Some histories cannot be contained in a thousand words. Perhaps, movement may do some justice?8/15/1838 Prologue I have been to the British Museum. I have waded through the rich cultural repertoire of objects from my part of the world, the most significant one being that of the Nataraja, the dancer: an ancient 11th century Chola Bronze. I even watched a small clipping of Uday Shankar's dance as a part of a larger video compilation on display. Our complicated history with the British empire isn’t exactly a new phenomenon; after all, our ‘nautch’ women were used as a way of symbolising the colonial power in the country for many years, while being used to represent authority back home as well. Disclaimer This project was created in fulfillment for a module titled "Performance of Heritage" at the University of Roehampton, London. As a student studying the course as a part of my international master's, Choreomundus, I would like to clarify my position in the project. While I can voice my opinions, it is important for me to acknowledge that coming from a caste and community that is not the Isai Vellalar (the collective term for different communities that traditionally practise dance and music as their primary occupation), I do not have any claims of ownership over the art form I practise, and that its history is deeply mired in localized socio-political hierarchies. I have grown up with many doubts and struggles to understand the history of the art, and the unacknowledged privilege that I, and many of my kind, enjoy through the practice of the form. I want to reiterate that I am not the art form’s representative, and that I come from a very different background, an educated and middle-class one, that is also partly responsible for this troubled history. In future, if this project is going to be executed, as is our vision, it would only be with the consent and the backing of the Isai Vellalar communities, and with cultural organisations that promote equality, and with the post-colonial academic fraternity. Introduction When I come across these pictures of ‘bayaderes [i]’ and ‘nautch [ii] girls’ being taken to Paris and to London for ‘Expositions’ (O'Shea, 2007: 7) and exoticised in opposition to what is modern and “white”, I cannot help but wonder if such heritages of exoticism can actually be undone anymore. This heritage we preserve, and take as our own, is the heritage of a colonial past: the idea that pre-colonial India is no longer accessible, and now all that is left is to take all these changes we have been introduced to, and make it our own, our new post-colonial reality. It is also the heritage that makes me think twice before putting on an actual Bharatanatyam costume and going to dance in public, lest people exoticise me and not really focus on my dance, because they are still looking for those images of the dancing girls from the past. This is a strangeness I feel for my own culture and customs; that makes me wonder if I can negotiate these narratives by asking: how does one navigate such troubled waters? This gaze makes me ponder if one can ever perform in public spaces without compromise? Perhaps my dance will be given importance if I were to wear every day clothes, no make up or jewellery, and maybe simplify my repertoire? But then again, why should I? Is it not the same reason why I wear a pair of jeans and t-shirt to blend in, while paradoxically wanting to stay different? Thus, my thread of connection is a quest to undo, or at least acknowledge this gaze [iii]. Bharatanatyam Bharatanatyam is perhaps one of the most easily recognisable classical dance styles from India that has been hugely successful on a transnational scale. The history of the art form has been worked on by various scholars (Soneji, 2012; O'shea, 2007; Meduri, 1996; Srinivasan, 1985 and many others). Janet O' Shea succinctly sums up the history of Bharatanatyam in an introduction to her book: "Bharatanatyam's immediate predecessor was sadir... practised by devadasis, courtesans affiliated with temples and courts as performers and ritual officiants. The anti-nautch reform movement.. denounced the devadasis' nondomestic lifestyles as prostitution... the anti-nautch reform agitations, together with changed political circumstances and economic conditions, impelled the form into obscurity... By 1935, the form had begun to change hands, with middle-class, Brahman girls.. turning to dance study and performance... defended the formerly marginal practice by aligning it with political discourses such as nationalism and regionalism". (O'shea, 2007: 5-6). The ongoing battle with many hereditary performers claiming back the legacy of Bharatanatyam, and many middle-class and upper-class practitioners rubbishing such claims is a story for another day. However, the beginning to this project is the Exposition that took place in 1838 (Zon, 2017: 62-63), that recreated how the dancers and their art was viewed in the West, and how these perceptions have changed very little since then as Sitara Thobani points out in her book on Indian classical dance (Thobani, 2017: 22-23). Devadasis It is quite clear that the blacks will be slaves; Inkle, Mr. Yates—Yarico, Miss Bayadere!— "White man don't leave me,"—and depend upon it my dear Saundorouna, Ramgoun, Veydoun, Amany, and Tille,—as long as white man can get one single farthing out of your dingy persons and most unpoetical postures—white man will not leave you. (New Sporting Magazine 1838: 384) The history of the Devadasis [iv] is a long, problematic one. The romantic associations of the ‘bayadere’, as this devadasi was often called outside the country include Goethe’s "The God and The Bayadere" written in 1859 and in many ‘oriental’ operas that were staged after (Mehta, 2002: 51) such as the French choreographer Marius Petipa's La Bayadere of 1877. However, while the devadasis enjoyed respectability for a large part of South Indian history unto the late nineteenth century, they were also steadily adapting to suit the tastes of their colonial masters. (Soneji, 2012: 101). Thus, multilingual javalis [v] were produced, violins became an indispensable part of the orchestral arrangement, and as time went by, the devadasis shifted from courts onto cinema and their dance, into what became a nationalistic mainstream dance movement sans their presence. The transformation of the devadasis is apparent: one of the paintings (or see below) was etched in 1782 called “A troupe of Bayaderes, Or Indian Dancing Girls” by Pierre Sonnerat. This is one of the earliest existing depictions of how the dancers dressed, looked and performed, recorded from an outsider’s gaze. And then comes the episode of the devadasis that were taken to Paris and London for their expositions in the 1830s after much interest was sparked from the idea of European writers on the “sensual and mysterious oriental dancing girl” (Zon, 2017: 55). This is where they faced a lot of mixed reviews for not having lived up to the European orientalist imagination, and were called “utterly uninteresting, wholly unattractive”, even as they presented the temple repertoire, for the first time, outside the temple, ritual premises. (Zon, 2017: 65). Back home, by 1930s, the Abolition movement had taken place, and the dance form was ‘revived’ by many upper-class reformists post-independence. My Attempt at the Museum Sarah will lead the audience into the South Asian section with her dabke, clapping and dancing as they follow, and on my request, they will slowly disintegrate into forming a circle around me. Sarah will, perhaps, join the circle as a spectator. The audience are free to move around, but are expected to maintain some silence, so the dancer can promote the idea of ritualism behind the dance form that has been long lost in its transition onto the proscenium stage. The item I will display is an Alarippu [vi]. I will have a projection on the walls in four directions of the room that displays a video of two devadasis performing this Alarippu in the early 1900’s. But when you see the contrast between the Alarippu that the artists in the video from the early 1900s perform, as opposed to how I do it now, note the changes: the musicians, the costume, the postures, the jewellery, and most importantly, the space. My costume will be a completely stitched, customised one made of silk, and my jewellery, the polished, ruby-decked gold plated jewellery. I will be using three musicians for the performance: the nattuvanar (the person who will vocalise the performance and wield the cymbals), the mridangist (percussion player), and the violinist (an addition to the Bharatanatyam orchestra during the British rule, to break the conventional idea of what is considered traditional or classical). When I have finished, I will ask the percussionist to continue the beats and lead the way as I dance behind him, and lead the audience with gestures into the open Atrium space at the museum between the restaurant and souvenir shop space where Naiara will be waiting with her musicians. Once I meet Naiara, we will have a short episode critiquing how essentialism begins: We will be playing the theme song from an Indian TV Serial called Arabian Nights that used to be aired in the 1990's, and we would compare and contrast our costumes, bodies and movement while acknowledging that we've been subjected to the common denomination of being an oriental dancer. Once this is done, and Naiara begins her curation, I would retire abruptly to the restaurant to order a coffee, to show that our lives are real, and blur the lines between theatricality and reality, what constitutes in a museum and what is living. Why am I performing at the British Museum? 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' (Lopez y Royo, 2002: 3). Thus, South Asian dances often have a difficult time in shirking past labels and moving forward. As Lopez y Royo concludes, and I concur as well, South Asian dances are only often seen as 'artistic heritage' and the dancers not as 'agents of interpretation', which is what they need to be (Lopez y Royo, 2002: 8). Thus, the aim is to re-create the 'gaze' for these expositions that were performed for centuries under the British imperial reign as a step towards sch interpretation. Alongside this there is a critique of such a gaze: to question it, and challenge the representations of the 'exotic spectacle' into something that is no longer the Other (Bhabha, 1994: 123). Instrumental to this is the framework is the idea of acknowledging the different political modernities that India has been undergoing (Chakrabarty, 2008: 20), and the subsequent argument that in order to be seen as a part of the mainstream, the first step is to unfreeze the dancing woman in time as a product of a romantic past. So how do I go about with this process? How do I acknowledge, however, that this gaze will pervade, and how do I go about normalising this gaze? Perhaps this is a start. To take dance out of a proscenium stage, and place it in domestic spaces in a video form. But for a project that is being envisioned in the British Museum, how will this normalising work? How do I recreate an ambiance that suits my dance rather than their eyes? How does one negotiate what to perform, and what to display, while being conscious of the changes to the dance form itself that each decision brings about? There are two ways to do this: 1) present as is, and shock an audience till it becomes a part of their everyday being. 2) start slow, create works that are easy for them to relate to, to understand, start with costumes and jewellery that are suited to their taste, and build up as we go. Both of these have their own set of dangers. With one, I risk freezing the modernity of my dance form in time, and make it such that it hasn’t changed at all for centuries. With the second, the opposite happens. I might have changed and adapted the form so much ,that there is no going back, thus, leaving a Ship-of-Theseus question unanswered. At the end, a nagging question that I am left with is this: “If she can speak all this, is she even the subaltern anymore? Who is?” Notes [i] Bayaderes – a French term for the devadasi, often flippantly used with various other dancers from different styles and countries. [ii] Nautch - a corruption of the prakrit word 'natcha', meaning 'dance'. refers to an entirely different set of dancers up north that performed in courts and for entertainment and were often used interchangeably for the devadasis down so [iii] Gaze - positing from the post colonial theory of Homi Bhabha, who, in his Location of Culture, talks of how the coloniser prefers his colonised to be the same, but not quite, and therefore distinguishes through "Otherness" (Bhabha, 1994: 123). I look at this as the gaze, the ways of looking at the Other. [iv] Devadasi - literally, 'deva' meaning god, and 'dasi' meaning servant, thus, 'servants of the lord'; these were women dedicated in the service of the temple, and danced as a part of the temple rituals. [v] Javali - a fast-paced, expressive dance piece that focusses often on eroticism and was a later addition to the bharatanatyam repertoire. The one particular javali that has found recognition, and has now become a piece of recitals due to a new wave of 'devadasi revivals' is the multi-lingual "o my lovely lalana" by Karur Sivaramayya (1798-1820) (Soneji, 2012: 100). [vi] Alarippu - from the Telugu word ' alaru', which means 'to blossom', the Alarippu is performed as the first item in a bharatanatyam repertoire, in three speeds and in different rhythm scales. References:
Pictures courtesy:
Video used for the Dance production: British Pathe (13 April 2014) Maharanee of Baroda 1930-1935. Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHOyvm4qA2E Accessed on 18 April 2020. Sound Track for my video: Goda, Subhashini and Krishna, Sheejith (2013). “Alarippu”. NGS, Chennai.
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subhashini godawhat i am is a bharatanatyam dancer and a poet from chennai, south india with a double masters in english literature, and a current masters in dance anthropology (choreomundus). i work with ritual transgression, memory, migration, politics, and gender with respect to dances from india and indian diaspora. Here are some scholars that have been working with these different discourses, particularly bharatanatyam, gender and post coloniality:
amrit srinivasan prarthana puryasaktha avanthi meduri davesh soneji harikrishnan janet o'shea saskia kersenboom-story jayachandran s ann r david sitara thobani swarnamalya ganesh gayathri c spivak sangeeta ray dipesh chakrabarty homi bhabha deepak mehta vasant kaiwar binita mehta alessandra b. lopez y royo |