PALLAVI VERMA(Prompt 4 and self reflective essay)

Non-Fiction:  Using 2000 to 2500 words, give an evocative description of your favorite painting, photograph, dance-performance or sculpture. Feel free to explore various dimensions of this work - the creative process of the artist behind the work, the spaces of its exhibition, its impact on you, and the work's many afterlives, among other aspects.  

                                   
                                                             SUTRA

Note: I have picked a dance performance by a Belgian choreographer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The name of the performance is "Sutra"(Link to the performance: https://vimeo.com/40664952).

 We all have might have seen sand art, right? It looks fascinating when we watch beach sand being performed with that white background light using different textures and impressions, sometimes using pinch, sometimes making strokes and using different tools. Artist's hands moving in the sand in real time to create different images with the macro context remaining same. There's something about these image formations in the sand frame by frame which holds viewers eyes. Stories through real-time image creation. It feels meditative. Now let's imagine if you are given a single unit of the element(or property, can be pipes or tires or rodes) and in fixed multiple numbers of it. Bound by the same concept, think of all the possible images or installations you can design from these blocks into a given space. What is the possible imagination and arrangements of the blocks you could think of?

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a Belgian choreographer. Looking into his past works, what I found interesting was the use of modular set design. He uses a single element(property) in multiplication. Unlike a static stage set, the dancers form different installation or arrangement using this modular set. It’s a real-time stage construction. The properties become an active part of the performance in relation to the human body instead of just a passive one. Bound by the same concept, these moving props are brought into changing contextual composition. Body in disguise comes as some choreographic tool using this set design with very less use of the wings.

                                                   
Concept and movement Philosophy
Fascinated with Bruce Lee and kung fu since childhood, Larbi had developed a lifelong interest in the Shaolin school of Chan Buddhism and had long dreamt of working with Shaolin monks. He makes it true by his work "Sutra" in 2008. There's a group of monks, Larbi and a child monk in this work. Back in 2007, he spends almost a year with these monks in Shaolin temple absorbing their lifestyle in order to create this work. They were open and eager to learn from Larbi his western modern techniques of dance and in return give him their Buddhist philosophies and Kung Fu moves. Kung Fu is a martial art form with the spirituality of Buddhism in it. The influence of Eastern philosophies in the Western Modern Dancing has a long history from Anna Pavlova working with Uday Shankar to Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn playing roles of Radha and Shiva, to Mata Hari. Even in the current context, take the case of Yoga as an example. The number of high profile people involved in yoga, their adapted trendy gypsy dresses, popular henna tattoos, the display on a magazine or album covers, the western culture has taken a fancy to Indian spirituality and fashion. It's like an OSMOSIS process. It definitely opens up a new set of the possibility of work and growth.  
Talking about his set design, there is the use of 21 wooden cuboid boxes open from one end- one for each monk, 1 similar steel box for Larbi and 21 Miniature palm-sized version of these wooden boxes. The idea to create this set design comes from a tight dormitory arrangement of the monks in the monastery next door to the Shaolin temple. The set designer also saw how in factory work, the girls working there used to sleep in these joined bunk beds. He felt these were human lives in storage, filling shelves for bodies. The word "Sutra" means a thread. How a group of monks, a figure in a jacket and a jogger(Larbi's role) and this set design are tied together is something interesting.

At the start, Larbi and a young monk are hunched like chess players over a miniature model on the downward right of the stage set( palm-sized wooden boxes laid out in the same arrangements as the actual boxes). This created an illusion of puppet theatre: either Larbi or the little monk played puppeteer arranging the miniatures. The monks moved and executed that layout—sometimes even before the order was given, which playfully altered the manipulation effect.



Installations and its relation
Performers drag and lift the boxes into 16 different installations. Lotus flower(one of the key symbol of Chan Buddhism), blooming of this lotus flower, domino effect, tight dormitories of monks to the temple gate of the Shaolin temple. One of the interesting imageries that stand is that of the skyscraper with Shaolin monks on standing on top of each, having changed into natty black suits. They leap like early businessmen. Back in 2007, when Larbi just started working with these monks, It was comforting even for Larbi to see that these young monks of 21 or 22 age were open to pop music, a life with an internet connection and mobile phones and in fact they have always been on top of new technology. This skyscraper image also shows how urbanization is now part of their life.

Larbi's Role
He transforms his role from a puppeteer in the beginning to an onlooker, absolutely shown as somebody unaccepted by the monks, isolated and sometimes in conflict with them. It can see in the way he is wearing this western costume of the jacket and a jogger and the fact is given a steel box unlike wooden boxes of the other monks. His relationship with the child monk is being shown as that of a warm, protective and friendly. His first solo dance later joined by the little monk, happened after a renegade monk threw the miniature box models off to the ground and carried the steel box to the center of the stage and in front of the line of wooden boxes. Larbi joined the monks for the first time after the skyscrapers/plum blossom stakes installation during which Larbi taught the monk's sign language. When a monk performed scorpion-style imitative boxing, Larbi joined as a playful adversary, imitating the monk’s movements, and turning it into a yoga position. Later which transformed into the toad-style imitative boxing then Larbi swiftly imitated the toad-style jumps. Towards the end, he transforms from a playful adversary to a community member who is finally an integral part of the Shaolin kung fu world

It's interesting to see many young dancers in India drawn towards western athleticism while western dancers drew toward eastern philosophies. Shaolin Kung Fu was said to be never meant for stage performances. It started happening in 1987 and now in this performance, the warrior monks performed kung fu to Brzóska’s contemporary music with strong minimalist influence for two violins, cello, piano, and percussion, which provided the reflective driving force for the coordination of the monks and Larbi’s movements. Larbi's experience, working with monks reflects monks adapting to the urbanized lifestyle while he at the same time fears that Sutra's world travel can make their culture contaminated. I feel his observations are contradictory and make him look like an outside eye. Asian countries are enriched culturally and socially with growing potentialities and advancements. It's interesting to think about what difference in the perspective of work would have been possible had it been an Eastern choreographer using the Shaolin Kung Fu and Buddhism philosophy. 

                                    SELF REFLECTIVE ESSAY

The intention to do this elective for me was to learn something new which is out of my comfort zone. Sometimes dance is like stories in space with movements as ink and sometimes it is very much poetic in nature. I could connect quite a lot of things from this course with my own practice such as free writing like dance improvisation, John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" with dance as art in motion, extending the understanding of metaphors to body metaphors, Dobey's essay to understand reader's mind and keep the spark alive in the language as  a writer, or even looking closely at the graphic novels and the transitions from panel to panel. All of it somehow connected to my own practice in ways more than I could think of. Metaphor workshop and Stephen Dobey's essay is something that stayed with me apart from various other crafting elements learned earlier like line break, repetition. As a creative writer, it becomes a responsibility to bring freshness and spark in the language and to understand what impact it makes on reader's mind. I remember the map Aditi had drawn about the power of the particulars and changing abstract into concrete (experiential) through particulars. Moving from general to specific or precise and how precision comes regardless of metaphorical or literal image. The example of "The box" in the classroom discussion enhanced the learning even further. Something which helped me in improving my midterm poems. Another was the graphic novel Maus class discussions. The body deals with time and space in dance. Panels were like those static marking of time and space. The six types of transition in movements from panel to panel improved my observation and in all the possible ways text is juxtaposed. The rules of free writing: Stream of consciousness, not to stop, not to edit and not to worry about making sense were very similar to dance improvisation and I felt trying out same experience but through a different medium.

This course has helped in improving my articulation and observation. I have been quite regular to the classes and have tried to keep up with the readings as much as I could. Reading "The God of Small Things" for the 3rd time now was a completely different experience for me. I read it even slower this time and tried looking into the finest details of it like the role of internal capitalization, repetition of one imagery in changing context, subcontinental language into English. The class discussions exposed me to thoughts I never paid attention to. One such thought I remember is the language we write, think, dream and the language of our anger. And the ways our education system defamiliarize us with our native languages. As of writing part, I overcame the inhibitions that I can't write. I observed various crafting elements in the classes and how emphasis was allocated in different poems. I am keen to hone these skills further and write my everyday encounters and experiences more creatively and playfully.