The reality of cultural appropriation and entitlement

At the peak of Chennai’s annual art festival (Jan 2018), two artistes from distant parts of the world — Melbourne, Australia, and Los Angeles, USA — came together to present Sweating Sarees, an hour-long, tag-defying performance. What was it? Dance? Drama? Dissection of Bharatanatyam lessons in the US? Academic discourse on ethnohistories?

Sounds complicated. But believe me, there was nothing tortuous or turgid in what Ramya Harishankar and Priya Srinivasan did as they retraced the history of Bharatanatyam. Surprising, because Priya’s book on which the show was based is a sombre academic work with a stern subtitle: ‘Indian Dance as Transnational Labor’, (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2012). But conversational, interactive dialogues made the show an engaging ride.

The two women focussed on Indian dance showcased in the US back in the 19th century, and on the roots it subsequently put out in the land of the free. The “oriental dance” of the nautchwalis and their retinue provided a singular, spectacular, and somewhat mysterious experience to the Americans. With the advent of a new class of educated professionals in the 20th century, Indian dance schools sprouted in many US cities, launched by their dance-trained wives. But what they do mostly remains a niche activity of a minority community.

The most riveting moments in Sweating Sarees came with visuals from forgotten archives. They revealed shocking truths about the cultural appropriation of elements from Indian dance by the holy cows of modern American dance. We saw the “nautchwalis” who toured the US in the 1880s, and the image of Ruth St Denis, the “foremother” of American modern dance, in her famous piece Radha. She is fore-grounded in a whirl of her long skirt, with an entourage of Indian male “natives” behind her, playing instruments, testifying to her clever, exoticised marketing strategy.

Priya showed how St Denis, and later Martha Graham, coolly appropriated not only the gestures, stances and movements, but also ideas and narratives, from the Indian “nautch” girls and their male accompanists. However, while the white Caucasians went on to become icons, the brown Indians remained unknown. St Denis “artfully imitated” the Indian artists whom she encountered on Coney Island and elsewhere, to choreograph her own pathbreaking work, without any acknowledgement of sources. We also hear the story of a man who filed a suit against St Denis for using him as cultural capital, and passing off his ideas as her own. 
When the American court dismissed his case, the New York Times (May 3, 1910) bellowed triumphantly “Hindu Didn’t Teach Her!”.

Watching Sweating Sarees was to feel that terms like cultural appropriation, class privilege, entitlement and colonisation, are not so much critical jargon as urgent reality — past and present. Humour gave balance, and tided over the sagging parts.

History came alive when Priya made adroit costume changes on the stage — from traditional to modern. A fluffy tutu and a single ballet shoe added to the fun, reminding us that the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova had inspired a young Rukmini to take up Indian dance, though today Rukmini Devi’s revivalist movement is seen by critics as the appropriation of the culture of the devadasis by a privileged class.

Ramya exemplified this nouveau class of Indian dancers from an entitled community. But the names of her gurus running on the back screen, which gave her legitimacy, belonged to those who claimed the old devadasi tradition.

Today, the very word devdasi (god’s handmaiden), raises socio-political issues. Wedded to the gods, dancing/singing as ritual worship, the devdasi belonged to a community which inherited these performing arts as her birthright. She was supported by temple stipends, and by wealthy patrons. But the set up remained inexorably patriarchal. She paid a high price for her life in the arts. She had access to knowledge denied to women of every other class, but she could not escape social stigma.

Ramya’s abhinaya and evocative singing, redolent of this rich tradition, became a paradoxical reminder of how the devadasi was dispossessed. Instead of freeing her from bondage and disrepute as it meant to do, the abolition of the devadasi system brought another form of victimisation to the hereditary performer - loss of art and livelihood.

In Sweating Sarees, a visual on the screen said it all. With her back to the audience, a young dancer of our times, clad in silk and gold, her long plait topped with jasmine, holds a lovely pose. But the mirror reflects three nautch girls of long ago in black and white, clutching each other for support, their inscrutable eyes looking at the world, a theatre of sorrow and struggle.

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist