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University of California, Berkeley
Tamil Chair Conference
Kalai - Performance
14 November 2009
[see
U.C. Berkeley Department of South and South East Asian Studies,
Center for South Asian Studies and Berkeley Tamil Chair Web Site]
Opening Remarks: Alexander Von Rospott
Chair South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California, Berkeley. PANEL 1 Saturday, 9.15 - 10.15 am Janet O’Shea
University of California, Los Angeles
This paper investigates the Festival of India - started in London in 1982 -
as an event that furthered the international circulation of Indian classical
dance forms. The Festival of India was created as a response to a perceived
deficit in international awareness of cultural life of India. For the event’s
organizers and promoters, Indian classical dance forms became a way of
offsetting this lack. While drawing on earlier studies of the ‘revival’ of
Indian classical dance forms as well as studies of the recontextualizing of
Indian classical music, this paper also relies on theories of collection,
tourism, and ‘museumization’ to study the effect of festival programming on the
representation of difference in an international sphere. As part of this, I
question, for instance, how classical dance performance allowed the Festival of
India to support India’s status as an emerging, yet non-aligned, power in the
cold war context.
Ahalya Satkunaratnam
University of Chicago Strategic movements: An exploration of
Bharata Natyam performance in Colombo,
Sri Lanka
This paper examines two Bharata Natyam choreographies performed in different
venues in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2007. Both works evoked themes of war and
conflict and were choreographed by a single choreographer/teacher. I suggest
that the spaces in which these pieces were performed, and their associated
audiences, influenced the choreographer’s approach to war and, correspondingly,
multiculturalism and peace. Utilizing ethnography and choreographic analysis, I
explore how the sites of the performance, their related histories and current
circumstances within a context of war, shape performance on conflict.
Coffee Break: 10.15 10.30 am
PANEL II. 10.30 - 11.30 am Bharathanatyam - its Americanization or Localization
A study based on the performance, production and training in North America Vidhya Subramanian
This paper looks at the changes that Bharatanatyam has undergone as a result of
its migration to North America. Throughout the paper, both theoretical and
practical aspects of the art form will be touched upon to elucidate the theories
presented. At the outset, I will present some background information on the art
form. I will follow this up with a brief report on the history of
Bharatanatyam’s migration to North America. The methodology will divide the
study into three aspects – performance, production and teaching, in order to
take a look at the influences of migration on the art form.
In performance and production, after touching briefly upon the history of
Bharatanatyam’s migration to America, I will examine if artists in North America
have adapted their performance and production, and touch upon works presented by
a couple of them to understand how they were influenced in their work due to
immigration. Similarly, the changes undergone in the teaching of the art form
will be looked into in some detail to provide insight on what incites these
changes.
Magic, Drink, and Seduction:
The Untenable Life of the Moti Dance in Tamilnadu
Davesh Soneji
McGill University
In 1933, when R. S. Shelvankar was working on the first study of
Marathi-language records of the Tanjore palace in Modi script, he noted a unique
set of injunctions to be followed by court nattuvanars which included the
following statement: “Without the permission of the court, pungi [the
snake-charmer’s pipe] should not be played, nor should the modi dance be
performed.” But what exactly was this moti dance? From the Tanjore palace
records, it is clear that the dance was prohibited by the darbar in 1820 during
the rule of King Serfoji II (1777-1832), and that it was accompanied by the
playing of the snake-charmer’s pipe. In 1867, colonial anthropologist John
Shortt published an essay entitled “The Bayadère; or, Dancing Girls of Southern
India,” in which he mentions a dance called “modiyedoocooroothoo” (moti
etukkiratu), and provides an extensive description of it. While we were
conducting fieldwork with the devadasi community in Viralimalai in 2004, Hari
Krishnan and I came across a living version of the moti dance performed by R.
Muttukkannammal. This was a hybrid piece, performed in two languages, Tamil and
Hindi, and almost exactly matched the description provided by Shortt in 1867.
The dance offers a play on the Tamil word moti, which refers to a trial of
magical power on the one hand, and to the snake-charmer’s pipe (also called
makiti or makuti) on the other. In the second half of the piece, the dance
switches from Tamil into “Hindustani” mode, and becomes a kind of romantic
drinking song in which the heroine is seduced by the hero. Using historical and
ethnographic sources, this essay contextualizes the moti dance in terms of
larger questions about hybridity, “classicism,” morality, and the question of
the tenability of devadasi performance practices in modern South India.
Discussion of Morning Papers: 11.30am - 12.30 Lunch Break: 12.30 - 1.45pm
PANEL III 2 - 3pm Kristen Rudasill
Bowling Green State University, Ohio Distinctive Tastes: The Aesthetics of Sabha Drama
Ideas about good taste in the city of Chennai, India, are determined in a
substantial way by the performances that find their way into the sabhas. These
cultural organizations are best known for the December-January music festival,
but they operate year-round, sponsoring primarily classical music and dance
performances along with some plays, films, and lectures. Each sabha has its own
unique identity and calendar of events, but there is an identifiable “sabha
aesthetic” for each art. This paper attempts to articulate this aesthetic for a
genre I call sabha theater. Additionally, through an analysis of the debates and
discourse surrounding the genre, I argue that the oft-dismissed
entertainment-centered dramas favored by sabhas offer an essential counterpoint
to the classical performances in creating ideas about what qualifies as good
taste.
The Divine Drama of Utal and Kutal
The Mattaiyati Utsavam at Alvar Tirunagari Archana Venkatesan
University of California, Davis
On the final day of the Annual Markali Festival at Alvar Tirunagari, Visnu as
Adi Nayaka and his consort, Adi Nayaki have a grand quarrel, which is followed
by an even grander reconciliation, facilitated by Nammalvar. Divine quarrels and
reconciliations are common themes in many temples festivals, both Saiva and
Vaisnava. In this paper, I will discuss the purpose of this festival at Alvar
Tirunagari, and the role of the Araiyar, a group of hereditary performers in
enacting the festival.
Coffee Break 3pm -3.30pm
Panel IV 3:30-4:30 pm A Little Jingle of the Dancing Bells
Reflections on the Staging of Early Tamil Cinema and Bharatanatyam Hari Krishnan
Wesleyan University
In the early 1920s, when cinema as a colonial technology came to South India,
hereditary devadasi dancers were the leading actresses of the emergent film
world. It was precisely their stigmatized status that enabled them to enter this
world at a time when other upper-caste “householding” women could not.
Ironically, today upper-caste women dominate Tamil and Telugu language cinema as
overt, public objects of sexual desire, in a strangely conservative yet
promiscuous, globalized India. The story of this transformation is deeply
connected to the emergence of “Bharatanatyam” as a middle-class cultural
practice, and to the new forms of nationalized morality that came to be signaled
by both Bharatanatyam and new Tamil cinema. Mythological films, the vilification
of courtesans and dasis, and the comedic trope of the nattuvanar in cinema
radically altered the practice and staging of Bharatanatyam. Later, in the 1950s
and 60s, films such Konjum Salangai (“A Little Jingle of the Dancing Bells,”
1962) that explored the complex love-triangle between a musician, a singer and a
devadasi dancer, reified middle-class notions about Bharatanatyam’s pasts. The
success of this film was largely dependent on the Brahmin female dancer Kamala
Lakshman, who had made Bharatanatyam dance “safe” for public consumption a
decade earlier. In this paper, I historicize the “cross-fertilization” between
Tamil cinema and dance – early cinema represents Bharatanatyam’s pasts, while
stage performances of Bharatanatyam are dependent on the aesthetics of cinema.
In doing so, I demonstrate how deliberations and on nation, caste, and morality
effect the creation of Bharatanatyam as and in cinema.
Discussion of Afternoon Papers 4:30-5:30
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