Questions for Contemplation: Performance and Scholarship Across Borders

Questions For Contemplation: Performance and Scholarship Across Borders

My initial interest in attending the Hemispheric Institute stemmed from questions I am endeavoring to interrogate with regards to dance and how dance deals with notions of authority, identity, memory, and translation, especially as it crosses borders. I am thinking specifically of indigenous/ethnic dance forms that become a part of a “Western” contemporary or ballet dance form, but am now also thinking about the translation of ritual in communities ie: the space for ritual, the purpose of ritual, and how ritual changes when and if it moves into a theatrical setting for spectators who have paid a price for admission. It is the difference between the spectator wanting, desiring, to have the transformative experience of the ritual and the spectator who is not necessarily looking for something transformative, but entertaining.

I have attempted to explore some of the questions regarding performance within the frameworks of two interviews from the Encuentro: the first interview was conducted by Victoria Cuellar and myself with Josh Kun, DJ, music critic and assistant professor of English at UC Riverside. Josh performed “Border Sound Files v.1: An Audio Essay”/“Archivos de sonido fronterizo v.1: Audioensayo” a performance-lecture. The second interview was with Daniel Banks, Education director of the NYC Hip-Hop Theater

Festival and Professor in NYU's Department of Drama. Each artist answered questions on the same four broad topics relating to the crossing of artistic borders. The topics were as follows: Origins and Performance Routes/Roots, The Dilemma of Ownership and Identity, The Ethics of Appropriation, and finally, Changing Performance Spaces/Changing Entertainment Values.

The idea of ownership proves to be a difficult one. It is intricately bound up with identity and authority. For many, the authority to represent groups of people in an authentic and truthful way belongs solely to others within the same group and representations outside of cultural identity are problematic. In my interview with Daniel Banks he spoke of his discomfort with representations of African American religious experiences in many theatrical performances: “I hate these shows (and they are usually directed by a white director) where a black person has to stomp and shout and pretend to have a religious experience...”^* For Daniel, this type of representation reinforces the imaginary that African American religious practices necessarily lead up to some degree of spirit possession by the worshipper, and presenting this spirit possession is akin to “showing a secret sacred ritual.” * Daniel then speaks about Regina Taylor's play Crowns based on a book about church hats and African American women's relationships to them. In Crowns Regina Taylor never lets the religious experience become what's expected. As Daniel says: “that was a very interesting choice that Regina [made]. She got us to that point where we knew that's what was next.I thought that was tactically pretty savvy of her.”^*

Daniel also brought up the subject of tourist productions and voyeurism in our interview; two related problems of ownership, identity, and authority. I am going to define tourist productions as “authentic” performances of culture and locale performed for the express entertainment/education of a non-indigenous people/groups by indigenous people/groups. It is a performance of difference that may or may not be a true representation of the people/place, but serves to reinforce the expected imaginary of the people/place. So can tourist productions ever be negotiated to transcend notions of difference based upon body and cultural geographies? Is there a space for viewing that is not voyeuristic?

DanceBrazil, based in São Paulo, Brazil is an interesting example. They fuse traditional Afro-Brazilian movement forms with modern dance presenting programs throughout the United States: a touring tourist production. They tour under the umbrella of the Capoeira Foundation with the goal of “spreading an Afro-Brazilian cultural message through educational, presenting, and producing activites.”1 By combining Afro-Brazilian forms with modern dance DanceBrazil tries to transcend difference while retaining their cultural identity. However, in my experiences at performances of DanceBrazil, the moments in the program when the audiences respond the most are the moments when modern dance gives way to capoeira. The audiences thrill at the daring, the jumps, slides and kicks of the capoeiristas. Time Magazine has described the company's aesthetic as “martial art with an African beat.” And according to the New York Post, Jelon Vieira, artistic director of DanceBrazil is: “a master capoeirista [who] comes to the rescue with 'A Jornada' which deploys his dozen dancers to amazing effect. They twist, they turn, they somersault, they pose – they do everything unbelievable that you would hope capoeiristas would do.” 'A Jornada' premiered in 2002 and according to DanceBrazil's website, “follows the path of capoeira as an expression of Afro-Brazilian culture across geographic and cultural lives.” The newspaper quotes never move beyond the “unbelievable” tricks the capoeiristas perform and so without the audience's willingness to see/experience the performance beyond the fantastic tricks of the capoeiristas, DanceBrazil cannot successfully challenge the dominant imaginary of Afro-Brazilian culture and cannot move beyond being a tourist production.

A key purpose for tourist productions along with entertainment is education. DanceBrazil tours to expose and educate audiences about Afro-Brazilian culture. Jelon Vieira has a school on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan; anyone can take classes there and after learning some of the basic forms of capoeira can appropriate them and present an unauthentic performance, something that happened in some of the early performances of the hula leading to the question: does the prevalence and popularity of tourist productions contribute to the diluting of cultural identity? Jane Desmond in Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World dedicates chapter three: “Pictures Come to Life: Rendering “Hawai'i” in Early Mainland Hula Performances” to a discussion of the appropriation of the hula by mainland performers. She argues the appropriation of hula by these performers contributed to the cementation of the “hula girl” as representation of Hawaii. In this representation Hawaii is feminized, exotic, sensuous, a paradise2 and speaks to the idea of the place rather than the reality of the place. I grew up on the island of Hawaii and studied hula. Hula is the history and legends of Hawaii and it's gods. Some hula chants speak of a desire for sovereignty for the Hawaiian people. Hula is also about which leaves, flowers, or vines are used in the haku (head) leis and wrist/ankle bands and skirts made for each dance and why; it is the depository of Hawaiian culture. The annual Merrie Monarch festival (in honor of King David Kaläkaua) is the biggest event of the year on the Big Island. Hula halaus from all the islands as well as the mainland compete over the course of a week for top places. The performances at the Merrie Monarch festival look very little like those at luaus staged by hotels, or on The Brady Bunch in Hawaii, or any number of television, movie, and tourism brochure representations of the hula. As Jane Desmond mentions, even though the presentation of the hula in those instances look very little like hula performed on the islands for resident audiences, audiences who are unfamiliar with hula accept the performance as authentic without question.

Not all spectators accept performances at face value. The critic is the hyper-spectator, whose role is “the same as the fan's role in the sense that you're supposed to listen, you're supposed to enjoy, you're supposed to get off on it feel it. But as a critic,I will always try to historicize it in my head. Trace its history. Create the maps, create the lineage and then decide what to do with it.”¨ The critic's job can be made difficult when confronted with a performance form either commercial or ritual that is outside of the critic's own traditions. An essay titled “The Interested Act of Dance Criticism” in Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture by Ann Daly goes into detail about the questions dance critics have been struggling to negotiate as the “world dance” boom continues and defines four critical aesthetics and practices used by dance critics and historians in the dissemination of knowledge: ethnographic, canon, descriptive, and feminist criticism. 3 Ethnographic criticism aims to interpret the meaning of dance by positing dance as an expression (whether affirmatively or by negation) of cultural values, beliefs, and conventions. It suspends judgment in favor of a position of interpretation.4

These questions I am asking about how ethnographers (in this case artists, critics, and scholars) can/should observe and write about other cultures without imposing the dominant culture's value systems represent an ongoing conversation within the field of anthropology. It is a conversation that may have no conclusion, but in the process we will hopefully become more adept at recognizing when and how imperialist representations of the “other” occur. In this time of super-globalization our world is shrinking before our eyes. Because of rapid technological advances we are able to access virtually every part of the world through our computers, television programs, movies, music, or tourism, making each of us in a way, “armchair anthropologists.” While politically speaking this is a time of tightening of borders, culturally, theatrically, and educationally speaking, our borders are dissolving. This dissolving is on the one hand leaving artists (and spectators alike) with access to all kinds of new materials, forms and inspirations, but on the other hand leaves a collision between artistic/cultural ownership, identity, and ethics. This moment of tension is evident in both Josh's and Daniel's interviews. Both agree that “everything has been mixed to some degree or other” * and that this mixing is inevitable, but they are also wary about the loss of “ownership” of music, culture, or performance that this mixing necessitates. The additional questions I pose problematize viewing even further. As art is always necessarily a subjective experience, it is even more so when one thinks about how our individual experiences, beliefs, and memories affect how we see. Elizabeth Bishop wrote the poem “Santarém” about a memory of a trip to Brazil. She begins the poem:

Of course I may be remembering it all wrong

after, after- how many years?

That golden evening I really wanted to go no farther;

more than anything else I wanted to stay awhile

in that conflux of two great rivers, Tapajós, Amazon,

grandly, silently flowing, flowing east.

Suddenly there'd been houses, people, and lots of mongrel

riverboats skittering back and forth

under a sky of gorgeous, under-lit clouds.

with everything gilded, burnished along one side,

and everything bright, cheerful, casual- or so it looked.

I liked the place; I liked the idea of the place.

Two rivers. Hadn't two rivers sprung

from the Garden of Eden? No, that was four

and they'd diverged. Here only two

and coming together. Even if one were tempted

to literary interpretations

such as: life/death, right/wrong, male/female

-such notions would have resolved, dissolved, straight off

in that watery, dazzling dialectic.

And ends with an illustration of the subjectivity of aesthetic taste:

In the blue pharmacy the pharmacist

had hung an empty wasps' nest from a shelf:

small, exquisite, clean matte white,

and hard as stucco. I admired it

so much he gave it to me.

Then- my ship's whistle blew. I couldn't stay.

Back on board, a fellow-passenger, Mr. Swan,

Dutch, the retiring head of Philips Electric,

really a very nice old man,

who wanted to see the Amazon before he died,

asked, “What's that ugly thing?”

Translation/interpretation is clearly apart of Elizabeth Bishop's dazzling dialectic, although it's a dialectic made more interesting not through it's dissolving but through it's existence. This poem is a series of memories requiring negotiation and re-interpretation: “I liked the place; I liked the idea of the place.” Bishop's mythology of Santaém is the under-lit clouds, the gilded and burnished houses, people, and riverboats, all cheerful, bright and casual. Her interpretation of Santarém is also represented by the wasps’ nest described as “small, exquisite, clean matte white,/ and hard as stucco.” The statements and revisions she makes through the poem: “Hadn't two rivers sprung/ from the Garden of Eden? No, that was four/ and they'd diverged. Here only two/ and coming together” as well as Bishop's admiration of the wasps' nest and Mr. Swan's reaction to it: “What’s that ugly thing?” illustrate the tensions between Bishop's mythology/“idea” of Santarém and the reality of Santarém. Of course it is also possible to read Mr. Swan's “What’s that ugly thing” as his interpretation not just of the wasps' nest, but perhaps all of Santarém. It is this constant pulling, tugging, and re-positioning of memory, interpretation, idea, and reality that make this poem such a wonderful metaphor for the difficulties inherent in viewing and writing about performances that cross borders. As André Lepecki recommends, it is our job as consumers of cultures to examine ways in which “my audience body [can] become a partner to those bodies dancing for me.”5 It is not enough to say: “all art is subjective and therefore neither good or bad” and leave it at that, we must recognize there is a delicate negotiation and balance that needs to take place when it comes to the performers/performances that cross boundaries in our world of dissolving borders and inevitable mixing.

* Daniel Banks interview with Angeline Shaka, July 19, 2003

¨ Interview with Josh Kun, Angeline Shaka & Victoria Cuellar, July 19, 2003.