls? ( props ideas for performers, for 
audience?) 
-what can the audience take home?
-what role does mediatization take/conceptually?   
-how does this triangulation between speaker/camera/
spectator-performer relate to the 3 Avanthi Meduri roles of 
dancer/musician/text in abhinaya improvisation? 
-what costume could further help contextualize?
-how could we make the voice sound better?
-is the voice recorded or live?
-is there any music?
-does the performer ever move in space? 
-how does this piece want to be expanded? 
-do the participants ever change roles? Does dancer become camera person etc.?

QUEERNESS/POLITICS
-how does Maude Allen’s trans`national trajectory between Canada, 
Europe and the US relate to the PNC process?
-how are we asking the audience to participate in desire? -can we ask 
the audience to participate in desire? 
-how does the past influence the present and vice versa 
-would the dancer ever speak? Would the speaker ever dance?
-what is the role of whiteness? 
-how does forefronting Maude Allen’s queerness add anything to our 
understanding  
-why this piece now?
-what role does mediatization take/conceptually? (queer the camera 
gaze)    
-what can the audience take home?   
-how does this piece negotiate visibility and invisibility/who is seen 
and not seen?
-what is the relationship between past and present?
-how would the piece change if another body was being filmed by the 
camera? 
-are we dancing with ghosts?
-are we authenticating Maud Allan/providing her with cultural authority?
-how is this piece queer? 
-are we objectifying Maud Allan (-yes we are and what else are we 
doing?)
-if we are objectifying Maud Allan, what else are we doing?   
-what do we make of Maud Allan’s queerness?

LEGACY, LINEAGE
-how does Maude Allen’s trans`national trajectory between Canada, 
Europe and the US relate to the PNC process?
-how does the past influence the present and vice versa?
-what can we do with pearls? 
-what is the role of whiteness? 
-are we dancing with ghosts?  

-how does this piece negotiate visibility and invisibility/who is seen 
and not seen?
-who will interact with the audience?
-where is the historical archive of Maud Allan? (-how does the 
historical archive circulate 
within the piece?)
-what is the relationship between past and present?
-is there any music? (memory)
-does Maude Allen have a voice?
-are we authenticating Maude allen/providing her with cultural 
authority?

Top guiding questions (in no particular order): 1. how are we asking the audience to participate in desire? 
 -can we ask the audience to participate in desire? 

2. how does Maude Allen’s trans`national trajectory between 
Canada, Europe and the US relate to the PNC process?

3. how does the past influence the present and vice versa?

4. what can we do with pearls?

"the sins of such wonderful flesh"

For our next Post Natyam process, we are developing a collaborative project that stemmed out of our Queering Abhinaya Process:

"the sins of such wonderful flesh"

Combining​ ​video​ and South Asian abhinaya (modes of expression) to queer the gaze, “the sins of such wonderful flesh” performs erotically charged desire between women​​. The work is inspired by the figure of Maud Allan​, a white female North American dance artist who toured her “Oriental" dances in Europe at the turn of the 20th century.  ​​Maud Allan was a Canadian-born, California-raised dancer whose dance career took off in Germany.  She was all the rage for a couple of years around 1908 in London, where she gave 250 performances of the Vision of Salome at the Palace Theatre. Allan was a complex figure: anti-suffrage despite being an unmarried, financially independent woman; whose longest romantic relationship was with her female secretary and lover, despite suing ​the British right-wing MP Noel​ Pemberton-Billings for accusing her of being a lesbian; who performed sexuality through the guise of Orientalist spirituality.​ ​”the sins of such wonderful flesh” asks: what would it mean for a brown female spectator to perform desire for Maud Allan-as-Salome?​  What is the difference between desire and identification (aka self-exotification)? ​How might the erotic charge and fluid reciprocity of South Asian abhinaya complicate these dynamics?

We are excited that the piece will be performed in EXPLODE! Queer Dance, curated by Clare Croft in May 2019 at UC Riverside!

Here is an early experiment:

Post Natyam Collective: Feminist Camera and Queer Desire. Experimentations. from meena murugesan on Vimeo.

concept and voice: Cynthia

choreography and performance: Sandra

videography: Meena

text: publicity for the Vision of Salome circulated by Alfred Butt, the manager of the Palace Theatre

Background:
This project started in our Los Angles residency in June 2014 with the process Queering Abhinaya. Shyamala gave an assignment to embody alternative interpretations of a text (open up, subvert, or contradict the text). In response, Cynthia chose a piece of publicity on the Vision of Salome by Maud Allan. Cynthia directed us to each create a study to subvert the original meaning of the text. Sandra's subversion led to a collaboration between Cynthia, Sandra and Meena to use reciprocal gaze theory with a live camera. Now, four years later, we are revisiting the piece with Shyamala as creative process facilitator.

*The phrase, "the sins of such wonderful flesh," is taken from piece of publicity on the Vision of Salome circulated by Alfred Butt, the manager of the Palace Theatre.

Back to the Beautiful

Sandra and I co-created and performed Back to the Beautiful (Cellar), a participatory installation, in Salzburg on November 18, 2017.  The piece primarily took place in Kavernen, a former wine cellar built in 1595 that is now an art space, dug out of a mountain with rock walls, pillars, and vaulted ceiling.  One part took place in Republic, a blackbox theater near Kavernen.

Inspired by the Saalach river as both a site of natural beauty and potential border tension, Back to the Beautiful (Cellar) layers poetic and political video images, participatory encounters with the audience, and moments of live performance around the contradictory motifs of borders and beauty. While grounded in the Saalach, this participatory performative installation also incorporates images and resonances from other sites of border anxiety globally. Back to the Beautiful (Cellar) has been developed by Sandra Chatterjee and Cynthia Ling Lee, in part through Borders Resurfacing, a long distance creative exchange by members of the Post Natyam Collective.

Part of a larger event that involved talks, a "happening" (party), and another performance work, Back to the Beautiful (Cellar) was divided into three parts that were interspersed throughout the afternoon and evening.  While we conceived of the parts as relatively distinct from each other, they ended up blending with each other in interesting ways.

Part I: ritual handwashing + bottling

Part II: interactive installation

Part III: bottle exchange at the Happening

Video loops designed by Meena of footage from the Saalach, punctuated by border images and text, were projected onto two rock walls, one face-on and one at a steep angle.  We also had a soundscape by Varsha Dewan that combined water sounds with sounds of protest (Syrian, Gorkhaland) and people walking in nature.  Together, the video and sound created an atmospheric immersive environment.  In addition, Sandra and I designed several stations that invited audience members to engage with the theme of beauty and borders through different modalities.  The audience was allowed to circulate throughout the room and choose which station to engage with and for how long.

password "B2B"
B2B projection (tech rehearsal) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

The stations were as follows:

(1) Ritual Handwashing

In an intimate act, we washed the hands of audience members with water that we had gathered one chilly November morning from the Saalach, the river that forms the national border dividing Austria and Germany.  We played with the rhythm, tempo, and movement of the water as we washed their hands.  We mentioned scientific research that understands water as holding memories, reminded them the river is a national border, asked them to pay attention to the sensation of the water, and invited them to linger with the feeling and memories of the water as it evaporated rather than drying their hands.  Sandra spoke primarily in German, and I spoke in English.

photo: Monika Urbonaite

photo: Hubert Auer

(2) Videos and Mixing Waters

We set up a monitor with a loop of three short dance-for-camera videos, all collaboratively created by PN members in different configurations: Border Sawal Jawab, Saalach | San Lorenzo, and River Thumri.  Next to the monitor was a table with materials for the Mixing Waters ritual.  The table contained water from the San Lorenzo and Saalach rivers and natural objects such as leaves, rocks, twigs, and moss from both rivers.  The audience was invited to engage in a modified version of my Mixing Waters ritual through written instructions and personal contextualization of each river authored by Sandra and myself, and to end by making a visual arrangement with the objects, which they were asked to upload to social media at #backtothebeautiful.

Here are the videos (not looped):

password "split"

Saalach | San Lorenzo from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

password "damodar"

river thumri (working title) from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Border Sawal Jawab from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

(3) Texts

The text station contained English and German texts, both poetic and theoretical, that engaged with notions of rivers and borders.  Audience could read the texts and write a response on a large paper posted nearby.

The English texts that we used are viewable here (Sandra, feel free to add in the German ones!): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Hmflje-Ew3EHF9mcB1FclQ84yoEB7OyS

(4) Guided Movement Improvisation

This guided movement improvisation drew inspiration from a river score learned from Eiko and Koma.  It included imagining the sensation of water within one's body as well as crossing a river, encountering a significant physical obstacle along the way.

(5) Bottling
Audience members were invited to bottle water, write an answer to a question on a tag, and then tie the tag to the bottle and either take it home or place it on a table.  Bottles on the table would be exchanged with other people later during the happening.

There were three types of water to bottle: Mixed Water (Saalach and San Lorenzo), Saalach Water, and Water that has Touched Many Hands (the water we washed people's hands with).

The questions were as follows (and provided in English and German):
What is hidden beneath beauty?  What are the dark sides of rivers?  What memories does water hold?  What are we supposed to forget?  Do you have a beautiful memory of a river?  Do you have a memory of having difficulty while crossing a border?

The "altar" for the bottles also had a small video projection of Sandra's feet at a river in India.

password: Dudhia

. Camera and editing by Varsha Dewan.

Part III took place in republic (the theater) rather than Kavernen.  We set up the bottles and water along with an invitation to circulate the bottles.  We also shared some bottles with people -- this became a lovely interpersonal process of curating particular messages for specific people as a gift.

photo: Hubert Auer

Saalach | San Lorenzo split screen video

Here's a split screen version of Sandra's and my videos that were created in response to my Mixing Waters poem.  I edited it on the train from Munich to Salzburg, so it's a border-crossing edit!

password: split

Saalach | San Lorenzo from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Questions:
a) Babli's video is a little grainier/noisier than mine -- would it be better to reshoot her video with my phone, or to leave it as is?  (I uploaded a compressed version of the split screen video to make the upload faster, so the overall picture quality is a little degraded, but the difference between our two videos is still comparable).
b) What do you think of the sound and text?  Originally I was going to intercut our voices as in the original poem, but I kind of liked the overlap that occurred when I just overlaid the two soundtracks, so I only adjusted things slightly.
c) Any other responses -- things you particularly liked, that you would suggest changing, etc.

Meena's video loops 4 + 5 + 6 for Back to the Beautiful

Loop 4

https://vimeo.com/240783477


Loop 5

https://vimeo.com/240781253

Loop 6

https://vimeo.com/240780921

Border Sawal Jawab - refilmed!

Here's a new version of Border Sawal Jawab, shot by Meena and performed by Shy and myself.

Border Sawal Jawab from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Cyn's Creative Response 6.2

I got inspired by Babli's assignment #6 to modify my choreography of the San Lorenzo portion of my Mixing Waters poem.  This version is framed for the camera (though I was using my phone, so it was hard to get the perfect angle) and integrates objects from the river.  I filmed two versions, one in front of the windows and one against a plain white wall.

password for both: SL
Version 1:

Mixing Waters Poem: San Lorenzo from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Version 2:
 
Mixing Waters: San Lorenzo from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.

Questions:
(1) Which of these two do you prefer, and why?  (Personally, I'm kind of bothered by my reflection in the windows version, and the way the white wall keeps changing color throughout in the second.)
(2) What do you enjoy about this version as opposed to the more full-bodied dance version I did?
(3) How might you see this work -- or the dancey one -- integrated with Sandra's study?  How do you imagine them living in the context of the larger "Back to the Beautiful" installation?
(4) Other thoughts?

Shy's Borders Resurfacing Creative Response #6: Water Ritual Remix

This is a remix of Babli's and my water rituals, taking into account some of the themes (especially feet, fences, ritual and words (I didn't find a place for dots because I feel lines is closer to borders though I could imagine how this could be a different thing with dots and instructions on or under the dots)

AT ENTRANCE invite folks to remove shoes (optional - would folks do this?)

Projection:  One of Meena’s loops of water running down and reverse up a wall at or near entrance.  

Step 1 - Ritual footwash There is a large bucket/Tub of river water with a scoop set up, as well as an empty bucket/tub. (or we can keep this handwash if you think folks wouldn’t do it, especially cause it’s cold mid-november)

Audience instructions:

Foot wash

Take the scoop and scoop out water out from the one bucket/tub

Go over to the second bucket/Tub and let the water run over each of your feet into the emptier tub 

Remembering and honoring: Our bodies are about 60 percent water!  

Step 2 - bottling: There is a row of buckets with water and empty little bottles that can be closed.

Audience instructions:

Bottling

Fill one of the little bottles with water.

About 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by water.

Step 3: Memory/label. ]

Audience instructions:

Memories

Hold the bottle. Remember 2 situations:

1) A memory of you or others trying to cross a fence, border, or river

and

2) a particularly beautiful moment of spending time at a river (preferably Saalach or Salzach)

For each of the memories find one word that captures the memory.

Go to one of the tables in the room  and write your two words on a piece of paper and attach it to the bottle. 

 (NOTE:  tables should be in various places so that the lines in next section start in different places too)

Step 4 - Lines (Note 1:  this direction may be on portable slips of paper that audience members can take with them and follow the parts as you need.  Note 2: On the ground inside are curved intersecting lines - could be of tape or chalk or washable paint etc)

Audience instructions:

Exchange

 Take this slip of paper and your bottle.   Find a line on the ground and follow it with your feet.  If you come across another person on the same tape path, make a pattern with your feet together and your bottles.  Then exchange names, bottles, and river stories.   And continue on your journey. Repeat if you come across other people until you get to the end of the line.  

Step 5: - Bridges (note: this direction would be at the end of first line they followed and once again on a slip of paper they can take with them)

Audience instructions:

Bridges

Take this slip of paper and your current bottle.  Walk between or over the lines on the floor (never on them)  If you come across another person, you may create a bridge by connecting your bodies (may be hands, shoulders, backs, feet, elbows) so that someone else may go under it, or if you come across someone else’s bridge you may find a way under it.  Continue until you have made or gone under at least 4 bridges or until you wish to stop walking between and over the lines.  

Step 6:  (perhaps this part is in the final theatrical happening? )

Audience instructions:

Sharing

go to one of the two standing mikes in the room, and read the words on your current bottle into the microphone.  You may also share any part of the story you remember that is associated with those words.  

Questions:  

 1.  how much of this would you imagine folks really doing?  I imagine it with feet since that is one of the words, but hand washing is definitely easier if we want to do that instead?  Also, if people prefer not to touch, do you think I worded it in such a way that would give them an out?

2.   what do you think folks will get out of this experience?

3.  how can we bring in the theme of back to the beautiful even more to it?  how can this encourage hidden stories/histories to emerge? 

4.  Do we need to simplify even more?  if so, what do you think the most essential elements are?

5.  Any other thoughts, ideas?