Author/ Chao-he Lee (Specially invited writer, from the Graduate Institute of Anthropology, NTU)
Translator/ Artist Translation Service 譯術家專業翻譯工作室
I would like to share some of my observations during this co-production exchange project, with focuses on how the choreographers saw the dancers from the other dance group, in hopes of creating more detailed records regarding the interactions in this project.
Exploring Shakti, “the Divine Feminine”: Starting with Soft Bodies
Daksha Ji’s works aim to explore the extraordinary feminine energy (Shakti). The idea of this work can be traced back to the first exchange when Daksha Ji was surprised by the Taiwanese dancers’ softness. Therefore, she tried to integrate the soft feminine energy from the Indian philosophy into the choreography and presentation for the purpose of further exploration. During the rehearsals, she learned that working with the dancers by giving them direct instructions was somehow difficult for their body development. It seemed that they could only see the surface and imitate those movements from the outside. And she was sensitive enough to discover the dancers’ misunderstanding of the core meaning of the work due to cultural differences. In the Indian philosophy, Shakti (feminine energy) means soft, introverted, flowing, and giving birth to life. It has to be integrated with Shiva (masculine energy). When they co-exist, life is complete. However, although this principle seems simple, Daksha Ji was extremely careful about the dancers’ understanding and the audience’s interpretation during this cross-cultural exchange. During the middle stage of the development, she showed discretion in gathering the dancers and explaining her creative concepts to them with precise translations, guiding them into the universe of the choreographer’s creation. She explained as below.
This work is about seeking for self energy through the exploration of the two internal forces, Shiva and Shakti. Through the dancers’ bodies, the feminine energy in dancing was recovered. Shakti was a force of energy instead of a position or explanation. It had nothing to do with gender or appearance. It was about symbolic exploration and creation in the dancing process through the dancers’ bodies. Therefore, the aim was to present the cyclic, not linear, property of the feminine energy. Its inward direction, not outward, its creativity and attraction, its flowing like water, its perfection like a retracted circle, as it is care as well as nourishment, and it is birth as well as creation, and its omnipresence.
She tried to create an imagery space of dialectic among the choreographer, the dancers, and the audience through this work, and take the audience on a journey of awakening, exploration, discovery, and joy. Here, being overjoyed and elated was because of not only discovery, but also the hidden metaphor of the energy exchange between Taiwan and India. Through roaming, exploration, making friends, and building relationships, there was the joy of finding others to be with and the pleasure of sharing the recognized joy with the audience.
After this, she decided not to use the original teaching method of teaching the Odissi movements first and the combinations later. Instead, she chose to allow the dancers to develop the emotions they wanted to express first and teach the Odissi movements on the next day to help them create the images. Moreover, she also helped the Indian dancers to further develop their bodies by leading them to find the softer feminine energy, to enhance the work by making the best use of the bodies of the dancers with different trainings from different cultures. She asked the dancers to discover their inside, not the appearances, in order to identify the energy flows between postures. It was like, during the process, Darksha Ji guided the dancers to seek for a precious treasure by reducing rational thinking and focusing on feelings - clarity, brightness, and without doubt – giving birth to the most beautiful thing in the world within the entanglement of the arms. She interpreted the new lives born to earth through Shakti by handling exquisitely the tangle of reluctance to let go and sharing during the childbirth process of leaving the mother’s body. The work was finally completed, Darksha Ji’s exploration of Shakti started with the softness of the Tjimur dancers’ bodies and ended with singing of the Paiwan songs. During this process, she had always watched the Tjimur dancers’ bodies and took very good care of them while being happy to share her discovery. Through the dancers’ bodies, the deep thoughts and focuses in the aspects of body, mind, and spirit were linked up.
Déjà Vu in the Memory: Being Loyal to Our Differences
On the other hand, in the rehearsals for choreographer Baru’s work, the dancers first practiced the movements designed based on the four-step dance and Odissi dance, and then these movements were adjusted, modified in details, and re-arranged. In the initial stage, Baru requested the Tjimur dancers to have their own ideas and be in the active position instead of just learning the Odissi dancers’ movements for the adaptation of the four-step dance. Moreover, Baru also hoped the Odissi dancers to give up all the hand gestures to reduce the dancing style of Odissi dance. However, this attempt did not work. The Odissi dancers were particular about flow and balance when using their bodies. Without hand gestures, coordination for movements became really difficult to achieve. And the dancers found it very hard to learn. Therefore, Baru asked the Odissi dancers to show beautiful postures which they felt comfortable to show. Interestingly, the Odissi dancers once again habitually showed the hand gestures with the first two fingers joined and the last three fingers stretched out. For the Odissi dancers, each hand gesture comes with its own meaning. And this hand gesture means focus, meditation, and even a peacock. However, the most important thing at this moment was not the meaning behind the hand gesture, but the functional meaning it could represent. Thus, this hand gesture symbolized the on-stage performances without being limited by the meaning behind it. It was just a medium for the dancers to share the status of co-existence with the audience. This time, when the Odissi dancers put out their hand gestures habitually, Baru only suggested them to reduce the symbolic meaning of it instead of forbidding them to do it.
In fact, compared to the rehearsals for Darksha Ji's choreography, Baru's rehearsals were relatively slow in progress. And by the end, he wanted to change the unbalance caused by asking the Indian dancers to get rid of their physical habits. Instead, he grouped the dancers to create dual (even multiple) physical narratives, fortunately reconstructing the tension produced when the main bodies of the two cultures encountered. Originally, I thought it was a snap course and a way of compromises due to the time limitations on the new choreography for this cross-cultural exchange as he did not have sufficient time to think about the Odissi dancers’ cultures and habits in relation to their bodies and how to handle different dancing styles. However, after thinking over and over, I wondered what was my expectation behind this judgment? And was my understanding of “exchange” too narrow with this idea? Seemingly, cross-cultural exchanges are always expected to achieve the result of “1+1>2”, with the hope of bringing bigger and broader extra results. Yet, is it possible for cross-cultural exchanges to achieve “integration and bigger union”, with deeper thoughts about “greater oneness”? I asked myself these questions. When performing some sections of “Déjà Vu in the Memory” choreographed by Baru, the dancers were grouped based on their physical habits and they were arranged to fight against the members of other group. This method seemed arbitrary. However, the physical features of the dancers from the two different cultures were maintained, so that these two (or more) types of dancers could perform freely with their bodies on the stage. On the other hand, during the interviews with the Odissi dancers, we could hear some praises from them about how Baru conducted the rehearsals. They were grateful that Baru did not request them to dance in a way which they were not good at, but allowed them to present themselves on the stage at will. This seemed to reflect another precious aspect of this cross-cultural exchange, the “celebration of this encounter”. Those on the same stage shared the existence in that space at that moment. They counted the beats in their own languages. It was like the decomposed and then reassembled steps could still clearly show the dancers’ cultural memories. At the same time, they competed against each other and celebrate with each other on the same stage, presenting the process of getting to know each other with all the similarities and differences. In fact, this theme could be seen on the stage and off the stage during these two weeks.
Praises after the Encounter: Seeing the Heterogeneity of the Bodies in the Cross-Cultural Exchange
During the exchange process of this Lazurite Initiative, there had been a lot of praises regarding this encounter. And they continued to echo passionately for a while after the initiative ended. However, after the passion, was there any time and space left for this encounter to settle?
This exchange was not just an encounter, but a journey. In this exchange as a cultural process, the differences could be identified. Under the rules of cooperation and co-production, there were principles as well as compromises, so that the participants had to clarify theirs and the other party’s thoughts and the relationship between them. During the close interactions, they kept on observing each other’s internal aspects and finally built a space for sharing in the rehearsals after imitating, learning, demonstrating, and explaining. In this space, they lent a part of themselves to the other party while working hard to present their understanding of the other party in their performances. Moreover, the dancing bodies showed not only their differences, but their similarities as well. Even when they identified their differences, they tried to understand the reasons or causes of these differences.
At the end of this article, I’d like to go back to “When Taiwan and India Meet in Dance”, which is a part of the title of the Lazurite Initiative. In the sharing event held in Brilliant Time, lastly a participant from the financial industry asked, “after this cross-cultural exchange and detailed discussions, what do you think will be left?” And this participant wished to hear others’ opinions. It was my turn, and I said that through the observations in the field of the exchange, I could learn more without overlooking any details about how these two different dance groups faced major issues such as “being traditional” and “being contemporary” via self-identify and observing others. And the records helped me to reconsider the methods I used to distinguish the traditional and the contemporary. On the other hand, I hoped that in the future in a specific situation I might remember some moments from this exchange as a cultural is a collection of contexts, details, etc. As I am writing down this right now, I realize how I took a snap course to avoid the participant’s question cleverly and how difficult it was to answer this question. In this exchange project, how (why) can we claim that Taiwan and Indie had met in dance? And what did this meeting bring us? And who were “we”? How was the distinction achieved? Even now, I still can’t answer these questions thoroughly. However, I still hope that in the cross-cultural exchange context, “appreciating each other’s culture” can be more than just a metaphor and a modifier, and besides “appreciating” and “watching extensively”, we can learn more for us to talk about in the future at our leisure.