Interview with Angeline Shaka
and Daniel Banks
Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics: Spectacles
of Religiosity, NYU, July 19, 2003.
Angeline: What do you think happens, what is the biggest change
for you when you see a performance that has come from an indigenous culture
become a part of mainstream or pop culture?
Daniel: Well, I think we have to be careful about that sort
of anthropologizing of culture because all cultures are on some level
indigenous and on some level mestizo at the same time. I think we get into trouble
when we get very precious about talking about the indigenous culture because
everything has been mixed to some degree or other. I worry that we use
indigenous as a euphemism for “brown” but I think the fundamental question
you
are talking about is what happens when something is ritual and then becomes
theater.
But isn't that in essence
what theater is? Theater is the taking of something that had use to a
community, taking something that had use value and then turning it into
symbolic capital. Fine Art, the
painting on the wall, the play, has more symbolic capital than it does use
value, although it certainly has more than symbolic capital for the producers
of it, but it's less clear how that serves a community than how a healing
ritual or a rain dance or a prosperity dance or something serves a community.
But I also think in some
ways, the West has this compulsion to try to bring ritual back into our world
in peculiar way. [...] I think we are constantly struggling for something more
meaningful and in the absence of more formal community rituals, we create these
kind of secular rituals that I think on some conscious or unconscious level are
an attempt to create ritual for ourselves.
To get back to your question,
is it appropriation when we take indigenous or traditional art forms and alter
them to create something more ecumenical? I don't know I think everything in
the world is up for grabs to a certain extent I think the large question is
“Who is it for? Who is it by? Who's getting paid?”
I've seen very successful
productions where I've thought that- here's a concrete example: I have a phobia
of the Black church on stage. 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. [...]
It was very interesting to
see this piece Crowns that just came out: a Regina Taylor piece based on the
book about church hats and in the production that was done in New York at
Second Stage the production would go up to that line of where they were just
about to have church on stage and someone looked like they were about to get
the spirit. They wouldn't actually “get the spirit” and I thought that was a
very interesting choice that Regina (of course being from within the African
American culture) made. She really got that there was a line and if you crossed
that line it was almost like showing a secret sacred ritual. She took us to
that point where we knew what was next.
I thought that was tactically pretty savvy of her.
AS: Do you think that you could have a group bring in
their “rain dances” and put it in the Joyce or Carnegie hall and have it keep
it's integrity or does the act of paying for tickets change that?
DB: [...] I get very uncomfortable with that, I even have
to be dragged to Ballet Folklorico type performances because I just feel far
too much like a voyeur in those situations. I feel far too much like I'm
watching a tourist performance. [...]
If someone is going to go see
a tourist production, I guess I would much rather that person give the money to
whatever city, whatever country needs it. The sad reality is that a lot of the
companies that do get brought up here are treated horribly and do not make a
lot of money. Assuming that a group is being treated right and being paid well
then who am I to say no, we shouldn't bring them here because of
anthropological political correctness. But the reality of the situation is that
most of those groups are not treated as well as they should be. They certainly
are not treated as well as Western groups that are brought down to their
country (that can't afford them as much as we can afford them) so it's case by
case. I can't say categorically it doesn't work or it shouldn't be done there
are so many exceptions to the rule and the ultimate question is: Is it moving?
[...] I guess I'm happy to explore the possible problems with that scenario in
order to think about how it can be done better. [...]
What I do think is important
about the kind of work that hopefully we do in Performance Studies, and the
reason that these questions are asked is just as much as possible to understand
the politics around it and then make better choices. The other side to this
question is how do we look at somebody's work like Ron Athey? He creates highly
ritualized work, he's an HIV+ artist and his company at one point was all HIV+.
I haven't seen his name out there lately so I dont know if they are inactive
now but he had a company that was very much around contaminated blood, about
piercings. He used to suspend himself from piercings and he used a lot of
ritual and visceral imagery from African tribes and it was very intense work; a
lot of people couldn't watch it. I
was astonished at how powerful it was to see a ritual created out of our
economic, political, sociological, and health crisis in the '80's and early
'90's. He was creating a performance ritual which you walked away from feeling
like you had not been entertained, you were watching and partaking in a ritual,
almost in the same way as Nao's work last night. Several people were saying
last night: “it took too long to strap the water on” and and yet that's the
thing about ritual performance. It doesn't just happen, the slitting of the
goat's throat takes all of two seconds. It's the preparation leading up to that
that then prepares you for the cataclysmic moment. It could be that the power of presenting this work may not
be just presenting the results but maybe you show the preparation that goes
into the dancing, not just the dancing itself.
AS: I grew up in Hawaii, I was born there and live there
until I went to college in New York and I had done hula growing up and then
went and did this very contemporary dance and at one point decided I wanted to
mix the two and there was certainly an issue (for me) of authority, because
hula is very ritualized and it's telling the stories of the cosmology of the
Hawaiian people.
DB: And is your background at all Hawaiian?
AS: I have no Hawaiian blood in me except that I was born
on the island and lived only there.
DB: So culturally you were very much there but not [...]
That's another tricky thing.
AS: My mother's family is from El Salvador and I don't
have much of a connection to that, I don't speak Spanish, I should, I wish that
I did, I don't, so it's very funny also being here at the Encuentro. All this
is a part of where I come from but I'm not relating to it as such. It kind of
comes down to authority and who is and who isn't allowed to use or appropriate
and then change things.
DB: That's maybe true in terms of cultural production, I
think also we're at a moment where you basically get to say who you are and
what you are, but I think you are right that that doesn't yet necessarily yet
translate to sort of “cultural property.”
AS: If you had learned Indian dancing and combined that
with modern dance and went to India and performed that not being Indian I think
you would get a very different reception than I think you would get in NY and
where is that line? That could be a dangerous line, perhaps?
DB: But ultimately too, the bottom line is look at what
Martha Graham did with Japanese forms.
AS: and Ruth St. Denis...
DB: Absolutely. Certainly look at what Japanese Butoh
dancers have done with American forms, so ultimately I think that's where it
helps us to push ourselves to ask these questions: What are our motives? What
is the nature of what we are doing? But also say “is this something that spirit
has given me to do, am I the one that's supposed to do this, or am I just
getting off cheaply by not pushing my art harder, or not pushing my own
creativity harder? Am I being lazy by just taking something that's readily
accessible, or am I actually responsibly creating something new, because
everything is based on something.” So the question is in blending the modern
dance with the hula, are you purporting to be and I use this word with huge
quotes around it, are you purporting to be an 'authentic' hula dancer, or is it
simply that the hula is somehow affecting the modern dance in such a way that
you wouldn't necessarily notice it unless you told somebody. I think it's all about degrees and it's
all about finding your own integrity. It's about finding a balance in terms of
aesthetics. Some people don't mind being political and out there. [...] It's
based on what you're comfortable with. And only your gods can tell you what
you're comfortable with. That's probably on some level too liberal of a
position for the kind of Performance Studies ethic of critiquing appropriation.
I guess the answer is you can critique it but you can't stop it.
You have to look at Ruth St.
Denis, Ted Shawn, look at somebody's project like Katharine Dunham, some of her
stuff seems so difficult to watch and yet it wedged open a door at some
particular moment. You talk to dancers who danced with her and she gave them
opportunities that nobody had.
Maya Deren was possessed of spirit. Do you know Maya Deren's work? The
Divine Horsemen. You should
definitely watch the film and read the book. It is incredibly problematic and
yet somehow bizarrely wonderful. She was chosen to be a bridge.
END OF INTERVIEW