BHB Blog

Bodystorming Hits Bangalore now has a blog of its own! All the posts and updates about the event will henceforth be available on the independent blog - here. For more details about the event you can also check the Bodystorming website. 

Bodystorming Blog Post - Day 1.

This blog post is by Anjali Vaidya, a grad student working with India Bioscience and a member of the documentation team for Bodystorming Hits Bangalore.

“If you're trying to give the big picture of a big idea, to really capture its essence – the fewer words you use, the better. In fact, the ideal may be to use no words at all.” This was how science writer (and instigator of the Dance Your PhD contest) John Bohannon introduced the idea of using dancers to explain and explore complicated problems in his 2011 TED talk, “Dance vs. powerpoint, a modest proposal,” which doubled as a performance piece with the Black Label Movement. The dance – and talk – came to the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Bangalore on Sunday April 26^th, with the role of John Bohannon reprised by Joseph Crook of the Black Label Movement.

As Crook told the audience at NGMA about the “spooky” counter-intuitive properties of superfluids, such as their capacity to slow down light, the ideas were mirrored in the movements of dancers behind him. “This is the great pleasure of science: the defeat of our intuition with experimentation,” said Crook. “But the experiment is not the end of the story, because you still have to transmit that knowledge to other people.”

Can dance help transmit complex scientific ideas to non-specialists? The spell-bound audience on Sunday suggested that it could. However, the dancers of the Black Label Movement have gone much further than just mirroring science in recent years, under the direction of dancer/choreographer Carl Flink (University of Minnesota). The dancers use movement to brainstorm scientific problems, a method they call bodystorming – and draw artistic inspiration from science in turn. Carl Flink spoke on Sunday of his collaboration with biomedical engineer David Odde (also of the University of Minnesota), all of whom are now in Bangalore for a week-long Bodystorming workshop at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS). Odde and Flink met through the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Minnesota, through a shared interest in catastrophe – one in cells, and the other in dance. They have worked together ever since, exploring the dynamic environment within a cell through dance.

Dancers can only complement computer simulations, Flink asserted on Sunday – they cannot replace computers. What bodystorming can help with is intuition, narrowing down the potential avenues for exploration. “There are three doors you could have gone through, and now you know to go through door one,” explained Flink.

Satyajit Mayor (NCBS), who has helped bring bodystorming to Bangalore, spoke of how he gained a more visceral understanding of his research problems by seeing the dynamics of cell membranes acted out on a macro scale by the Black Label Movement at Woods Hole, Massachusetts last year. “We got a bird's eye view, and started to see patterns emerging,” he explained. The exercise also “sharpened one's own ability,” Mayor said, to break down a problem into a set of necessary mechanical rules.

The dancers, in turn, are inspired by the natural patterns that immerse them. Crystal Edwards, a dancer and choreographer with the Black Label Movement, said that bodystorming had changed her own creative process. “Instead of trying to make something happen, you set up rules and let patterns emerge,” she said. Likewise, Joseph Crook found the process of scientific collaboration stimulating, saying that it let him “think beyond the world of art for inspiration.” 

Carl Flink, as well, looks to the world around him and sees organizing principles that inspire. “Whenever you look out the window you see so much motion,” he said. “I like to capture that in my choreography.”

What does he see so far in Bangalore? Flink admitted that he and the Black Label Movement dancers were mildly terrified by the city's traffic, on their way to NGMA on Sunday. But the more that he watched, the more order he saw in the interweaving vehicles. They were guided by one rule: “If you see the space, you take the space.” Flink illustrated his words with a weaving of body and hands, making even the chaos of Bangalore traffic momentarily beautiful.

BODYSTORMING: An event to discover the physicality in science and thinking in dance.

Can body think and brain act? Bodystorming, a play on the word “brain storming”, nudges us to conceive “body” as a site for thinking, reflecting and communicating. The concept materialized when Carl Flink (Dancer) and David Odde (Scientist) from the University of Minnesota realized that they could get new insights into the common idea that they were exploring by being open and receptive to each other’s language of thinking. Bringing the two deceptively distant disciplines together, bodystorming gained momentum and was hosted as an event in many places across US and Europe.

This April, NCBS is bringing Bodystorming to Bangalore, where scientists will collaborate with contemporary dancers from across India, in an effort to exchange and understand the other’s world. Moving according to rules that govern movement of particles within a cell, the dancers gain a ‘lived experience’ of microscopic- cellular level processes. For Aparna Bannerji, an Odissi dancer who also heads the Science and Society department at NCBS, “Such an engagement can help a scientist arrive at new insights into processes that cannot easily be ‘visualised’. Bodystorming helps to visibilise the invisible.  For a dancer, the source of inspiration comes from a life-process and a scale that would not normally be explored, allowing for a new extension in their practice.”  More importantly, this concept challenges the conventional idea of science as being solely a logic and proof driven process, and opens up the importance of intuitive and inspired insights that often lead to the breakthroughs in science.

Bodystorming, draws attention to the “doing” or “practice” of science by moving it to the realm of experience. The practice of science, often pigeon-holed under the labels of thinking and theorizing, is distanced from it’s very physicality. Aparna also adds, “Thinking, investigating, creating, walking the path of inspiration that leads to new insights are all 'physical activities.” For her “There is no abstract notion of a mind that can 'think' if the body does not exist - so bodystorming helps make this connection.  If one can 'think' with mind and body aligned, then what happens to the type of knowledge that we can produce?  This is the real question I have for the process of bodystorming; will the use of a different practice, produce a different kind of knowledge?”

A scientist when she engages with her work also engages with it bodily – as she does an experiment or even as she cracks a formula. However, in Bodystorming, one is practicing science or doing science in a much deeper sense than experimenting or cracking a formula. This is because the material of bodystorming is the experience of being the object of study and not observing the object or experimenting on the object. Darius, a dancer and a Research Fellow at NCBS, emphasizes on this aspect of bodystorming “For me, bodystorming is a way to bridge the gap between me as a scientist/ observer and the object under study (a set of proteins, a cell, an organism) as you become a part of the study object.” The distance between the person and the work almost collapses as one becomes the object to be theorized about, - making body the site of scientific practice.

Science is often perceived as a body of knowledge which is separate from the scientist (the one producing the knowledge) while dance necessitates the presence of the dancer. The common epithet – of ‘Can you separate the dance from the dancer?’ can perhaps be extended to the scientist as she engages in this process.  Dance is not mere movement but reflects the relationship of the dancer with the dance. Similarly, scientific work embodies the nature of scientist’s engagement with her work. For example – we might have a better insight into Einstein’s theory of relativity if we understand his life, his reasons and the conditions in which he proposed the theory. Bodystorming exemplifies this relationship between scientist and science by addressing the process of the work. Looking at science as practice automatically entails the presence of a practitioner. The work itself embodies and is inclusive of the people involved in it.

According to Shabari Rao, a dancer and documenter of this project, “Non-scientists often tend to think of science as product as they are ignorant of the processes that are involved in the making of science. Similarly, non-artists tend to think of art as product rather than practice.” The week long residency that is organized as a part of bodystorming provides a context for dancers and scientists to understand art and science not as disembodied entities but as a way of understanding the world, as practice. Bodystorming in some sense goes beyond drawing conclusions about the cellular activities. It is a space for dancers to see science as a physical activity and for the scientist to see dance as a thoughtful activity. It is about drawing a distant world closer, familiarizing the unfamiliar and connecting the disconnected.

This Transformative Practice Residency is an Invitation to come SHIFT WITHIN by Reconnecting to the Self & your Lived-Experience. Through various Somatic exercises adapted within the conceptual model of the ancient chakra system (sacred architecture of body and psyche) we will explore our lived-body or soma as a site for Insight, Integration, Knowing and Transformation; Our Performances will inquire & research what’s most relevant to our Present Selves

This residency is a class designed as a part of the graduate thesis of the facilitator, Pushpanjali Sharma, M.A. (Embodied Studies), Lesley University, Cambridge, U.S.A. She is offering it in India for the very first time.

	Day 1 (4thApril)	Day 2 (5thApril)	Day 3 (6thApril)	Day 4 (7thApril)	Day 5 (8thApril)	Day 6 (9thApril)
10-12pm	Daily- Opening Interaction Different Somatic Exercises (Body-Mind Centering, Feldenkrais, Continuum and Ideokinesis) utilizing visualization, sound and movement. Chakra Dhyana Followed by Movement Improvisation- Play
12-12.30pm	Tea-break
12.30-2.00pm	Writing, Sharing/Discussion, Generating content and material for Performance
2.00-3.00pm	Lunch-break
3.00-5.00pm	Lab time- Each Individual will work on their own performance/creative piece supported by the facilitator; Performances will inquire into the subject matter that is spontaneously emerging during the day, as well explore/interpret what it means to move beyond frames, and peel off social-masks Closing Discussion

Take Aways:

1. Explore and Learn Somatic (mind-body) practices for self-healing, self-knowing and self-expression; Come alive to a renewed sense of embodiment; discover the joy in movement, dance and being.
2. Move away from the typical way in which the body has always been treated as a puppet, an instrument or a hired body, towards an epistemology of the lived-body as a site for insight, integration, knowing, wisdom and transformation.
3. Investigate into the seven aspects of the self represented by the chakra system through chakra dhyana
4. Let go of end-gaining and goal driven approaches, in favor of process oriented approaches
5. Find support in the self and in each other
6. Adopt approaches that promote a balance between work and rest, and incorporate effortlessness and ease in our lived-experience
7. Reclaim your creative agency and your authentic voice. Learn to create a performance piece, through your own organic somatic process, that inquires into what is most relevant to you right now.

Please Bring:

1. Bring to our first class meeting one personal item- can be a poem, an object, picture, music, photograph, anything that is significant to you which you could share with others. This could be something that has heart and meaning for you in your relationship to the arts, embodied practices and healing.
2. A towel for supporting the body during somatic practice
3. A notebook/journal and pen
4. Colour pencils/ crayons/ art items (If you like to express through art, not cumpolsory), Individuals may chose to bring anything that enhances/supports their medium of expression
5. Wear comfortable clothing, in which you can breathe, express and move freely. For those who like to improvise and move uninhibitedly on the floor and are wary of your knees, bring yourself a pair of knee pads for protection.
6. For those of you who are choosing to stay on at Antara, please carry your own bed sheet, pillow cover and towel for personal use.

Pushpanjali Sharma:

Belonging to the sea- shore of Goa and the Foothills of Jammu, Pushpanjali Sharma a performing artist and research-scholar in Somatic Education & Transformative Practice is currently on the last stage of her Master’s Degree in Embodied Studies from Lesley University, Cambridge (U.S.A). As such she is taking the opportunity to explore and examine somatic practices and its application towards internal inquiry, embodied writing as well as somatic-performative research. The residency at Antara is an amalgamation of the same. 

 During Embodied Creative Practice:

“I am free from time, effort is replaced with ease, limitations are transformed into freedom, and mundane is elevated to a heightened state of connectedness to the source of all things.”

As a contemporary dancer she has trained both in India (TR Dance company, Mumbai, Gati Dance Center, New Delhi) and for the last three years she has lived in New York training in Ballet-Contemporary track at Peridance Capezio Center and studying composition and choreography at Dance New Amsterdam (Certificate course) and Movement Research (Somatic-Performative Intensives).

Alongside being a trained pilates and yoga instructor, Pushpanjali has researched several somatic practices- Feldenkrais, Body-Mind Centering, Continuum and Ideokinesis, at Movement Research, NYC. She has interned/menteed under second generation somatic leaders Dr. Martha Eddy (Body-Mind Centering), Mary Abrams (Continuum). Studied Arts and Healing under Vivien Marcow Speiser (Expressive Arts Therapy) and has also taken several workshops under Michel Casanovas (Feldenkrais Teacher- Dance maker).

" I am fascinated by ‘true potential’, finding fresh ways to enhance the experience of life! The idea of internal transformation of the individual revolutionizing the whole, and finally creating and performing work that is palpable, resonant and shifts both the performer and the audience, drives me moment by moment!"

Kindly Note:

1. This residency is open to all interested in embodied practices and performance inquiry. Previous dance experience is not mandatory.
2. Lunch can be provided on prior notice. 
3. Residential facilities are available.

Workshop Venue:

Antara Artists' Collective

12th main, Shubh Enclave,

Harlur Road, off Sarjapur Road,

Near Springfields Apts.

Bangalore , India.

Bodystorming Hits Bangalore

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND MOVEMENT

Can we reflect, remember, react and talk through our bodies?

Bodystorming is an initiative which explores this concept in action, giving people an experiential account of what it means to engage with the body as a medium of thought and communication. While we are quite familiar with brain storming- coming up with ideas rapidly in a group situation, we rarely think of doing the same with our bodies.

What happens when we collectively throw ideas together spontaneously using our bodies?

Bodystorming – which began as a way of physically committing to and testing ideas about biological processes at the cellular level, is very soon coming down to Bangalore, as a common initiative between the city's dance and the science community.

The National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS) supported by the Wellcome Trust is hosting the Black Label Movement for a 10 day intensive engagement with the dance and science communities in Bangalore. The fundamental idea behind this initiative is to use simple interaction rules between dancers to simulate and understand biological processes, drawing from deeply inter-disciplinary roots.

The Black Label Movement is a dance company led by Professor Carl Flink and closely working with Professor David Odde (Department of Biomedical Engineering), both from the University of Minnesota.

A series of events are planned, including a bodystorming workshop for 25 selected dancers and a residency at NCBS where in 10 invited dancers will work with BLM intensely. They will be in constant touch with scientists and researchers to discuss and articulate their work. These sessions will seek to explore the ideas for bodystorming, its potentials and limitations. The programme will also include public interaction sessions with lead researchers Carl Flink and David Odde and a final performance by the Black Label Movement. The programme is being coordinated by the Antara Artists’ Collective.

There are plans to continue this engagement beyond the duration of the workshop/residency series to offer dancers and scientists in Bangalore a way to keep the bodystorming practice alive in the city.

This program is an opportunity for dancers who wish to work with deeper awareness of body and its role in dance. At the same time it stretches the notion of what it means to experiment in science – playing with the idea that ‘to experience, is to know’.

The bodystorming workshop shall be held on 25th and 26th April 2015 from 2 to 7 p.m.

Register for this workshop by filling up this online form: Click here

Kindly note:

• Applicants need to share a link to their performance video in the form
• The last date for registration is 31st of March 2015
• Applicants will be informed about selection for workshop on or before 1st of April 2015 through email/phone
• Selected participants are requested to arrive at the venue at 1.30 pm on 25th April 2015 for orientation

Workshop Venue:

The Lewis Foundation of Classical Ballet

5th floor, Salma Bizhouse,

Manee Avenue Road,

Opp Lakeside hospital,

Above CCD, Near Ulsoor Lake,

Bangalore- 560042.

Innovation in Choreography- Workshop by Jhelum Paranjpe

  Innovation in choreography - (For dancers from any discipline and with min. 5yrs of learning experience)

As part of Antaradhi- workshop series, we bring the maestro - Jhelum Paranjape from Mumbai to share her choreographic process with young dancers of Bangalore. We aim to bring together dancers from various disciplines and help them learn, share and work with a seasoned master and explore  their own creative /choreographic selves. The participants will explore diverse ideas, creative and critical thinking , breaking boundaries of their own movement vocabulary and  eventually fitting their work into their respective forms.  

Key take away for the participants -

1. Know the choreographic process from a path breaking choreographer of a classical dance tradition.

2. Opportunity to innovate within your own movement vocabulary.

3. Learn to assess when change/borrow/modify in the choreographic process.

4. Challenge your creative self and explore the possibility of developing your choreographic skills

   under Jhelum Paranjape's mentorship.

About Guru Jhelum Paranjape –
Jhelumtai, as she is fondly called, has consistently broken new ground in the traditional odissi dance form through her innovative choreography and teachings. In a career spanning  over three decades, her body of work includes vast repertoire of productions like Leelavati, Narmada, Uma to name a few.

While maintaining the core and spirit of Odissi dance, she has effortlessly moved beyond the boundaries placed by any traditional art form. An explorer at heart, she has helped hundreds of students explore a world of limitless possibilities in movement converting them to fit in the traditional/classical vocabulary of Odissi. Using Vivaldi's music from Four seasons to show swarm of bees moving across the stage tracing beautiful patterns or to show a herd of elephants moving rhythmically in a playful mood or a flock of birds gliding gracefully in the evening sky.... and all this unveiling into solving mathematical problems in her production Leelavati based on the 12th century mathematical treatise by the same name.

Maths was never so beautiful before!

http://www.thehindu.com/2001/02/24/stories/0424403j.htm

In another production -Narmada, she imagines the river as a woman. Nurturing, purifying, life giving, yet, standing strong and fighting man-made disasters. In showcasing the many faces of the river, she uses fluid movements of Odissi and juxtaposes it with Gymnastics to showcase the might of the man-made dam. She intersperses this with folk movements to show life along the river. http://smitalay.com/Narmada.html

Besides these, she has created several productions / pieces voicing social, environmental, ecological, political, feminist, educational and feminist themes each scaling new heights. She also brought "Bollywood hangama - Odissi Istyle" taking popular classic and new age bollywood music and weaving it into Odissi vocabulary, taking Odissi to those who generally stay away from "Classical dances". She has performed and taught in many countries received many awards like Kumar Gandharva award, Mahari award, Vidya Bhushan award, Women Achiever's award to name a few.

Dates: 22nd - 26th Jan 2015 Time: 10.30 am - 1.30 pm Fees: Rs. 5000 For registration - click here
Note: Participants may bring a piece of music /poetry that they wish to work on. we will then select a few out of those and work on them during the workshop.

Jhelum paranjape will also conduct a Lecture-demonstration - "Counting, Cooperating and Creating: how does dance help?" on 26th evening 4.30 pm at Antara which will be free and open for all. 

How Do I Engage With Art?

As I was whiling away time on internet, I stumbled across an idea –treat art as if it is a human being. The idea was an image representation- of art and onlooker embracing each other in a kiss. The image spoke to me, telling me something I was struggling to articulate for a long time – how to engage with art? The answer given was simple - engage with art like it is a human being. But can we treat art like a human being- we can’t give art food to eat, water to drink, put it to sleep or actually kiss it.

I remember having left art galleries and auditorium feeling very inadequate for not having understood the painting hung on the wall or made sense of dance performed in an auditorium. Being a student of history and philosophy of art, believing that I was passionate about art, it was disappointing to realize that when it came to understanding specific art work, it was a totally different ball game. This summer, joining Antara as a Research Affiliate, I spent my time observing dance in the dance class and eventually also dancing. I listened to the staccato of the wooden taala, sometimes watching people move to it and eventually moving to it myself. As I started being in this space, how I tried to connect with art in general and dance in specific shifted fundamentally.

What was so different about how I looked at dance in an auditorium and how I looked at it here, at Antara? Settings like art galleries and auditorium do not allow us to explore art, play with it. Often my engagement with art in these places is limited by distance and regulation. Antara was a free space, it let me do what was not allowed in auditorium and galleries, it allowed me to play with it. It let me engage with dance by including me in the environment rather than excluding me from it. In an auditorium, the stage excludes the audience. At Antara, even as an observer I was inside of the environment and felt physically and psychologically close to dance.

When dance is performed in an auditorium, when a painting is kept in a gallery it is decontextualized, we do not know where it comes from, which world it was made. In contrast to this when we see a writers room full of books, a scientists room with equipments we don’t just see objects. Such environments express the relationship of the writer with her books and scientist with her equipments. “Relationship” is the word of focus here. I might buy a book and keep it without reading it. Then I am not really owning the book or have a relationship with it except in economic terms. Only when I read it, engage with it, listen to it and speak with it, can I take the text from the author and make it my own. The environment at Antara allowed me this kind of engagement- allowed me to bring dance closer to myself and establish my own spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual relationship with it.

Some audience can be really moved by a performance in an auditorium so this is not to imply that one cannot engage with dance in an auditorium at all. This is to say that community spaces like Antara facilitates one to listen to art for more closely and deeply when compared to an auditorium. What the image meant when it suggested that art is human was that it is beyond just any other physical object. What makes it more than a mere object is our relationship with it. So it is not about making art human but letting art make you more human, to let art be the stimuli that evokes your emotion, intellect, body and spirit- all the qualities that make a one a human being.

Learning Differently With Traditional Art Practices

Our performing arts institution is located in a rapidly urbanizing area, south east of Bangalore.  The area has transformed from rural to semi-urban in less than ten years.  Semi-urban, because the civic infrastructure is poor and cultural and community commons are virtually non-existent.  I moved into this neighborhood five years ago and Antara began in an effort to bring artists to a community that had no access to any formal spaces for artistic practices.   For most urban middle-class children dance and music learning is accessed through out-of-school learning.  Majority of them do not pursue this learning beyond school age and these classes are generally the only formal arts-education they receive in their lifetime. 

We began with a commitment to traditional South Asian art practices (Odissi, Kathak, Bharatanatyam, Hindustani and Karnatic Music).   

What do these art practices bring us that conventional learning does not?

We believe that traditional artistic practices offer a range of benefits, helping one to form connections between:

·         concept and movement (or sound)

·         the physical and the ideal

·         reality and imagination

·         action and thought

·         most importantly, body and mind. 

Many young students who come to learn from us experience for the first time the connection between the living body and the lived body.  That is, they experience that the BODY not just the mind, is a SITE OF LEARNING.  Through their bodies they not only learn movement but also music, rhythm, history and myth.  Through reflective exercises of writing and other forms of expression that the students engage in as part of their dance training, we began to realize the depth of student’s experiences.

Traditional art practices taught at Antara serve as tools for embodied learning which are not normally offered in conventional education systems:

Conventional methods approach learning as:	Embodied practice at Antara, approach learning as:
teacher-centered, focused on external goals or student-centred and skill focused	developmental progression that happens with the beginning of inner awareness and moving towards an interaction with the outside world
mind focused and teach how to be outwardly organized	body-focused and teach how to be inwardly organized

An example of embodied learning practice at Antara:

Poornima Dahale, Odissi instructor at Antara is holding a 10-day intensive workshop for beginners.  Her classes include reflective exercises of the mind and deep relaxation practices.  In the open garden space at Antara, students are experiencing their bodies in a wholly different way.   The pictures say more than words can.

Poornima says

“I believe letting go of all stress, relaxing and enjoying works wonders vs. forcing, controlling and torturing your body.

I do not believe in mind over body theory. Body and mind work hand in hand. Both influence each other and guide each other. Body has its own wisdom and  it is constantly guiding us ,only if we could listen.

My journey is to find ways to share my love and passion for Odissi but with a more holistic and joyful approach. I try to learn from various forms of bodily practices and bring the most suitable lessons I learn into my own practice and sharing.”

Demystifying Devadasis, Demystifying Dance

Today almost three generations down from the nationalist movement, Devadasis are thought of as extinct and are recalled as people from the past. They are remembered either as auspicious women who were victimized by the society or as overly sexualized people who with their excessive sexual instincts were propagating a lifestyle which was regressive to the ideals and the growth of Indian society. Stigmatized as a community with regressive ideals, they were alienated from their own art.  These are not imaginings and ideas that are founded on material history of the Devadasi community but are certain tropes that were created as a result of the political agenda and interests of various people during the nationalist movement. Sadly, these tropes become the reference points of their history, to which they trace their present identities. These tropes are so dominant in the imagination of the people and the Devadasis themselves that, to uproot it, one has to delve historically into the complexities of their lives. One has to trace, not only linearly but dialectically to get some insight into the trajectory of events that unfolded in the history of Devadasis – the people and the practice. 

The Devadasis of the present day themselves have to invoke ‘artificial’ memories of their pasts that are constructed politically in order to make sense of their identity. Since Devadasis are portrayed in such opposing images of sexual exploitation on one hand and glorious artists on the other, they pose a problem of category. The Marxists interpret them as exploited labourers with no agency while some nationalists consider them as the keepers of the culture and the tradition of the country through their art and practice of dance. It is required, for us to articulate the past of the Devadasis differently to render their present identity, a historical reference and not vulgarly reductive and politically motivated stereotype. In order to open up multiple yet not skewed imagination of Devadasis, it is needed that we explore the social reality of the Devadasis in the previous centuries in India. To recount and account for historiographies exploring the subjectivities of the Devadasis who were common place is the need of the day and not just that of the few iconic and exceptional ones. A larger number of Devadasis are the ones whose voices were drowned in the loud commotion of the Nationalist movement with the grand agenda of reformation of the whole country.

Historically, the many roles played by devadasis are ambiguous in their definition and are amorphous in popular memory. The term “Devadasi” itself is a problematic term which is loaded with one, singular imagination. Various regional practices collapse under the weight of this one term and the meaning it entails. Leslie Orr in her book “Donors, Devotees and daughters of god” discusses how the term “Devadasi” is barely encountered in the regional inscriptions and the scripts of the 18th and 19th century. This implies that the word is a much modern creation that reduces and consolidates various practices into one category. Books like Davesh Soneji’s “Unfinished gestures” and autobiographies of devadasis such as “Rukmini Devi- A Life” by Leela Samson and “Balasaraswathi- Her Art and Life” by Douglas Knight demystify this term “Devadasi” for us. They reawaken the eclectic lives and practices in the 19th and the 20th century that are eclipsed by this singular dominant term. “Devadasi” as a terminology, is crudely understood to mean “slave of god” or “hand-maiden of god”. Stereotypically, we tend to associate the term with the temple women who were dedicated or symbolically married to the presiding deity of the temple.

Devadasis in temple have been the perpetual and persisting stereotypical image of the Devadasis in Indian cultural imagination. Apart from being in temples they were also courtesans and street dancers. Their roles were diverse and they were not restricted to dancing and singing. The modern idea of Devadasis is largely that of dancing women in temple. It is necessary to break this one image into the variety of experiences these women went through within and outside of temple. Leslie Orr in her work traces the beginnings of the Devadasi practice in the temples to the Chola period in the 6th to 9th century. She develops and constructs this history through inscriptional and iconographical evidences on the temple walls. She also claims that in the Chola dynasty, the temple women were the patrons of the temple as well which is clearly reversed by the medieval time. Though we frequently encounter the idea that the raison d’etre of the devadasis in the temple was singing and dancing, Leslie Orr says that their roles in the society were holistic and diverse, and their lives were relevant to the on-goings of the stately affairs.

Saskia Kerseboom, author of Nitya Sumangali, recently in a talk mentioned that dance was not just formal movement. It was a yagna which had a veda. A good dance performance was important for the well-being of the state, crops, king and his subjects. Dance in today’s society seems to have lost this relevance to our lives and is perceived as something apart from the everydayness of the world. This calls us to engage with the nature of the art practice and explore the lives of the artists, to see what made them so relevant and probably what should make artists relevant to our lives and world today.

References

• Soneji Davesh, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Orr, Leslie C., and Leslie Orrey. Donors, devotees, and daughters of God: temple women in medieval Tamilnadu. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
•  Samson, Leela. Rukmini Devi: A Life. Penguin Books India, 2010. 
• Knight, Douglas M. Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life. Wesleyan University Press, 2010. 
• Kerseboom, Saskia “An East-West Perspective on Abhinaya”, Conference “Abhinaya in Classical Dance”, Bangalore, November 15, 2014

Javalis- Abhinaya in the 21st Century

As part of Antara’s effort to situate South Asian dancing from an aesthetic, historical and social perspective, we carry reviews and analysis of some of these embodied practices.

This week’s blogpost is by Ajay Cadambi, a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore who studies biophysics. His interests include the history of science, temple architecture and dance history. 

Javali, Raga Atana, Roopaka Tala

In 1920, the dedication of women to temple service was banned. This was directly in response to a nation-wide agitation that viewed women associated with temples as prostitutes. In Andhra, strangely enough, the art form of hereditary female performers survived well into the 1950s, in what are referred to as salon performances or mezuvani (from the urdu word mezban which means host). Contrary to popular belief, the devadasi did not perform excluslively within the precincts of the temple. Nationalists seem to want to skew over this fact, in their reconstruction of the history of art forms like Bharatanatyam which they describe as temple-centric.

Consequently, a large number of hereditary female perfomers or sanis were disenfranchised and their art form would have altogether disappeared into oblivion if not for the efforts of a wonderful woman named Vakkalanka Swapnasundari. With the support of her Kuchipudi guru, Pasumarthy Sitaramayya, she convinced various illustrious sanis from all the three major regions of Andhra, viz. Telangana, Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra to teach her their art. Important amongst them were Late Maddula Lakshminarayana, Late Chirutanipuram Pottigari Ranganayaki, Late Saride Anasuya and Late Golconda Bharathamma. Swapnasundari single handedly resurrected this art form and brought it to the proscenium stage.

A javali from this repertoire is presented by one of her students in the link I have pasted below.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEAp-Fmh6nQ

Unabashedly erotic, javalis are the quintessential marker of salon performances by courtesans. Soneji notes that “javalis are also signs of the volatile, sexually charged space of the salon, one that was diametrically opposed to the contained, private sexuality of the conjugal home." Like their predecessor, the padam, javalis are also tripartite and contain a pallavi (refrain), anupallavi (a sub-refrain) and charanams(stanzas). Like the padam, the narrative content of the javali is subject to multiple interpretations. The unravelling of this layered meaning through the medium of abhinaya (mime) via the use of hastas(hands) and facial movements that depict objects and ideas in multiple ways, in accordance with classical imagery associated with shringara (erotic love) is what would be expected from a good dancer.

A sani would also be expected to sing the javali in addition to performing abhinaya to it. The raga(melody) that the song is set to, the poetic devices used in the lyrics of the javali , and the tala(rhythm) enable narrative and aesthetic movement through the text. The narrator of the javali is almost always a woman and she is mostly in conversation with a patron, even if the lyrics themselves are directed towards a local representation of Krishna. The javali is always about the sexual subjectivity of the individual female performer and it is for this reason that sanis also talk of the proximities of their own lives to the narrative of the javali.

It is indeed, a rare opportunity to be able to witness elaborate abhinaya and to witness such a rare composition that is mostly unknown outside of the sani repertoire. Most of these javalis have not been documented in textual formats. There is an element of spontaneity in the performance as well which would be expected of a sani, because abhinaya was never “choregraphed” per se.  The distinctive feature of javali renditions in coastal Andhra is the gaptu-varusa, or improvised dance sequence, at the end, which apart from being exquisite in this particular rendition, undeniably marks the technical and aesthetic continuity of javali renditions in the courtesan community.

A brief description of the Javali is as follows:

The nayika is married and is trying to ward off the sexual advances of the hero. She might be doing so because she does not think highly him. He may not be a refined man for example. Or she may not want to engage with him because he has approached her at an inopportune moment and she does not wish to be caught by her husband. The dancer, Pujita Krishna Jyoti very skilfully portrays both these ideas.

“Expect nothing from me.

If my husband were to know, he will think me a cheat.

I am not like that lotus-eyed whore of yours, so these antics won't work.
I know you are only after my jewels, but I am not flattered by how handsome you are.

I can only tell smooth talkers like you to get lost.
Don't ask for things you can't have (like the moon).

I am appalled that you aren't even the least bit coy at approaching someone as exquisite as I.

Go away!”

 Reference:

- Soneji Davesh, Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory and Modernity in South India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.