4. Dance: cross-cultural representation

(1) Formerly Novack.

(2) The workshop, entitled The impossibility of representation? Practice, performance and the media took place on 23rd April 2005 jointly hosted by the Centre for Media and Film Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London and the AHRC Research Centre for Cross-cultural Music and Dance Performance. This is an inter-institutional body based since 2002 at SOAS and made up of three different university departments: the department of Music at SOAS, the Dance Programmes of the School of Arts at Roehampton University and the department of Dance at the University of Surrey.

(3) Subrahmanyam too seems to be aware of it (Subrahmanyam 2003, 314-318). However, in keeping with her Weltanschauung she explains this property of the karanas as a direct consequence of the universality of the Natyasastra and the relationship of derivation all dances share with the dance described in the text , which she regards as a "mother" dance.

(4) Vatsyayan was well acquainted with LMA, which she studied in Ann Arbour with Juana de Laban (Coorlawala 2001)

(5) See Franko’s observations on the geometrical dances of 16th century France and choreography as bodily writing (2001, 191)

(6) In her re-evaluation of Vatsyayan’s work, O’Shea has also discussed the ‘common dichotomy between rationality and emotionality’ present in western dance studies and how Vatsyayan’s technique concept has been able to ‘transcend it’ (O’Shea 2000,84). There is here an overlap – an interconnection - with my remarks on the ontological status of body parts, which I retrieve from my Vatsyayan –inspired reading of the Natyasastra.

(7) See also Coorlawala’s account of the Sanskritised body in bharatanatyam (Coorlawala 2005) and the response given by Meduri in the same volume (Meduri 2005).

(8) There were several justifications for attempting an analysis based on Natyasastra classifications in the context of Southeast Asian dance. There is a historical cultural and artistic convergence between India and Southeast Asia, evident in the eastward spread of Hinduism and Buddhism and the use of Sanskrit as the language of a cosmopolitan elite (Pollock 1986). Nevertheless the kind of analysis which Vatsyayan proposed is not, in principle, only applicable to Indian or Indian-related dance, as already noted by Erdman.

(9) Dance in Bali is to be understood as a continuum of dance and theatre, as signified by the Indonesian word tari and the Balinese word igel, loosely translated as dance.

(10) Whereas, as seen earlier, Vatsyayan’s own nuanced analysis of the Sanskrit textual material, its vocabulary and its relationship to the embodiment process, embracing the aesthetic relationships between dance, music and the visual arts does not eschew such specificity.

(11) Ness has given a compelling account of her experience of the learning process of embodiment during the dance lesson she took in Ubud, Bali in May 1992 (2001, 68-86)

(12) I began this phase of the project in Bali in 2002, in Peliatan, with lègong dancer Ni Putu Swartini and continued the embodiment process in London, throughout 2003, with Balinese dancer and choreographer Ni Madé Pujawati. Ni Putu is a traditionally trained lègong , whereas Ni Madé is a graduate from the Academy of Indonesian Performing Arts in Denpasar and an Arja specialist, though knowledgeable about tari lepas (such as lègong). She was performer-researcher for the AHRC Research Centre for Cross-cultural Music and Dance Performance from 2003 to 2005.

(13) Another name for agem is basic body posture (agem dasar). Significantly, Dibia notes that it is both a posture and a movement phrase executed without covering space (Dibia 1992, 197)

(14) Kawi is a literary language which coincides but is not exactly identical, with Old Javanese and Middle Javanese, spread in Java, Bali and Lombok.

(15) This is the opinion of Old-Javanist Kuntara Wiryamartana who argues that the language of this text is fairly late (pers.comm).

(16) However, a fitting term of comparison is the 1925 text from the Yogyakarta court Serat Kridhwayangga by Sastrakartika, mentioned by Brakel-Papenhuyzen. In this work, the characters of wayang wong theatre are connected with the behaviour to be displayed in relation to the ruler by specific individuals or groups (1993,68).

(17) I too initially thought this was so (Iyer 1997; 2000). Since then through further research about this work carried out in Indonesia I have come to different conclusions. As said, there is no evidence to suggest that Nawanatya is a Javanese Majapahit work.

(18) One should also add here the vast niti (politics, rule) literature available in Old Javanese and Balinese.

(19) Formaggia includes the text among the manuscripts referred to in compiling her multi-authored account of gambuh (Formaggia 2000,360).

(20) cf. in chapter 3 the discussion of Guru Surendranath Jena’s conceptualisation of odissi technique and his recourse to movement units obtained from the Konarak nata mandapa.

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