A good thing about being partially unemployed is having a lot of time to catch up on videos that I wanted to see for a long time - Jerome Bel, Wim Vandekeybus, Akram Khan. The not so good side of it is having too much time to think and interact with those whom we have not met for a long time.
Somebody showed me an article that spoke about how white women who engage in belly dancing engage themselves in the process of cultural appropriation and how they should not be engaging in those forms of dance that originated in different ethnic set-up.
It felt so bad to have read that... It felt so bad because if one would change this one little word "belly dancing" into "bharatanatyam" or "chhau" then this article could be speaking about me and last, I don't know how many, years of my life... And do I feel like I did something wrong by having studied/performed/taught these dance forms????? NO. I don't.
I don't for many reasons.
One of them is the amazing education I received at The Department of Indology at Warsaw University. One of the first books that I was made to read was Orientalism by Edward Said. I have obviously met various types of teachers there but and I was lucky enough have met a few who did not believe in "cultural prejudices that are derived from a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and of the Middle East, and which, in practice, functioned as implicit justifications for the colonial and the imperial ambitions of the European powers and the U.S." (Wikipedia, article on Orientalism, Edward Said).
I was lucky to have met prof S. who was one of the greatest teachers of my life. It was with her that I would sit in a classroom and watch videos of Teyyam, Kutiyattam, Kathakali, Yakshagana, Terukuttu. It was with her that I have been through a year of reading Natyashastra (She would have killed me for spelling it like this without proper diacritic signs) and translating parts of Mattavilasaprahasana, Mahabharata, Shoorpanakha anka of Ashcharyachudamani. It is thanks to her that I will always remember that it was in 1912/13 that Ganapati Shastri discovered the manuscripts of Bhasa's works in a house belonging to one of the Chakyars. It was she with whom I could sit in the Kutambalam of Vadakumnathan temple in Thrissur and watch performances of Nangyar Kuttu and Kutiyattam in 2002. It was she he would rent a car to take me to the field where Staal attempted at reconstruction of fire ritual. It is because of her that I am the person I am today.
Do I know about the critique of Peter Brook's project of Mahabharata as taken away from it's cultural context? Critique of Stall for providing multicultural context to the fire ritual? I do. But are the Teyyams organised by IGNCA in Delhi less taken out of their cultural context than Brook's Mahabharata? Is a Mohiniyattam production of a Swan Lake less taken out of it's cultural context than Staal's fire ritual? Is my professor less culturally connected to the performing arts that she studies and writes about than an urban Indian 40-year-old working in an IT sector?
I was also lucky to have studied Comparative Indian Literature at The Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies at Delhi University. When I first decided to pursue my studies in that Department the University Authorities told me that the course in Comparative Indian Literature does not exist, and that if I think it does then I am not intelligent enough to pursue studies at the university level. But the course did exist and I did fight my way through to get the admission. And I am happy I did. Thank you for making me read Badal Sircar, Chandrashekhar Kambar, BV Karanth, Jibanada Das, Jaywant Dalvi, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Thank you for discussions on women position in India, on cast identity, on problematics of religion in various regional literatures! Thank you for adjusting the timetable in such a way so that being the only student of the course I could pursue both my MA and M.phil and my Bharatanatyam studies at the same time. Thank you for making me "me" and giving me a sense of connection through literature with the place where I live. You did not teach me to read "Five point someone", but you gave me a sense of connection with the land I step on.
Thank you also for teaching me that modern theatre in urban India started from translations and adaptations of Shakespeare. Did the theatre personalities of that time think of the concept of cultural appropriation? (And yes, I do know that I'm writing in a simplistic way now).
Few years back I was working in a village in Rajasthan with a group of theatre artists from Kolkata. I was the only "foreign" person in the group. The moment I arrived I was told how dangerous the place can be for me, and how much time it took the villagers to accept that the director's wife can wear capri trousers and roam around the place. I was told not to wear my black sari because the villagers might think that I am a ghost. (You know - "those stupid village people who still live in XIX century conditions"). So I did wear my black sari and I did roam around the village meeting children and women, visiting the colony of the pottery makers, eating roti at a house of the neighbours. We were working on a play and I invited the women and children to come and watch our final rehearsal at that place. Around 50 people came... and it made me so happy... People I worked with looked at me as if I was a mad person, and I looked at them in the same way when they busied themselves with complaints about the lack of entertainment, lack of TV, heat, need to have drinks more often. I don't know who was more "foreign or Orientalist" amongst us - me or the rest of the group.
Being a non-Indian person working with Indian culture is not easy. Few years back somebody close to me said that people want to watch my performances only because I have fair skin; that the quality of my dance does not matter. It hurt a lot. Few months back when I was working for my own project at artist residency another person said that I was given the residency only because it looks cool to have a foreign name printed in a programme brochure. It hurt badly again. It hurts when each time I start teaching in a new institute I have to convince the head that I do know Bharatanatyam as well as my Indian colleagues do. That parents of the students can always come and talk to me if they are scared that their children may not be given proper education in this classical Indian dance form because of me being a non-Indian teacher. (And yes, I do suck at two major points - I don't speak Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam, and I don't know how to sing, I'm out of key most of the time).
Being a non-Indian Bharatanatyam dancer also means limited access to resources and performances. Well... it's actually more complicated than that... There are some festivals that want to present performances by foreign artists and I did perform at some such festivals. They are usually nicely organised, and the performers are a mixture of both Indian and foreign artists but at the same time this question is always there - why the need of showcasing artists as "foreign"? Am I really a white monkey that is to be displayed on stage for the people to watch and the festival organisers to have a higher turnout? It is below my dignity as an artist to be treated like that, at the same time these are the only festivals that are accessible for me, and in most cases the only ones that openly call for applications to apply. I recently rejected 3 such performances, and I guess the politics around the performance is one of the reasons why I feel less and less connected with Bharatanatyam these days... Funny... It used to be the only life I knew...
I recently worked in a project that rejected me as an artist because they wanted to work with "native Indian women" and I was a foreign national for them. They ended up working in a close collaboration with a "native Indian woman" who spend last few years of her life living and studying in Germany. I fought badly, and finally was accepted into the project, but my skin was not brown enough to be treated seriously. It was a bad experience to work with a group of white faces who came to civilise natives of this country in their ways of living. It was a true experience in Orientalism, and I hope never to repeat this experience again.
I am not an Indian national, at the same time I have never studied in a fancy dance institute abroad and do not have a tag of "foreign educated" artist, so i am not exotic enough at the market.
Too white to be brown, too brown to be white. It's a tough place to be in. Believe me.
Why am I writing all these?
It started from this idea of appropriation of traditional arts. Well, in my naive little mind I always thought that art is something that is supposed to unite people rather than divide. If a white woman is not supposed to learn/perform belly dancing, Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam or any other dance form, that why should a Japanese or Indian woman learn classical ballet? Isn't it a form of appropriation? Why shouldn't we say - hey, you Malayalis - don't try to dance Kathak. You Poles - do only your Krakowiak dance. You, Akram Khan - don't try to be contemporary. And if we apply this to arts, then won't we soon apply the same principles to our lives? Poland only for Poles! Maharashtra for Maharashtrians! Haven't we heard it somewhere before? Really... do we artists want to repeat the politics of division rather than unity?????
Somebody showed me an article that spoke about how white women who engage in belly dancing engage themselves in the process of cultural appropriation and how they should not be engaging in those forms of dance that originated in different ethnic set-up.
It felt so bad to have read that... It felt so bad because if one would change this one little word "belly dancing" into "bharatanatyam" or "chhau" then this article could be speaking about me and last, I don't know how many, years of my life... And do I feel like I did something wrong by having studied/performed/taught these dance forms????? NO. I don't.
I don't for many reasons.
One of them is the amazing education I received at The Department of Indology at Warsaw University. One of the first books that I was made to read was Orientalism by Edward Said. I have obviously met various types of teachers there but and I was lucky enough have met a few who did not believe in "cultural prejudices that are derived from a long tradition of romanticized images of Asia and of the Middle East, and which, in practice, functioned as implicit justifications for the colonial and the imperial ambitions of the European powers and the U.S." (Wikipedia, article on Orientalism, Edward Said).
I was lucky to have met prof S. who was one of the greatest teachers of my life. It was with her that I would sit in a classroom and watch videos of Teyyam, Kutiyattam, Kathakali, Yakshagana, Terukuttu. It was with her that I have been through a year of reading Natyashastra (She would have killed me for spelling it like this without proper diacritic signs) and translating parts of Mattavilasaprahasana, Mahabharata, Shoorpanakha anka of Ashcharyachudamani. It is thanks to her that I will always remember that it was in 1912/13 that Ganapati Shastri discovered the manuscripts of Bhasa's works in a house belonging to one of the Chakyars. It was she with whom I could sit in the Kutambalam of Vadakumnathan temple in Thrissur and watch performances of Nangyar Kuttu and Kutiyattam in 2002. It was she he would rent a car to take me to the field where Staal attempted at reconstruction of fire ritual. It is because of her that I am the person I am today.
Do I know about the critique of Peter Brook's project of Mahabharata as taken away from it's cultural context? Critique of Stall for providing multicultural context to the fire ritual? I do. But are the Teyyams organised by IGNCA in Delhi less taken out of their cultural context than Brook's Mahabharata? Is a Mohiniyattam production of a Swan Lake less taken out of it's cultural context than Staal's fire ritual? Is my professor less culturally connected to the performing arts that she studies and writes about than an urban Indian 40-year-old working in an IT sector?
I was also lucky to have studied Comparative Indian Literature at The Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies at Delhi University. When I first decided to pursue my studies in that Department the University Authorities told me that the course in Comparative Indian Literature does not exist, and that if I think it does then I am not intelligent enough to pursue studies at the university level. But the course did exist and I did fight my way through to get the admission. And I am happy I did. Thank you for making me read Badal Sircar, Chandrashekhar Kambar, BV Karanth, Jibanada Das, Jaywant Dalvi, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Thank you for discussions on women position in India, on cast identity, on problematics of religion in various regional literatures! Thank you for adjusting the timetable in such a way so that being the only student of the course I could pursue both my MA and M.phil and my Bharatanatyam studies at the same time. Thank you for making me "me" and giving me a sense of connection through literature with the place where I live. You did not teach me to read "Five point someone", but you gave me a sense of connection with the land I step on.
Thank you also for teaching me that modern theatre in urban India started from translations and adaptations of Shakespeare. Did the theatre personalities of that time think of the concept of cultural appropriation? (And yes, I do know that I'm writing in a simplistic way now).
Few years back I was working in a village in Rajasthan with a group of theatre artists from Kolkata. I was the only "foreign" person in the group. The moment I arrived I was told how dangerous the place can be for me, and how much time it took the villagers to accept that the director's wife can wear capri trousers and roam around the place. I was told not to wear my black sari because the villagers might think that I am a ghost. (You know - "those stupid village people who still live in XIX century conditions"). So I did wear my black sari and I did roam around the village meeting children and women, visiting the colony of the pottery makers, eating roti at a house of the neighbours. We were working on a play and I invited the women and children to come and watch our final rehearsal at that place. Around 50 people came... and it made me so happy... People I worked with looked at me as if I was a mad person, and I looked at them in the same way when they busied themselves with complaints about the lack of entertainment, lack of TV, heat, need to have drinks more often. I don't know who was more "foreign or Orientalist" amongst us - me or the rest of the group.
Being a non-Indian person working with Indian culture is not easy. Few years back somebody close to me said that people want to watch my performances only because I have fair skin; that the quality of my dance does not matter. It hurt a lot. Few months back when I was working for my own project at artist residency another person said that I was given the residency only because it looks cool to have a foreign name printed in a programme brochure. It hurt badly again. It hurts when each time I start teaching in a new institute I have to convince the head that I do know Bharatanatyam as well as my Indian colleagues do. That parents of the students can always come and talk to me if they are scared that their children may not be given proper education in this classical Indian dance form because of me being a non-Indian teacher. (And yes, I do suck at two major points - I don't speak Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam, and I don't know how to sing, I'm out of key most of the time).
Being a non-Indian Bharatanatyam dancer also means limited access to resources and performances. Well... it's actually more complicated than that... There are some festivals that want to present performances by foreign artists and I did perform at some such festivals. They are usually nicely organised, and the performers are a mixture of both Indian and foreign artists but at the same time this question is always there - why the need of showcasing artists as "foreign"? Am I really a white monkey that is to be displayed on stage for the people to watch and the festival organisers to have a higher turnout? It is below my dignity as an artist to be treated like that, at the same time these are the only festivals that are accessible for me, and in most cases the only ones that openly call for applications to apply. I recently rejected 3 such performances, and I guess the politics around the performance is one of the reasons why I feel less and less connected with Bharatanatyam these days... Funny... It used to be the only life I knew...
I recently worked in a project that rejected me as an artist because they wanted to work with "native Indian women" and I was a foreign national for them. They ended up working in a close collaboration with a "native Indian woman" who spend last few years of her life living and studying in Germany. I fought badly, and finally was accepted into the project, but my skin was not brown enough to be treated seriously. It was a bad experience to work with a group of white faces who came to civilise natives of this country in their ways of living. It was a true experience in Orientalism, and I hope never to repeat this experience again.
I am not an Indian national, at the same time I have never studied in a fancy dance institute abroad and do not have a tag of "foreign educated" artist, so i am not exotic enough at the market.
Too white to be brown, too brown to be white. It's a tough place to be in. Believe me.
Why am I writing all these?
It started from this idea of appropriation of traditional arts. Well, in my naive little mind I always thought that art is something that is supposed to unite people rather than divide. If a white woman is not supposed to learn/perform belly dancing, Bharatanatyam, Mohiniyattam or any other dance form, that why should a Japanese or Indian woman learn classical ballet? Isn't it a form of appropriation? Why shouldn't we say - hey, you Malayalis - don't try to dance Kathak. You Poles - do only your Krakowiak dance. You, Akram Khan - don't try to be contemporary. And if we apply this to arts, then won't we soon apply the same principles to our lives? Poland only for Poles! Maharashtra for Maharashtrians! Haven't we heard it somewhere before? Really... do we artists want to repeat the politics of division rather than unity?????
