FUSE#1

Element# 1.2
Post-Colonial Tactics
Wrestling with the
contemporary
Notes from Mandeep Raikhy
What is ‘contemporary’ in dance if it is not in reference to a form(s) developed in
the West? Can the ‘contemporary’ be experienced as a process? Could it indeed
be a lens through which we are able to look at the body in relation to the world we
live in? Can this lens of criticality allow us to ask questions about the body, the way
we live, dance, perform, assert, articulate and act? Could these questions allow us
as individuals/ collectives to resist, disagree and respond to our socio-political
environment? Through these questions, can we as artists challenge our own forms
of articulation? Can dance become a means of critical engagement?
The use of the term ‘contemporary’ in the context of dance in
India comes with its own tensions and forces. At first, it carries
with itself a kind of a homogenizing effect. It has mostly been
taken for granted that everything ‘contemporary’ in dance must
correspond somehow to dance developed and practiced in
Europe and the USA. The form and aesthetic stemming from a
highly developed discourse and economy in the western
hemisphere begins to wash out any specificity that dance in other
parts of the world may aspire to nurture.
Through the work of Gati Dance Forum in initiating an artists-led ecology for
performance in India in areas as diverse as creation, advocacy, performance
infrastructure, pedagogy and research, we have often arrived at these questions.
Through my own creative practice, I continue to complicate these questions for
myself.
Dance in India, on the other hand, is embroiled
in a national identity project since the beginning
of its independence movement in the late 19th
century. Dance, more than any other discipline,
carries the burden of 4000 years of India’s
cultural history. Under the guardianship of the
state, this burden isn’t an easy one to shirk.
Dance practitioners in India particularly struggle
with binaries such as ‘contemporary’ and
‘traditional’, where one is necessarily always
pitted against the other and where the former
invariably poses a threat to the great national
identity project. Now with a right wing
government in power, these tensions and forces
make dance particularly potent in these times.
Ignite Festival of Contemporary Dance. Images from Mandeep Raikhy
33 34