Over the past five days, we have tackled and discovered many questions, concerns and provocations, but our question from day one has served as a trigger for many of these conversations. Before an evening performance on December 21, we met Leela Venkataraman to elaborate on some of the points she made in her opening speech the previous day.
She remarks that the female body, with its breasts - prominent, articulate markers of a certain gender, makes it slightly harder for those possessed of them to bend gender and take on roles from the opposite sex, reiterating that this is a personal viewpoint.
It leads us to wonder why male bodies might be considered neutral. Many people point out that a bare torso allows one to locate dance movement in the body with greater clarity, which gives male bodies an edge over other bodies. Yet, it is facile to ignore the social and historical climate that makes it unacceptable for women to dance bare-bodied and achieve equal clarity. Another argument is that the flatness of the male torso offers a plainer space for the dance to be projected onto the body. Do you think that male bodies are neutral dancing bodies? Read on, and respond.
Excerpts from a conversation:
Who would you say are five dancers who have changed the game for dance in India, vis-a-vis the male dancer?
First, of course, Uday Shankar and Ramgopal. Until that time, where was the question of Indian dance being performed there (outside India)? An odd devadasi had gone there. Shanta Rao had performed a few times. Other than that, Indian dance had really not been considered in a big way. And the fact that there was a beautiful male body performing for the first time. And both these people had such an awesome presence - that made a tremendous difference to what was shown. And plus the exotic costumes.
