Indent: The Body & The Performative

Last-ing

An edition accrues over time. The etymological underpinnings of the term ‘edition’ gesture at acts of ‘giving’, ‘producing’, or ‘bringing forth’, doing so ‘out of’ or ‘from within’ bodies and repositories of people, ideas and images. Last-ing has been several years in the making, starting from murmurs in 2020, to a proposal in 2021, and finally, an edition with 12 works spanning writing, video, and photographs in 2022. What it has meant to us has changed constantly; imagined in a shaky post-pandemic moment, it now manifests as the intention to endure, to remain, to leave traces. To last, leakily.

Indent originated as a project of Gati Dance Forum, a dance organization in New Delhi. It was set up with the intention of exploring the relationship between the body and performance, with its mapping of this performative body expanding across space, time, and disciplinary boundaries with each edition. In 2022, Indent is imagined with collaborators working across time zones. Besides furthering an engagement with a performative and embodied imagination, it has also allowed us to consider what it means to edit and publish a ‘journal’. In making space for various textures of ‘writing’, from the diaristic to the academic to the visual, it can no longer rely on uniformity as harmonizing force, in using the same citation system, or models of ‘blind’ peer review. Journals are messy, leaky affairs, and Last-ing stays true to this confusion.

Moving away from a more conventional system of peer review that we implemented in previous editions, where external reviewers responded to contributors, this year, we set up peer review groups with contributors from the present edition, where they responded to each other’s work. This allowed long conversations to unfold between contributors, who then took some of that feedback into revised drafts of their work.

Instead of being released in a single drop of 10-12 works, this year, Indent releases 2-3 works per week, to allow readers to spend dedicated time with each of the works. This means that there is a shift in how the editors introduce the issue. Instead of doing a single introductory note, we write episodic texts each week.

How does a journal constitute itself? ‘Mapping’ how the 12 works speak to each other has been a large part of this year’s editing process. This included working with illustrator Alia Sinha to visualize a mind-map of the edition. The map takes many forms, appearing as a GIF and a series of still images that are further broken down into detailed segments as we release each work.

 

Beyond and Between - Space Studies for a Diasporic Dance

Andrea Itacarambi Albergaria

 

Future plans

individuals joined by illusion: courage

Old past steps

ancient memories: fear

Present looking at the wind hitting the leaves: dew

and the cup of coffee upside down

to be the sludge in the air: spaces

everything is left on one side of the arm:

dust cloud mist hug (us)

I wrote this short poem in 2021 the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, reflecting on The Dream Play (1901) by August Strindberg. In this work, characters merge into each other, locations change in an instant and a locked door becomes an obsessively recurrent image. As Strindberg himself wrote in his preface, he wanted “to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream”. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. From my poem Future Plans, I traced a map of research that explores through dance, specifically through Odissi, outside and inside spaces into a diasporic poetic field of creation. Thus, Beyond and Between - Space Studies for a Diasporic Dance, is a project of photography, dance and empty places, designed for exploring spaces and lasts. This is last and also my last (as measurement of my feeling, or my inner poetic, my narrative to build body work in a contemporary scene and in a multimedia landscape). The poem is about isolation, not just during the pandemic. It is about isolation in moments of solitude in the journey. 

To dance Odissi or any other Indian dance in Brazil is to dance alone. Nobody knows this art, just a few connoisseurs of this finest of forms. This is the poetic diaspora. I keep resisting with the dance that I believe, that my body answers. I can feel this dance and I keep dancing even though nobody knows what this is.

To stay between and beyond, create another dance from this. This is the isolation of practicing an art totally out of context. This is my feeling. This is my measurement. 


Master of Quarantine: Come on. Come and help us dance—We have to dance before the plague breaks out. We must!

 (STRINDBERG, 2010, p. 151).

In Strindberg´s work, Indra asks his daughter Agnes about where she is and how she came to be there. She replies that following the path of fire and lightning, she ended up walking trails made of lightning and that the cloud, changing course, dragged her down, where the air is dense, heavy. The father then says that Agnes is falling on Earth, surpassing the limits of the different mythological skies. In addition, he asks his daughter to tell how those who live there live. Only the laments of humans are audible in the abode of Indra and the daughter, already closer to Earth, in contrast, tells her father that there are also shouts of joy, bells and lights that light up.

One may ask, “But what makes your engagement with Odissi diasporic?”. Here, I must share my idea of ‘poetic diaspora’ (not just diaspora), two Greek terms full of potency in their essence. I am not referring to the diaspora (that emerges from) flight, persecution or situations where populations move for some reason, whether hunger, subjugation or religion. I coined the term ‘poetic diaspora’ (Albergaria 2020) to describe my own diasporic experience in search of a poetics as an artist, as well as the poetics of Odissi dance, which arrived in Brazil, not through the installation of an Indian community, but through dance itself - tours by Indian artists, anthropological theatre (Barba, 2012; Schechner, 1996) and through artists who went to India for the technique and complexity of this art. I am one such artist.

This work Beyond and Between reflects this aspect of my dance work. You can find some aspects of Odissi in it if you are an Odissi Dancer. But if you are not one, you can see a flowing dance. The colours, the aharyam (ornamentation and costume), some patterns of Odissi, or some charis (gaits or walks across space) with sculptures of alasa kanyas (women in attitudes of languor) in displacement are present. But at same time, where are they heading to now? They can disappear, they can multiply themselves or they can follow people walking to or from some place. 

This video dance was produced during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was my way of delving in - between faith and an unexpected future. From this, I have reached beyond…

 

And from there my inquiries emerge:

A woman draped in a red sari stands on a long flight of steps near a railing. Her feet together and hands behind her back. The image has a bluish tinge to it.

How is it possible to survive, from ourselves
if not through movement?
Filling spaces, flowing, going beyond,
being in the middle of questions and certainties?

A montage of 4 images of the dancer in a red sari on the steps. She is holding various hand and body positions with respect to the camera and the flight of steps she is standing on.

How can my dance flow through this situation - in isolation - where multiplicities come and go, in a battle with my thoughts?

A dancer in a red sari on a flight of steps has her back to the camera. Left hand in Odissi mudra held above her head. Right hand is folded in front of her chest. She has her left leg placed on a step, right leg crosses diagonally behind her.

How can I look outside and not suffer with worldly chaos?

A dancer in a red sari on a long flight of steps with pock-marked surfaces and symbols drawn on many steps. It appears like an ancient hisyorical site.

Is there any other border for a contemporary body and mind?

Dancer in a red sari standing on a flight of steps, her body facing the camera. Her head is tiled upwards looking at her oustretched left hand. The right hand is looped under a metal railing .

Is there any other kind of division that I couldn't go into?

A montage of 4 images of a dancer in a red sari. She is holding various body postions. For exampl: tilting her torso, raising her arms, etc

Which of us will keep dancing after all?

Creation and performance: Andrea Itacarambi Albergaria 

Photographs: Max Carniel

Music (morchang): Edson Fernando   

Brazil 2021

References

ALBERGARIA, A. I. Mudras: o gesto da dança indiana Odissi como caligrafia corporal na cena contemporânea. Curitiba, CRV, 2020.

BARBA, Eugenio; SAVARESE, Nicola. A Arte Secreta do Ator – um dicionário de antropologia teatral. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2012.

SCHECHNER, Richard e LIGIÉRO, Zeca (org). A estética do Rasa. Performance e Antropologia de Richard Schechner. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X, 2012.
__________________; The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London and New York. Routledge, 1995.

STRINDBERG, August. ‘The Dream Play’, Plays by August Strindberg, New York, Charles Scrribner’s Sons, 1912.

Andrea Itacarambi Albergaria is a Brazilian Odissi dance teacher, performer, writer, and also a PhD Student in the Performing Arts Program and a member of the Intercultural Studies Group, Arts Institute - University of Campinas, Brazil (Coordinator Prof. Dra. Mariana Baruco) with the collaboration of University of Pondicherry (India), Performing Arts Department (Coordinator Dr. Prof. RK Ravivarma) . Her Diasporic Poetic concept of dance research comes from her autoethnographic process of creation, from pedagogy up to live performances as well as creation.

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