As it is now clear, Chapters 1 to 5 are a RePresentation, for they have already appeared in some other form elsewhere, whereas chapter 6 and 7 are newer additions to what is a complex problematic in the study of dance as a performing art, and of its choreographic past. In many ways writing a conclusion to this ebook is an impossible task and something I have tried to delay for as long as I could: the medium is such that this ebook can always be revised and added upon and I will do so, in future. But for now it feels right to suspend the discussion and come to a temporary closure. I have already indicated the reasons why I chose to write an ebook in the Preface: I have always envisaged this ebook to be interactive and indeed in June 2007 I posted a call for comments, as I wanted to write my conclusion taking into account feedback from readers. Having waited for a period of nearly 5 months for the comments to come in, I am now ready to review the situation, looking to the future, for I am committed to a continuation, in one form or another, of the critique I have attempted through these webpages.
Interacting with readers: your comments
(As some people have specifically asked me not to mention their names, I will respect their desire for privacy).
Some of my readers have felt some unease with the format and have pointed out that “the hypothetical conference format” is not borne out by the Introduction “which is not dialogical”. To this I would like to respond that all parts of this book are dialogical because of the way the book has been written and because of the facility to post comments at the bottom of each chapter. I have had to set a password for posting them because of the inordinate number of spams, which posed a serious threat to the existence of this book, but it is still possible to engage in a dialogue by sending me an email and requesting the set password to start a discussion.
One writer believes that chapter 2 would be vastly improved by referring to other translations of the Natyasastra. This puzzles me because the chapter does not deal with textual translations but only with the interpretation of the Natyasastra in dance practice. Did the writer mean other danced interpretations of the karanas?
Dominique Delorme, a French performer who trained under Padma Subrahmanyam, asked me to make a correction to my statement that there are no contemporary choreographers working with the karanas, without using any bharatanatyam. He is one of such performers/choreographers. I apologise to Dominique for the omission. Chapter 2 has been amended accordingly and a photograph of Dominique has now been added.
It is the chapter on odissi which seems to have upset some sensibilities. Leesa Mohanty, odissi dancer based in Mumbai, posted her comments to the odissi list on yahoo.com on 23rd May 2007 taking issue with the fact I have mentioned Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra’s caste and expressing her discomfort with a historical account of odissi which does not present it as sacred and ancient. I thank Leesa for taking the trouble to make her views known. I am also aware that her feelings are shared by other odissi dancers on the same list. But I stick to my guns: Guru Kelucharan’s caste is a non-issue, all I said was that he was from a low caste family from Raghurajpur, and yes, odissi is neither sacred nor ancient. This does not make it any less beautiful.
Others have sent comments encouraging me to explore the topic of ReConstruction and RePresentation further and integrate some case studies relating to Euro-American dance – for example the work by Millicent Hodson on Nijinski’s dances for the Ballet Russes. This resonates with my endeavour – and Millicent has, incidentally, already contributed a piece to the old Archaeology/Performance website, which I curated from 2002 to 2004 and continue to curate, in a new incarnation, through these Metamedia pages. I obviously discussed in this ebook the material I was most familiar with and hesitated to undertake new research in a completely different area – my training is in the visual culture and performance arts of Asia. However, I am not ruling out the possibility of adding more material and being more global: this could be done through a collaboration. I am definitely interested, it is a question of working out the details of how to do it and with whom.
The future
Writing this book has been a journey which has allowed me to uncover the cultural politics of bharatanatyam, odissi, lègong and their representation (with a low case r and p), and the resistant aesthetics of Guru Surendranath Jena's, as also of Sardono W. Kusumo’s choreography. It has helped me to put in context the whole issue of reConstructing and rePresenting dance, viewing its many ramifications and querying the practices of the present. Archaeology has sustained my enquiry – “we are all archaeologists”, writes Shanks in his Manifesto, “archaeologists don’t discover the past, they work on what remains, …with the life of things”. In this sense I perceive myself as an archaeologist investigating dance. The research process that led to this book has stimulated my creative engagement with the material I have discussed, offering an opportunity to rethink my teaching practice and my performance of scholarship, attempting whenever possible to work together with my students and engage critically and reflexively with the material traces of dance, never forgetting that the construction of dance knowledge is a creative event in a contemporary context. I am reluctant to end this endeavour – I am only suspending it for a while. I will of course pick up its main concerns and continue working on them in a different form and elsewhere: much of my scholarly work has involved and involves a transdisciplinary transformation and I am already engaged in new, parallel, projects. But I am committing myself to returning to these webpages, some time in a not too distant future and pick up the thread of the discussion. Metamedia at Stanford, which hosts this ebook, is a collaboratory and you, the reader, are invited to participate in rePresenting the dance past.
Alessandra Lopez y Royo, London October 2007
Return to: 7. RePresenting dance: archaeology and dance photography
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--- Posted at Jun 17/2007 11:43AM:
Alessandra: I am receiving comments but very slowly and many of them are very short, too short to be published. Please do contact me with your views, if you are worried about preserving your anonymity that is absolutely fine. I will not publish anything without your permission. I am also aware that one of the dance lists on odissi recently had a series of emails referring to my chapter on odissi and to the work by Marglin. I will report on those comments in due course on these pages. Once again, I look forward to hearing from you
-- Posted at Jun 28/2007 04:24AM:
Alessandra: I have had to lock this page. See Tim's message on home page. I am sorry but spams are threatening this work. Therefore email me your comments rather than posting them.
-- Posted at Oct 27/2007 02:25PM:
Alessandra: I started this conclusion in June by writing the following: "Well, this is not the usual conclusion at the end of a book. I am going to write it but first I would like to gather some of your comments and reviews and use this space to respond and begin a dialogue. Why would I put my work online if all I wanted was a traditional book? The whole point was to do something different and fully exploit the advantages that online publishing offers, such as INTERACTION. So please email me your comments or post them on this page using the post facility. I expect to write the conclusion after reviewing your comments. Please note that your comments and criticisms will be quoted in full, with your name and, possibly, email address. Should you wish to remain anonymous please let me know when you email me and I will do my best to protect your privacy. Look forward to hearing from you!"
Many thanks for responding.