General introduction:We are dancers from the Global South and practitioners of dances which histories are intertwined with the history of colonialism. Our dances were exhibited in Universal Expositions in the 19th century as the primitive counterpoint to a modern Europe. They were staged and adapted to the coloniser’s taste and for the colonised gaze. Bodies were made exotic and dances were variously classified as “folkloric”, “traditional”, “classical” and even “tribal”. We will be presenting a project of a performance envisioned to be held in the British Museum, transiting between the rooms with exhibition of artefacts from South Asia, Egypt and the African continent, performing Dabka (from the Levant area) Bharatanatyam (from India), Raqs Sharqi (from Egypt), Adamu dance (from Kenya), Bata dance (from Nigeria) and Agbekor dance (from Ghana). The reason why each of us chose to dance these are explained in our individual portfolios: Sarah Amawi (Dabka) Subhashini Goda (Bharatanatyam) Naiara Rotta Assunção (Oriental dance/Raqs Sharqi) Mark Lenine (Adamu dance) Olabanke Oyinkansola Goriola (Bata dance) Mariama Hashiem (Agbekor dance) We grapple with how to bring these dances back to the Museum, which is considered a privileged space of exhibition of the colonial world in the West, while negotiating the essentialism involved in such a venture. Constitution of museums, its relation with European modernity and the idea of “Heritage”:Lopez y Royo states that "Cultural heritage is political. It underlies the relationship of the present with the past. It is about how the past is interpreted and lived in the present, and this may entail a view of the past which is imposed from above" (2002: 2). During the 19th century, “The museum – as the modern fetish-house of the archaic – became the exemplary institution for embodying the Victorian narrative of progress.” (McClintock, 1995: 45). They were repositories of the ancient and exotic past, to contrast and legitimate European modernity, musicological institutions, and although flourishing, were linked entirely to colonialism (Said 1978: 15). This period saw the emergence of a new and exploitative class of art-loving masters who occupied the position of acquiring valuable objects and artefacts in the imperial domain. As time went by, the acquisitions became too large and expensive to be kept in private homes. This need then brought about the presence of the museum as a space for preserving them as colonial treasures. The artefacts, being outside their countries of origin, led to the establishment of more local museums by the colonial powers in the territories under their control. The newly established nations took over the museums after their autonomy, and they served as self-appointed guardians of the past. In this history, the British Museum played an influential role. Nowadays, Trip advisor, among other travel organisations, rank British Museum as the 2nd best Museum among the Europe top 25 (Mcguire: 2018). Since opening its doors in January 1759, it has welcomed 350,404,179 visitors (Museum numbers). People come from all over the world to check the vast collections and items housed in the institution that started to be accumulated in 1753 (British Museum History), ironically, from all over the world. With over 8 million objects and 2 million years of history, the Museum displays not only connects to this project and theme of coloniality but gives us a great foundation to spark conversations on using the medium of dance as an intangible cultural heritage. Ideas and hierarchies about what should be preserved are the base of the traditional notions of “museum” and “heritage”, sustaining a colonial rhetoric. (Lopez y Royo, 2002:2). In this project, we propose a different rhetoric as we take control of our own histories. Understanding coloniality as the “multiple and heterogeneous global hierarchies (“heterarchies”) of sexual, political, epistemic, economic, spiritual, linguistic and racial forms of domination and exploitation where the racial/ethnic hierarchy of the European/non-European divide transversally reconfigures all of the other global power structures” (Grosfogel, 2011:12), we propose to “decolonize” the discourses about our dances in the institution that served as the main model for the colonial museums around the world. Playing with essentialism:In this project we are aiming to directly address ‘cultural essentialism’ as it is defined, ‘for example concerning identity. This refers to discourses and practices which label and relate to particular groups of people in ways which suppress difference and homogenise and fix them, not merely stereotyping but either pathologising or wrongly idealising them.’ (Sayer 1997: 454) However, while playing with essentialism, the common thread we are weaving here is presenting and defying the colonial reference to “Orient” or “African” or “Middle-Eastern” as one; Compressing thousands of ethnicities and differences across these cultures into homogenized sections in the British museum. The paradox we are trying to represent is how different and variant these cultures and their practices are and how “Oriental dance” or “African dance” is not just one thing, but rather a complex of richness and distinctiveness within themselves. Video proposal: Since we are living this unforeseeable moment of a global pandemic, we have decided to include in this project the production of a video that gathers all six performances that we intend to present in the British Museum. The transitions in the video will be slightly different as proposed for the museum, taking in consideration the geographical proximity and the way the artefacts are distributed in the exhibitions. On the other hand, we acknowledge this choreographic presentation was not originally idealised to be in a video format, which also brings a new way of looking at it – using other tools to deal with the situation with creativity. Thus, while the larger plan is to present the performance at the Museum, this pandemic has given us the challenge of understanding how bodies interact within domestic spaces, and the negotiations and implications of carrying our colonial pasts and post-colonial beginnings in our bodies even as we recreate them in movement. Each one of us recorded a different choreography at home, respecting the current necessity of keeping distance from one another. This leads to a relevant discussion on personal archives in a digital era, where so many people have access to devices that allow us to record and to keep these images in a domestic and rather intimate archive. Bharatanatyam (India), Dabke (Palestine/ Syria/ Jordan belt), Raqs Shaaqi (Egypt), Adamu (Kenya), Bata (Nigeria) and Agbekor (Ghana) are the dances we have chosen to record for the video, according to each of our cultural backgrounds and dance/research experiences. We added quotations to either historicize our dances and show a counterpoint to the present choreographies or to exemplify the meanings and feelings that they represent to the dancers, discussing, the political intricacies of the particular styles, especially when related to British colonialism. Finally, we have some questions that we seek to answer for ourselves and for the others:What is the legitimacy that we, with our class privileges, have to represent these dances? Can the subaltern actually dance in the museum without being essentialized? As dancers, what are our social and political responsibilities in this process? And if the subaltern do dance, would they still essentialize their own kind, while simultaneously trying to normalise the gaze of otherness? Those are some questions we want to address with our bodies, individually and together. References: Bacchus, Maria (2020). How the West Wants you to See the World. Map drawing as part of the project “Teaching Orientalism through Art Practice: ‘Othered’, the Virtual Exhibit” by Katherine Blouin and Girish Daswan. Available at: https://everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2020/04/29/teaching-orientalism-through-art-practice-othered-the-virtual-exhibit/ (Acessed 19 May 2020) Duthie, Emily (2011). The British Museum: An Imperial Museum in a Post-Imperial World. Public History Review Vol 18 (12–25). Grosfoguel, Ramón (2011). Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality. In: TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, UC Merced. Available at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq (Accessed 09 May 2020) Lopez y Royo, Alessandra (2002). South Asian dances in museums: culture, education and patronage in the diaspora. In: Chakravorty, Pallabi (Editor). 2004. Dance in South Asia: New Approaches, Politics, and Aesthetics, Proceedings. Swarthmore College Cooper. Paper originally presented in 2002. McClintock, Anne (1995). Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge. Purkayastha, Prarthana (2019). Decolonising human exhibits: dance, re-enactment and historical fiction. South Asian Diaspora, 2019, Vol. 11, No. 2, 223–238. DOI: 10.1080/19438192.2019.1568666 Said, Edward W (1978). Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. Sayer, A. (1997) Essentialism, social constructionism, and beyond. Sociological Review. 45(3) p.454 Webpages: McGuire, Caroline (5 Sept 2018). British Museum is the fourth best in the world says TripAdvisor – so who beat us? Accessible at :https://www.thesun.co.uk/travel/7182479/british-museum-tripadvisor-musee-dorsay/ . Similar initiatives that inspired us:
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It was developed by a group of students of Choreomundus - International master in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage, as is part of the final assessment for the course Performance of Heritage, that took place in the University of Roehampton, in London, Spring of 2020. |