FUSE#5

The Problematic Danseuse
Narayanan, from whom I was receiving specialized training in
abhinaya at the time, attended my Chennai performance. She was gracious,
supportive and even came back stage before the performance
to bless me. A few days later in class, she asked me, “You are so good
at your classical, why do you need to present your modern work on
the same stage?” (Personal communication) I had chosen to express
my personal aspirations and to embrace the transience—choosing to
spend my limited time on an imaginary beach, walking on the sand,
reveling in my body, mind and spirit, spending precious moments
with an illusory lover, bonding with a girl child and finally departing
with grace and gratitude. At this point, I return to Irigaray who says: “I
consider it a mistake to divide my work into parts that are foreign to
one another. Its becoming is more continuous and the way it develops
is close to that of a living being” (2002: 200). Narayanan’s response
revealed to me that my attempt towards an integrated representation
of my various facets as a dancer and as a woman was not favored.
Irigaray’s concept of a “spiritual-embodied unity” is what I seek to
move towards which, “in phenomenology of the body, is considered
as structurally similar to the lived body” (Lehtinen 2014: 17).
A few months later I was invited to perform at the NRI 23 Festival
organized in Hyderabad by the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Department.
I decided to present Moments In Time and sent the organizers all the
required preliminary material, including a synopsis of the work and
publicity images. They had raised no concerns at the time regarding
the work. I had completed the first two segments following which I
changed into my purple sleeveless top and black trousers and began
the final piece. Twelve minutes into Eighteen Minutes, the organizers
turned off my lights and sound as they felt I was performing ballet
movements and my costume was indecent. The scene I was performing
was one in which I was in a supine position on stage to depict
the bonding between mother and child. The theme was expressed
through abhinaya and not ballet, a form in which I have not trained.
I had thought (somewhat naively) that as an NRI dancer, the value I
would bring was the reflection of my authentic experience of living in
a diasporic environment, along with my simultaneous connection to
India. It was then that I understood the expected role of a non-resident
Indian—to perpetuate status quo as opposed to adopting an
individualistic approach.
Bharatanatyam is positioned as the cultural touchstone of the
diaspora for whom India represents an imagined homeland. The
purity, acceptability, sacredness and link that had been drawn by the
revivalists to India’s ancient history were associations that encouraged
parents in diasporic locations such as Singapore to enroll their
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