A Foreigner in India for Diwali!

Diwali is described online as a five day Hindu festival celebrating the spiritual “victory” of light over darkness… And as I suspected, my regularly scheduled classes were either suspended, or sparingly attended by students who did not take time off to travel home to spend the festival with family. As the foreigner, I was actually relieved to not be invited to familial events as the additional time I had to myself was very much needed for rest and preparation for the “community” workshops and a major presentation I had to conduct.

Testing my audio-visual setup in the auditorium at Triveni Kala Sangam.

Most of my friends in, and from, the USA were focused on the midterm elections. And this was my first experience voting with an absentee ballot as a US citizen living abroad. I posted a note on Facebook as I drove by the US Embassy in Delhi where I had performed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company in 1997, before I was a US citizen. There is something absurdly surreal about trying to keep up with politics in the USA while living in India and being immersed in working and adjusting to the local culture and politics, some of which seems to be equally divisive amongst politicos in both countries. However, for the most part, it is easy to see how the struggles of living day-to-day can seem so separate from being involved in how the government of one’s country operates. It can be exhausting to constantly “fight” the realities that seem to permeate life for me here. I allow 1-1.5 hours for travelling to/from different parts of the cities I’m in, bureaucracy and language issues can holdup things as simple as buying stamps or cleaning liquid to the complexity of registering one’s resident status, a cryptic “street address” system has had me struggling to get to the right destination pretty often, and for the most part I have accepted walking away from purchases I can live without or patiently standing my ground when there is no other option.

I am back in Mumbai as I write this, still dealing with the remnants of a chest cold that was at odds with my determination to conduct three “community” workshops and give a lecture-presentation, all in addition to teaching every morning. Associated with my workshops and presentations outside of Danceworx, I have had some pretty enlightening conversations about perspectives on dance as a profession by various “free-lance” practitioners here. It seems that there is a highly competitive rivalry between the various environments for training, and that I sit in an unusual position of being a free agent looking to teach in various institutions. In the USA, to be a free agent teaching at multiple institutions is often a necessity of survival.

My three primary groups of students at The Danceworx in Delhi, along with Arun the drummer I hired for modern classes.

As for “success” in the dance field here, it seems that a lot of the attraction for young dancers might be based on “viral popularity” which in turn can become income by getting picked up to perform as “celebrities” in commercial “industrials”, elite “entertainment-for-hire” groups or production companies, and a range of Bollywood gigs. Even for those that make it into a group to “perform-for-pay”, a percentage of their income will be based on teaching, even as they are still very nascent dance students themselves, and this is challenging the depth of pedagogical knowledge available to the next generation of dancers. The realm of contemporary “concert” dance where dancers and choreographers get to explore topics and dynamics beyond entertainment has not fully filtered into the greater public audiences in India. Subsequently, of those whom aspire to such a life, the privilege of working entirely as a dancer/performer in the world of Indian contemporary dance may only be for the smallest percentage. All of that said, I was given a performance of a solo work by Bharat Sharma, titled "1989", where he highlighted a personal response to the global events of that year, including the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, where I was at the time. It was touching and distinctly rooted in an Indian movement aesthetic, that I don't really know how to describe in words. But my personal connection to the San Francisco Bay Area reminded me of the Oakland Hills fires in 1991, and my sorrows today for those living through the current wildfires in northern California.

Obviously I am oversimplifying the dance situation in India, and I am not really addressing the “classical Indian dance” field of professionals, about which I have had very little conversation. My opinion here is just based on my limited experience in the last few months. People have spoken to me primarily out of their interest in the developing aesthetic for an “Indian Modern/Contemporary Dance”, and have expressed that the evolution of “contemporary dance” in India as a potential alternative to the Indian dance forms, is barely twenty years old. Along with the “viral video” concept, one of the most popular forms of western style dance in demand is Jazz, along with Hip-Hop and other “street” forms. I have definitely put pressure on myself to keep my ballet and modern classes relevant for how their technical and artistic approaches can be applied and draw from Jazz and street forms. At the same time, I still try to adhere to advice I was once given, “When in a ballet class, be a ballet dancer. When in an Afro-Caribbean class, be an Afro-Caribbean dancer.” You get the idea. There is much to be gained as a dancer that can be both confident and competent at assimilating in multiple approaches to dance.

Speaking of multiple approaches, it is amazing how many different remedies I tried to avoid what started out as a head cold from becoming something much worse. I even discovered Ajwain seeds are good for you? I admit, I had no idea what Ajwain was when I bought a pack of “digestive” cookies at the store. I like “digestive” cookies with tea (a habit I picked up from living in England as a teenager), and when I tasted the first cookie it had a flavor that I was not sure I liked. But I thought my cold might have affected my taste buds. So I tried dunking one of the cookies in the tea, and the unknown flavor got stronger. Only then did I actually read the label on the package and it read Ajwain Cookies (+ No Added Sugar). What is Ajwain? I had to look it up online to find out that it is a seed that originates in India and is often used to treat colds, congestion, bronchitis and asthma. Who knew? I still am not sure I like the taste, and maybe I just prefer a little more sugar in my cookies. Either way, I have a chest cold that is dangerously resembling bronchitis and I have been using every remedy I know to keep myself going. I walk around with a thermos filled with freshly-made, hot, lemon-honey-ginger for sipping while I teach or talk to minimize my coughing when the cough drop under my tongue doesn’t do the trick; gargle with salt water; take an Ayurvedic cough syrup fortified with Tulsi (a kind of Basil), Mulethi (Licorice) & Banaphsa (wild violet), a few more things I had to lookup. I increased my daily fresh citrus fruit consumption, and at night I use Sudafed to help me breathe so that I could sleep. I’m sure that the air pollution in Delhi and the lack of any moisture in weeks did not help, but this cold seems determined to takes its own sweet time, no matter what I do. Is it odd that I anthropomorphize my cold with sentience?

Dancers and staff at The Danceworx in Delhi, dressed up for Diwali.

At Danceworx in Delhi, beyond my technique classes in ballet and Taylor-style modern, I also taught the “Waltz” section of Cloven Kingdom, which the dancers will perform as a part of their showcase in a couple of weeks. Courtesy of Sheela Raj, I taught a workshop on what I will call “creative dance approaches” to the kids from the Nai Disha School mentioned in my previous post. 

Anurag and me

Happily, they have a Bollywood teacher, Anurag, who helped me out by giving them some movement they are familiar with towards the end of our workshop,and I got to appreciate the mutual love and care he shares in working with the kids. 

Group workshop #2 with Bharat Sharma to my left and Sina (musician) with drum. Photo by Stuti Arora

My two open workshops at Bharat Sharma’s new studio, NarenJayan, were completely full with great dancers from a range of companies and studios from around Delhi. And my final night in Delhi, I gave a lecture presentation about my life in dance in the USA, giving context to how the choreographic works I have performed over my thirty year career reflects a short history of ballet and modern dance from the Diaghilev era works through Paul Taylor.

While teaching, I am constantly noticing how different my approach to movement and technique appears to be for the dancers (both young and experienced) here in India. I haven’t quite figured out the details of the differences. But when I have a chance, I ask the students what they find to be different about what I have given them in my class or workshop. Mostly, the answers seem to revolve around my desire for them to perceive “shape” and “actions” as engaging their whole bodies, and that they dance in relationship to both the other dancers and their spatial awareness within the studio. Musically, I have made every effort to have a live drummer work with me for my workshops and modern classes, but this is not typically the case for contemporary dance disciplines here, at least in my experience thus far. The musicians have been mostly not accompanied dance classes before, and they have been great in giving me feedback as to how my rhythmic approaches are both simple and challenging for them because they differ from what they are used to, and that I clearly illustrate for them how movement, more than stamping and clapping can reflect music. At the same time, I have been really curious about the kinds of rhythmic structures described to me by one of the Tabla players where they progress through base structures called Taals which readily go beyond our western structures of duple and triplet combinations. Okay. I will stop there, as my mathematical nerd is emerging.

Sina in action by Stuti Arora

I am going to post this entry without much editing or review, as I have not had a great deal of time to put it together. But I would like to keep disciplined about posting each week, even though I think this one is a little overdue. Writing does actually help me keep track of what I have been doing. Namaste from Bombay!