DR635 Dance

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DR635 Dance Discourse - Autumn Term 2007
Bodies across Cultures
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Identity and Culture

• After gender, another central site of difference
  in our culture and society is national and ethnic
  identity
• it establishes more territories and borders
• as well as the notion of home and foreign (we
  vs them)
• It is an equally naturalised category
  authenticity
• Also, is even the notion of a globalised,
  universal, transcultural culture (or theatre) a
  Western neo-colonialist idea?

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Intercultural Performance

• Intercultural Performance crosses the borders of
  cultures.

Along the way, it may challenge (or reinforce!)
categories such as Western, black, African,
Eastern, indigenous...
such acquisition sometimes degenrates into an
exchange of cultural stereotypes, for
metatheatrical amusement Pavis 1996 (your
reading, p. 103)
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Intercultural Performance

• Much Intercultural Performance (eg. Barba /
  ISTA) concerns bodily techniques.
• Yet no seemingly individual or personal exchange
  can isolate dance or performance techniques from
  political or economic contexts of imbalance.

? Can Performance (and Dance) create border
tensions and challenge notions of authenticity,
cultural identity/clichés/stereotypes, or
globalisation?
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Intercultural Performance

• Patrice Pavis, The Intercultural Performance
  Reader, Routledge 1996

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The Discourse of National Identity

• In politics, definitions of national identity
  are often a denial of the sort of complex present
  in favour of some nostalgic, eternal and much
  purer past.
• (Jeyasingh 1998 46 your reading)

As with gender discourses, again beware of all
too easy dichotomies (such as East vs West,
European vs Arabic Cultures, Christianity vs
Islam, we vs the others...), which disguise an
unequal power relation.
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The Discourse of National Identity

• Jeyasingh points to the practical results of this
  discourse for a British-Asian choreographer
• that fictional incarnation of India as a place
  entrenched in deep spiritual and cultural
  certainties(Jeyasingh 1998 47)
• Yes, you can have a mission ... You can come
  out if you make perhaps a colourful dance about
  arranged marriages, told entirely through hand
  gestures, of course. And this is very important
  before you actually perform it, you have to
  explain each one because, of course, each one has
  a specific meaning... . (Ibid.)

? We must challenge the certainties of the of
course...
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Postcolonialist Studies

• Postcolonialist Studies investigate these
  discursive mechanisms and challenge these unequal
  power relation between the coloniser and the
  colonised

• Just as sex/gender, race and ethnicity is
  challenged in its status of a natural,
  essential difference
• it is no ontological difference, but
  performatively constructed

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Postcolonialist Studies

• Key postcolonial philosophers/thinkers
• Edward Said, Orientalism
• Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture
• Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic
• Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands and other
  essays
• Central terms/ideas
• Diaspora (to suggest a home and identity no
  longer predicated on a certain territory)
• the nation as narrative (Bhabha)

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Edward W. Said (1935-2003)

• Orientalism (1978)
• drawing on Foucault and Antonio Gramsci
• a key contribution to Cultural Studies
• the foundation of Post-Colonialism
• the Orient as romanticised fiction of the
  colonists view
• the notion of the exotic
• ? The Orient is first and foremost a Western
  construction rather than a reality
• It is the Other of the West (? Feminism!)
• it is a construction of 19th century culture
• see 19th century Ballets, such as Petipas La
  Bayadère
• The Orient has come to perform the Orient

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Homi K. Bhabha (b. 1949)

• Nation and Narration (1990),The Location of
  Culture (1994)
• Key influences Derrida, Lacan,Foucault, Said
• Colonial power manifests itselfin mimicry m.
  repeats ratherthan re-presents
• the ambivalence of mimicryalmost the same, but
  not quite
• the partial representation challenges the whole
  idea of identity almost the same, but not white

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The Own and the Foreign

• What is foreign usually evokes...
• either exoticism
• or it appears more real than the own

Saids and Bhabhas arguments stimulate some
critical precaution when we tend to naively
embrace multiculturalism, inclusion, and
cultural diversity (see S. Jeyasinghs essay)
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Other key names...

• W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
• double consciousness(The Souls of Black Folk,
  1903)
• Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) Black Skin, White
  Masks (1952)The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

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Shobana Jeyasingh (b.1957)

• born in India, living in London
• founded her Company in 1988
• Bharata Natyam
• Our example Surface Tension (2000)

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Cloud Gate Dance Theatre

• based in Taiwan, founded in 1973 by Lin Hwai-min
• Asias first contemporary dance company
• integrates ballet, modern, Beijing Opera, Tai
  Chi,and improvisation
• Songs of the Wanderer (1994), our exampleMoon
  Water (1998), Bamboo Dream (2001)

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Jiri Kylián (b. 1947)

• In 1980, Jiri Kylián spent several months living
  with aboriginal tribes in Australia
• Stamping Ground (1983)
• The creation of this piece is documented in Road
  to the Stamping Ground

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Dance Discourse
The End
Well.... almost.....