Art and Identity: a journey + 2 performances you need to watch
Today is an important day historically. In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14 year old Black boy was lynched and murdered, after being accused of being lewd with a white woman who was selling him candy. (She recanted her testimony decades later). In 1963, on the very same day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington.
It was with these two events, last summer’s protests against police brutality, and the passing of Rep. John Lewis that served as the collective catalysts for which I choreographed and presented a piece for Aguas Arts Ink’s “Songs of Freedom” that I called ‘Daring to Dream’. It was my first time trying to present all of me through my dance - the artists that inspire me, the fire that drives me to write and create and dance, my politics, my personal life as the wife of an African-American man and mother of a biracial son - and at that moment - the unborn daughter I was a month away from meeting.
You see, before then, even if I intellectually knew otherwise, emotionally I had the idea that classical dance was this lofty, ageless, pure practice, and I didn’t know how to harness it as a language to describe our messy modern worlds and the struggles that drive us. Or, probably more accurately, it felt scary to use classical dance as the language to do so. (The fact that it’s taken me a year to share clips from that performance shows that it’s still a work-in-progress)
Since then, I’ve been paying particular attention to and seeking out other artists who are also bringing their own lives and stories into classical dance. Two dancers whose work recently came to my attention for this reason are Bharatanatyam dancers Shilpa Nanjappa and Tanya Saxena.
Shilpa, who is from Kodagu, Karnataka, conducted research on adapting compositions in the indigenous Kodava language to Bharatanatyam, and is premiering her production “Tales in Kodava: The Fragrance of Kodagu’s culture, people, psyche, and language through Bharatanatyam” in the online festival PADMINI, which is organized by Rasabodhi Arts Foundation. The urgency of the production seems even more so given that the Kodava language is at risk of disappearing by the turn of the century. I have to admit, I’ve been watching the trailer - which is absolutely mesmerizing - on repeat while waiting for the festival, which starts Sep. 2. You can get your tickets to the festival, which features several premiering productions, here. Be like Nike, just do it.
Tanya’s production CHARKHA, which released on the 75th Indian Independence Day for the Embassy of India, Paris, explores the importance of the spinning wheel and the importance of the handloom tradition across parts of India and the larger geopolitical economic powers through the eyes of a weaver. What I love is the simplicity of the production, whether with the aharya, the music, or the dance. The music is plaintive at times, joyful at others, and the dance is haunting. It’s days later, and I’m still thinking about it. This, you can watch here. Right now.
If you’re still reading - I’m going to add a plug here for Off the Beat Dance Podcast - I started this project with Kiran Rajagopalan because the two of us connected on some of the same questions about dance - specifically Indian classical dance - and we wanted bring more people into the fold for this conversation. I’ve written more about the podcast in my last post. We’ve been working very hard over the course of several months and are going to be recording several more episodes over the course of the next few days. First episode is dropping Thursday, September 9th.
Cover photo of Shilpa Nanjappa by Simha’s Photography
