Situating the Body: Choreographies of Transmigration

Abstract

This paper aims to ask questions about how interculturalism might be informed by thinking through choreography. It examines the techniques and strategies of two Malaysian-Australian artists, Chandrabhanu and Yap, whose transmigration has constructed new forms of subjectivity from the memories and histories of dancing bodies. It asks how embodied experience, that includes dance knowledges, adapts before and after other social and political adjustments? It will examine how their choreography develops as a means to imagine the self beyond hegemonic political and social models of identity. In this regard, we have utilised the work of Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis to theorise the concept of the situated imagination and Sara Ahmed to complicate an understanding of diasporic experience in relation to home and belonging. We ‘trace the cross-pollination between various states’ in migratory bodies as forms of intercultural embodiment. Through discussion of two productions we consider in what ways Chandrabhanu and Yap establish modes of performative, and thus affective belonging, to place and nation.

Keywords:

• Intercultural Embodiment
• Situated Imagination
• Fantasy
• Transmigration
• Malaysia
• Home
• Childhood
• Performance
• Choreography

Notes

1. The term ‘dancing body’ refers to the kinaesthetic experience of dancing and its cultural significance, see Thomas 2003.

2. Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis argue that if thinking rejects its “impulse” instead of transforming it, the “traces” of recollection and memory that connect subjectivity to society become severed (2002: 323).

3. See Moira Gatens’ Imaginary Bodies (1996) for further discussion on Spinoza's contribution to a feminist understanding of the role of the imagination in constitution of the human body (xiv, 57) and thus to its wider implications for social and political life (108–124).

4. For discussion of binary oppositions that have disciplined discourses in Australian dance, see Fensham 2008.

5. From 1985 to 2000, Bharatam Dance Company produced over 30 new works, toured to schools and presented annual seasons and in doing so, were well aware of their political status: “it does not assimilate into a ‘dominant culture’ mainstream syndrome … neither does it accept a position of being a ‘minority culture’ exercise … Rather, the Company believes that dance in Australia does not have to be homogeneous, that richness of a broad base can create an exciting phenomenological diversification of … dance” (Programme note, Old Wives Tales).

6. Between 1951 and 1964, Australia hosted nearly 5,500 students and trainees, representing 16 per cent of the 33,000 places offered by donor nations contributing to the Colombo Plan. Students studying in Australia came from over 15 nations in South and South-East Asia with Malayan and Indonesian students in the majority (27 and 17 per cent, respectively). For a full historical account, see Oakman 2004.

7. Bharatam Dance Company, for instance, toured Milarepa (1988) in South-East Asia, and Light, A Séance Drama (1998) was presented as part of the Commonwealth Games Performing Arts Program in Malaysia. Tony Yap, for example, performed How Could You Even Begin to Understand?, ‘In the Arts Island Festival’, Bandung, Bali, Malang and Yogyakarta (2010) and TransGrobak, Jogja, Indonesia (2010) and Difficult Majesty (2009) for the Melaka Arts and Performance Festival, Malaysia.

8. Carter provides a detailed discussion of their artistic collaboration for the séance-drama, Jadi Jadian, in Penang during 1998 (2004: 97–124).

9. Based on Yukio Mishima's last novel, The Decay of the Angel (1970), this solo performance utilised his intense and erotic performance style to the full.

10. Music for the production was written by Tim Hook, commissioned by Bharatam Dance Company, included jazz instruments, a gamelan, reed flutes, and other instruments from Tibet and India.

11. The name of the deity ‘Shiva’ can appear with the ‘h’ and also without, as ‘Siva’. This paper uses the ‘Shiva’ spelling as this is the version in Chandrabhanu's dance production titled The Dance of Shiva.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Fensham

Rachel Fensham is Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. Author of To Watch Theatre: Essays in Genre and Corporeality (Peter Lang, 2009); co-editor of Dancing Naturally: Nature, Neoclassicism and Modernity in Early Twentieth Century Dance (Palgrave, 2011). Her writing has appeared in Dance Research Journal, Discourses on Dance, New Theatre Quarterly and other book collections. She is co-editor with Peter Boenisch of the Palgrave series, New World Choreographies and has been Principal Investigator for several large AHRC and ARC funded research projects including Digital Dance Archives (www.dance-archives.ac.uk) and the Pioneer Women Project

Odette Kelada

Odette Kelada is a lecturer in the School of Culture and Communication, Australian Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Melbourne. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including the Australian Cultural History Journal, Artlink, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal. She worked as Research Associate for Professor Fensham on the ARC Discovery Project “Transnational and Cross-cultural Choreography in Australia”, which included fieldwork in Malaysia with the choreographer Tony Yap