Author/ Yuting Huang (Curator)
Translator/ Artist Translation Service 譯術家專業翻譯工作室
By the end of April, the presentation of the experimental exchange work of the 2018 Lazurite Initiative “Living Tradition in Contemporary World: When Taiwan and India Meet in Dance” in Tjimur Dance Theatre, Sandimen, Pingtung was completed. The experimental exchange this year officially came to an end, leading to more expectation on the co-production in 2019. Many people asked me about the reason why I had decided to work on this project in the first place. I would have written a very personal long article to answer this question. Instead of doing so, I decided to include the “origin” section from the application form on the website. This section focused on the process of this exchange. From the perspective of planning, it reviewed the process of the whole project, along with deep reflections. It also identified the reasons why this project was feasible and effective, from the exciting beginning to the unforgettable ending of this project, to make this project more valuable for public references.
Was there any gap between the two different cultures in terms of exchange?
The linear distance between Pingtung, Taiwan and Bombay, India is nearly 5000km, with countless cultural circles in between. It takes at least 10 hours to get to India via a transit flight. With the advancement of technology, the geographic distance is no longer an obstacle. Was there any other obstacle encountered during the process of the exchange? Based on the result, the answer is, there was nearly no obstacle at all. In the aspect of curating, as a middleman, there wasn’t much I could do in planning. What I could do to help was to arrange the schedule properly, with the preparations before the exchange in February, the exchange in India in March, and the exchange in Taiwan in April. The intervals between the events were appropriate. In other words, the proper intervals helped to keep both sides warm. Secondly, before the exchange, I worked on the preliminary knowledge positioning for both dance groups. For example, I provided them cultural images and chances to participate in the dance workshops, and prepared some space for imagination and questions. This helped to keep them curious and started their conversations.
In March and April, when the groups officially visited each other’s country for this exchange, the decision to choose the main curator based on the locations was made. So I stepped back and served as an observer and a coordinator. The heads of the two dance groups took over the frontline job of the curator. This way, they could fully present their own cultural features and meanings of their dances in their own ways, resulting in a lot of good surprises. Both groups arranged a welcome ceremony for each other in their local and traditional way. In the very first meetings in India and Taiwan, they offered each other the best and the richest they could offer. The gate of exchange was opened with sincerity. It was a very touching moment.
During the follow-up development, there were even more breakthroughs. Besides professional performances, both Tjimur Dance Theatre and Kaishiki Nrityabhasha also valued dance education and cultural inheritance. The members of both groups were also teachers. Therefore, in their own home ground, they invited other people, from elementary school students to adults, to join them for learning and emulation. Some of the people invited were not even professional dancers. For example, the Indian dance group made some arrangements and invited classic dance learners from other classes to participate in the two sharing events with Tjimur Dance Theatre in India regarding the traditional music and dance of the Paiwan people and contemporary dance. Similarly, when Kaishiki visited Sandimen for this exchange, Tjimur Dance Theatre also invited some students from the Timur Elementary School and Nei-Pu Senior Agricultural-Industrial Vocational High School, expanding the scale of the exchange. Strictly speaking, this was not even one of the main tasks of this exchange. However, we have to admit that this was beyond our imagination for this exchange, making this event broader with more people included for this exchange.
There was an important common ground which helped the dance groups cross the barriers in the exchange. That common ground was the fact that both groups valued life and art, with art being a part of life. This was a very good foundation for their dialogues. Besides dancing, they could also talk about their passion for life. The members of the groups could communicate with tacit understanding. Daksha Mashruwala, an Indian choreographer, once said, “if you understand eating, you would be a good dancer.” She said it during a feast in India where people shared fine food with each other. In the similar scenario in Taiwan with the feast hosted by Ljuzem Madiljin, the head of Tjimur in her home, guests gathered together in the traditional way of the Paiwan people with singing and harmony filling up every moment. The members of the Indian group immerse themselves in the Paiwan culture. In return, they performed some Bollywood dances. This kind of exchange in daily life was not a part of the plan. The presentation of the dance after the exchange showed the tacit understanding and responses developed in daily life.
What were the subtle functions of the recording and research team?
In the initial stage of the planning, with the idea of implementing education, I asked some graduate students from dancing and film related graduate institutes to take part in the Lazurite Initiative to create text and image records throughout the project with the skills they had learned. In other words, these records are not passively recorded or just fragments of the process. They are products of records with observations. I have to admit that the development of the recording and research team was way better than I expected. Now, let me explain the subtle functions of the team.
The members of the recording and research team were from different fields with different backgrounds. In my opinion, this team composition was the best. The reason was that the people from different fields cared about different things and asked different questions. That was what the dance group exchange needed. However, the influence of the recording and research team wasn’t significant until during the second half of the project. That makes sense. In the process of the exchange, everyone was still trying to get to know others. The recording and research team needed to spend more time retrieving information and observing. Later, they had to find a way to keep focused in this play-by-ear project. Therefore, during the exchange process, the multiple focuses gradually integrated into one, which was the focus on questions and dialogues about the contemporary and the traditional. In the April exchange event in Sandimen, the daytime activity was the exchange activity for the Taiwanese and Indian dance groups. In the evening, the graduate students got together to share their ideas and opinions based on the observations they had made in the daytime. They didn’t always agree with each other. There were even arguments sometimes. However, there was always a chance to clarify their disagreement through conversations and communications. They learned more about contributing their own domain knowledge to the collaboration with other people in the analyses. After going through the process, the spirit behind the project titled “Traditions in the Contemporary Society” and the contents of the project were all implemented. At this moment, the recording and research team and the two main dance groups of this exchange were more or less equal in strength. And the media used by the recording and research team, text and images, further enriched the achievements of this exchange.
The image records presented the first meeting when Tjimur Dance Theatre visited India in March and the courses provided by the two dance groups in a series of four 10-minute videos. And there were also two videos recording the process of the experiment to create a dance work when the Indian dance group Kaishiki Nrityabhasha visited Sandimen, Pingtung in April, showing the two different choreographers’ considerations and perspectives, with focuses on the exchange of physical dancing movements and concepts for choreography. The content was complete and vivid. As for the text records, their functions were different from image records. The videos helped to reproduce the scenes during the exchange. And the text was a way to include the author’s own observations and experiences through the participation. The Q&A and interviews with the two dance groups were reconstructed truthfully through the transcripts. Furthermore, the text records also symbolized the implementation of academic theories in the field of exchange through the research and reflections in relation to the dynamics of dancing and mixed cultures.
Conclusion
The brief description above is to clarify the achievements of this exchange. Many things that had happened weren’t a part of the plan. Planning is fluid. Sometimes you have to take the leading role, and sometimes you have to let go. And the role should be played by different people who can collaborate with each other. In the beginning of the planning, I was worried about the variety in ages, races, and groups. It was proven that the multi-dimensional organization structure could be adjusted to a way with everyone supporting each other, so that everyone could do his job to make contributions to the overall achievements.
This cross-culture cooperation and exchange took time. It was also essential to physically visit the other party’s environment to experience their culture through vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and kinesthesis. Although not everyone could adopt a different environment, the very first exchange could become an experience and a reference for designing the model for the next exchange. Dancing requires the input of a lot of physical energy. Adaptation to daily life should also be taken into consideration. This time the exchange was 2-week long. The dancers had to rehearse all day for the experimental choreography and practiced with different types of rhythms and movements in the morning and in the afternoon. After two weeks, they were almost exhausted. On the other hand, it took a longer period of time to explore and deepen the aspect of cultural content. How to find a balance between these two aspects would be the challenge for the next exchange.
Based on the data from the recording and research team regarding the exchange of these two dance groups, precious information was summarized, including the Q&A about the views of both choreographers on the traditional and the contemporary, the learning processes of the classic dancers from India, and the Tjimur dancers’ impressions on the exchange with the Indian dances. This was very precious first-hand information. Through the efforts of the recording and research team, the images and text on this exchange have been released little by little. However, most of them are presented in Chinese. The Chinese text is still to be translated into English. We have to admit that when recording the achievements, the requirement for Chinese-English translation was not taken into consideration. Sometimes the exchange was interrupted due to language barriers. Currently, we are working on remedial measures. This experience is also a good reference for other future exchange events.