Author/ Wang Yu Cheng (Coordinator of Text Records)
This Lazurite Initiative project titled “Living Tradition in Contemporary World: When Taiwan and India Meet in Dance” was not just about dancing, but also about the culture and histories of the society in Taiwan and India. The question is: Why is it necessary to exchange through dancing? What is dancing? What is an exchange? In simple terms, the author believes that dancing is a behavior with the body moving through space and time. It combines space and time, forming an experience as a whole. Both practitioners and observers of dancing need this kind of experiences to recall the meaning of dancing. This article organized the body movement exchanges which occurred during this project. Based on the observations during the rehearsals and workshops for this project with Tjimur Dance Theatre from Taiwan and Kaishiki Nrityabhasha from India, the author explored the “balance” of the bodies, its applications, and the “imagery” induced by it.
Balance is not just something dancers pursue. It is the foundation to maintain the stability of one's body and is related to the instinct of regulating physical space positioning and reactions. In other words, balance is the physiological mechanism to avoid people from calling down. In order not to fall down, we involuntarily moving our body weight and center of gravity, change the area of contact with the ground, and muscle interactions anytime we are alerted. The difference between dancing and other sports is the extra-daily balance in dancing (Eugenio Barba, 1991). There have always been movements in dancing based on daily life actions since ancient times. Dancing has changed people's perception of and imagination on those actions. There are different types of dancing in relation to different living environments and cultures. Dances based on daily lives show a different balancing mechanism. The differences can be seen by comparing the Kaishiki Nrityabhasha dancers with the Tjimur dancers. The author also aimed to outline how these dancers did the exchange with this level of differences.
If we directly categorize body balance into static balance and dynamic balance, this categorization is related to dance works and dance trainings. In the contemporary limb trainings provided by Tjimur Dance Theatre, a single and repeated combination was always dynamic. In the traditional dance performances accompanied by songs and "Varhung ~ Heart to Heart", the dancers had been moving almost all the time without any static postures. As for Odissi Dance, introduced by Kaishiki, the trainings always began with a static posture, similar to the trainings of some familiar folk dances in Taiwan and classic ballet beginning with a fixed gesture or posture. And the instructions given by Dakshaji (Daksha Mashruwala), the art director of Kaishiki Nrityabhasha, were very interesting as they helped the dancers feel the dynamics within while holding a position.
Photo: The dancers were learning Chouka, an Odissi Dance technique, in a borrowed classroom of an elementary school during the workshop on the first day of the exchange in India
The Chouka squat training – An initial exploration of the Odissi Dance trainings
In the author’s limited experiences of watching Odissi Dance, there hadn’t been any off-balance movement material. Odissi dancers are always so graceful to look at. In the first Odissi Dance workshop, the practice was to move the center of gravity in the Chouka and Tribhangi postures. In order to maintain the postures they were not used to, the students couldn’t feel the calmness of the postures. The Tjimur dancers’ learning habit was to face a mirror and follow their teacher’s movements. Therefore, they put in more efforts to imitate the teacher’s squatting postures, steps, body movements, hand gestures, and eye expressions. In order to meet the standards they expected, their muscles were experiencing extreme tension.
The basic posture of Chouka is based on the Janannath (the god of Odissi Dance) statue, imitating its hand gestures, upright upper body, packed shoulders, lifted arms to horizontal, elbows bent to 90 degrees, fingers pointing at the audience, and the stance with the distance of two fists plus two thumbs between both feet and toes pointing at the sides while squatting. The dancers took delight in talking about the most painful practice, which was the first Chouka practice of this squatting posture up and down repeatedly, for from 8 eights to 10 or even 12 eights. This is the signature movement in Odissi Dance. Generally, in Odissi Dance, this posture can be performed with tens of rhythm combinations composed of steps, foot movements, body weight movements, turning, jumps, hand gestures, and directions. Tribhangi was like this as well. Therefore, the Tjimur dancers always endlessly grumbled complaints during the Odissin Dance workshop sessions.
In the article titled “Being in India: the Encounter with Odissi Dance” (Only Chinese Version), the author recorded the essentials of the Dakshaji movements. The key is not to over-control the muscles. All you need to do is to find your balance in different structures and maintain it. With enough practices, your body will adjust to achieve balance on its own. The author found an even more important mechanism, which is to integrate the imagery from facial expressions and eye expressions into this dynamic balancing system. Through the directing of the imagery, minor muscles may influence the whole body through eye expressions and projections. Seeing dancing this way is indeed quite different from Tjimur Dance Theatre’s focuses on decomposition and reconstruction of limb codes.
Learning the pure limb choreography in “Sthayi” and appreciating “Abhinaya – Ashtapadi” for the second time
The Odissi Dance courses in March in India were designed by Dakshaji for this exchange. We learned the pure limb choreography designed by the Odissi Dance master Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra in his early days. This work involves almost no narration. All we needed to do was to experience the grace and control of Odissi Dance. For the author, the origin of the aesthetics might be the symmetric and complete shapes painted in the air using the movements carefully designed based on the melodies and tala, or the variety and changes of the steps as the music temp got faster. The Tjimur dancers familiar with all kinds of choreographies in contemporary dances did not have problem accepting this kind of choreography. The interesting thing is that in contemporary dances, dancers are used to memorize coherent movements in choreographies using motive power from beginning to end. However, choreographies of Odissi Dance are not based on this kind of motive power but melodies in music. According to the author’s observations, for the Tjimur dancers, the transitions between sections were often against their instinct. The energy accumulated within their muscles couldn’t be released. Therefore, when it came to learning the movements, they needed to learn by rote with pithy formulas and melodies.
After all, the goal of Dakshaji was not to make the Tjimur dancers Odissi dancers through trainings. She even deliberately preserved the dancers’ individual personality and cultural marks. From the basic trainings to the rehearsals of “Sthayi”, she had always stressed the way of body coordination of Odissi Dance instead of setting up absolute standards for movements. She often expressed the principles and conditions that had to be met using “grammars” of languages. So, what are the grammars of Odissi Dance? The author wasn’t capable of understanding the description of the Odissi music formats in the Indian classic “Natya Shastra”. However, there is a line in it may just somehow capture the essence of dancing, which is “Yato hastastato drishtihi Yato drishtistato manaha Yato manastato bhavaha Yato bhavastato rasaha”. The direct translation of this line is “your eyes are where your gestures are, you heart is where your eyes are, your feelings are where your heart is, and your style is where your feelings are.” It stresses the relationship between hand gestures and eye expressions, as well as the relationship between this movement style and messages to be delivered. When the Kaishiki dancers shared this line with the author, they told the author that the bridge between dancers and their audience is their feelings. These words were more than that for the author, as they revealed how classic Indian dances connect dancers’ internal thoughts and feelings and their external movements. And “Abhinaya - Ashtapadi” shared by Dakshaji happened to be the best example for this grammar.
Ashtapadi is a basic form of poetry with 16 lines. It is one of the classic dance choreography materials created by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, an Odissi Dance master. It was originally from Jayadeva, an Indian sage. During the workshop in India, Dakshaji shared a section from “Abhinaya - Ashtapadi”, about the combination of Krishna and Radha in Indian philosophy meaning “a way to lead the audience into the dancing process and feelings” (with more details in “Natya Shastra”). Through Dakshaji’s performance, without understanding the content of the poetry and the implications of the hand gestures, we could still directly feel the emotional themes this dance work aimed to deliver.
When seeing the close connections between the upper body expressions and lower body steps of the Kaishiki dancers, the author suddenly realized that this kind of connection could be found in the basic Chouka and Tribhangi trainings. In the very beginning of the workshop, Dakshaji almost did not separate the upper body movements and the lower body ones at all. The reason was probably that the upper body expressions and the lower body movements were hooked together as a balancing system. It is even more essential in the internal aspect of Odissi Dance. Take the Tribhangi posture for example, if your center of gravity is on the right side of your body, you need to bend your body and turn your direction to balance the weight. And your hand gestures and eye expressions are also a part of your movements. During the time in India, the Tjimur dancers could hardly perceive in a direct way the association between balancing and relaxing. When Kaishiki visited Taiwan, some changes regarding the Tjimur dancers’ bodies happened. One of the dancers, Meng Tzu En, shared her realization that in Odissi Dance, though dancers’ bodies look static, dancers have to turn on the body sensors throughout their bodies to keep the bodies in a “dynamically balanced” state.
The contemporary limb trainings of the Paiwan people
The differences in finding balance became very significant when Kaishiki arrived at Taiwan. The Taiwanese dancers who had been through the professional trainings from dancing schools were very soft with very good muscle controls. They could complete a lot of difficult movements which regular people could not do. However, in Odissi Dance, muscle strength is used almost only for maintaining a low position. The rich energy is inside the distal parts of the body. It is not used to create muscle tension, but to keep the body alerted and conscious. The “contemporary limb trainings of the Paiwan people” developed by Tjimur Dance Theatre were completely different. In these practices, dancers’ muscle would contract and relax according to their rhythms and breathes. Dancers are bouncing almost without stop. When they fall down, they have to relax their torsos and hip joints. When they jump up, they have to move their centers of gravity up and forward. This kind of movements is performed using the power from losing balance while the muscle still has to maintain the balance.
The rhythms in this practice were based on the four-step dance of the Paiwan people. The art director of Tjimur Dance Theatre, Ljuzem Madiljin, used some ideas from the circle dancing in rites and rituals with the focus on the coordination of hands and feet. It looked like a simple practice with repetitions. Yet, in fact, it required the dancers’ sophisticated control of their muscles. Indeed, the Tjimur dancers were advantageous with their school background. The Kaishiki dancers also mastered the movements in the natural balanced state of their bodies. However, the difference was significant. When the Kaishiki dancers jumped, their hip joints were rather tight while their torsos were especially relaxed. It looked like the energy ripples came from their torsos, with larger amplitudes and shorter wavelengths. On the other hand, the Tjimur dancers’ torsos, hip joints, and lower bodies were all connected as a whole, moving at one go. When we mastered the movements, we moved our attention to the relationships between the songs and the bodies, thinking about the “grooving with the music” stressed by Ljuzem. Their energy was guided by the imagery of music and their breathing and rhythms were guided by music. Even the ranges of rising and falling and the dancers’ emotions at the moment were connected as well.
The backgrounds of the dancers of the two groups were too different. This fact was already known during the physical trainings. The Tjimur dancers kept on taking ballet and contemporary dance courses in academies after joining the Theatre. The Paiwan culture and physical trainings were merely parts of their cultivation backgrounds. There were still various skills and techniques they had learned through the professional academic trainings. During the short period of exchange, the Kaishiki dancers specialized in Odissi Dance weren’t able to experience all the trainings the Tjimur dancers had done. This is one of the regrets of this body exchange due to the time limitation.
“Déjà Vu in the Memory”
“Déjà Vu in the Memory” is a simple creative work made by the dance director of Tjimur, Baru Madiljin, for the six dancers from the two groups. Baru is good at applying techniques such as decomposing, assembling, and reducing movements. During the first day of the rehearsal, Baru paired each Indian dancer with a Taiwanese dancer and asked the two-men teams to start conversation with the steps of the four-step dance and Odissi Dance, while developing movement combinations. At the moment, the author was curious about whether it was possible to decompose Odissi Dance as it stresses the overall operations so much. For the dancers, the steps weren’t difficult to do. However, during the first few days of the rehearsal, the Kaishiki dancers still couldn’t help moving their upper bodies naturally while doing the steps for the opening. For them, the most difficult thing was to control their facial expressions.
When the dance performance began, the audience first heard the sharp electronic beats. The dancers stood in a bow-shaped line, facing the audience, without any facial expression. They slightly swayed their bodies with their steps. After they gathered together, their marked time with their right feet while moving their left feet forward and backward. Their bodies and hip joints began to relax. They stated to bounce. Then, their heads began to move forward and backward with the music.
This was the opening of “Déjà Vu in the Memory”. Besides the looks, we could tell the differences between the dances of the two groups according to their physical features. Although these dancers’ steps were the same, their upper body balancing mechanisms were completely different. The Tjimur dancers controlled their muscles very well to create share and long lines in the space. The Kaishiki dancers’ upper bodies divided the beats into sub-beats without changing the original beats. When the two groups of dancers began to create different movements in the space, the Kaishiki dancers provide dmore microcosmic joint activities while the Tjimur dancers were responsible for creating large shapes in the space. The two groups found a way to co-exist in the same space, releasing unique energy.
The sound of clapping and the voices of counting numbers came from the dancers on the stage. Each pair of an Indian dancer and a Taiwanese dancer began to fight, more directly showing the condition of this exchange with mutual learning, challenges, and conflicts which led to attempts to achieve harmony. In this cheerful atmosphere, the author couldn’t help applauding and cheering. However, the author wondered if the internal exchange would be buried by the hustling and bustling when the focus was only on the appearances and the two types of physically skills and languages were just combined directly.
Exploring Shakti, “the Divine Feminine”
Dakshaji’s work was still based on the vocabularies and grammars of Odissi Dance. The author considered this work as a love poem she gave Tijmur Dance Theatre as a gift. In this work, the quality of water was simulated using the bodies, which were flowing and soft, drawing circles in the space to store energy. And the interpersonal relationships were built through movements. The dancers presented the relationships between lovers, friends, and a parent and his/her child. Their bodies were both tenors and vehicles of metaphors, used to explore the female energy (shakti) in classic Indian philosophy. In the beginning of the rehearsal, Dakshaji told the dancers that the exploration of female energy has no end or conclusion, like dancers’ exploration of dancing. In the short lifespan of humans, we are always just seekers. In the opening scene, the 6 dancers moved with their own postures in a silent and slow way. According to Dakshaji, this scene was like doing yoga. At this moment, the dancers first sought their internal energy. Then they found that both male energy and female energy were within them. According to the classic Indian philosophy, there is a balance between male energy and female energy (indicating the two genders) within everyone. And in this work, Dakshaji wanted to focus on female energy.
In the beginning of the rehearsal, she explained the characteristics of female energy, which formed the structure of this work, including (1) moving in circles (male energy on the other hand moves in direct lines), (2) convergence with attraction (male energy on the other hand diverges); (3) flowing like water; (4) power of creation generated from encounters with male energy (this power can only be exercised through female energy, so there was a symbol of child birth in this work); and (5) power of caring and nurturing, presented in this work through the relationships between a mother and her child, friends, and lovers. This narrative of showing the metaphors through body codes which formed the external looks of the bodies, connecting the codes which couldn’t be connected while dancing, and delivering energy through the dancers’ feelings may be a common way of creating Odissi Dance works.
Dakshaji provided the external structures and the internal themes for the dancers to explore in every rehearsal or performance. Thus, the meaning of dancing was not just within the dancers’ hearts, but also in the moments of performing. Perhaps, the author should also go beyond what can be seen at present to explore internal energy.
Cooling down and getting closer
Every day, in the evening, the dancers who worked with different choreographers in the morning and in the afternoon would lie down on yoga mates with yoga blocks and deflated rubber balls to share their tips for muscle relaxation with each other in teams of two, just like being in the rehearsals in the morning.
“Living Tradition in Contemporary World: When Taiwan and India Meet in Dance” did not aim to learn from others, but to walk into each other’s life. In this short period of three weeks, from the Sandimen Community in Pingtung, Taiwan to the big city Bombay in India, the two groups shared their life experiences and learned. There was a scene in “Déjà Vu in the Memory” where the 6 dancers all largely moved their centers of gravity to a side with just one leg. During this moment, the author saw the Kaishiki dancers were moving as if their joints were pulled one after another, while the Tjimur dancers were moving using their side muscles. The author called this moment “the moment of presenting selves through steps”.
Sharing themselves brought a lot of delicate changes in their bodies. Tjimur dancer Meng Tzu En shared her unspeakable bitter suffering of learning “Varhung ~ Heart to Heart” through the Odissi Dance movements with rich but restrained energy. Dancer Ljaucu Tapurakac shared his experience of learning a lot of restrained movement textures to neutralize his uninhibited style. In fact, when a dancer comes into contact with a different type of dance, there is a chance for developing a new physical style. Dancer Yang Jing Hao majored in Chinese dance in college. After joining Tjimur Dance Theatre, he started to learn a lot about contemporace dance creation. During this exchange, Jing Hao was very glad to be able to once again explore a different dance style with largely accumulated cultural symbols. When he performed Odissi Dance, he presented a different charm through his movements. This is probably a very good example of different life experiences forming all kinds of shapes and bodies automatically presenting themselves through steps with everything accumulated, to get closer to each other.