Medialab Prado

In prior sessions of the Aesthetics and Politics of the Commons group, we defined the concept of “generative pattern language” as a set of relational modes between a relatively stable repertoire and placements that update it in a given landscape. Of all the existing pattern languages,  we are interested only in those that are shared by a community which, by using them, increases its autonomy. This distinguishes them from “closed” languages, which belong to communities whose loss of competencies (often caused by a change in the landscape) prevents them from updating the repertoire, which then becomes crystallized.

During the four prior sessions, we have gone from the description of each of the elements of generative pattern languages to the study of systems of complex pattern languages. In the first session, we defined each of the elements comprising the repertoire-placements-landscape circle; in the second, we studied a specific pattern language (that of Christopher Alexander in architecture). The third was an analysis of several pattern languages developed in landscapes quite distant from one another (Chinese martial arts and Parkour), and in the fourth, we studied a complex pattern language—jazz—which has numerous subsets of repertoires, placements and landscapes that nourish each other.

This fifth session is devoted to dance from India because, throughout its history, we have found pattern languages that correspond to each of the moments in our research. Furthermore, the dance of India is a clear example of a repertoire that has remained relatively stable, despite having been subject to continuous generative elucidations. The repertoire, in the dance of India, is proof of the expressive possibilities of the community that uses it, which defines it in a way as culture.

The dance of India has its origins in Shiva, the dancing god. According to the Hindu religion, he destroyed the universe though Tandava dance steps so that Brahma would create it again.   Natyashastra, the first compendium of music, dance and drama, tells the story of how Shiva taught Bharata all the Tandava dance steps and the rules for combining them such that those watching the dancer would savour Rasa, aesthetic experience. Thus, the repertoire of the Tandava dance (and its graceful, feminine version, Lasya dance) did not originate in a given landscape,  which is a requirement for the possibility of generative pattern languages; nor was it consolidated as the result of a conflict among several possible repertoires. In this case, the repertoire was given by God. And for that very reason, it could not be modified.

In the first phase of our study, we will analyze Tandava dance as an example of a pattern language that requires a perfect match between repertoire and competencies, in a landscape—the celestial courts—which makes both conflict and generativity impossible.   That is why Tandava dance is a non-generative language, which does not permit taking the step from what has been instituted (repertoire) to the institutive (placements).

In the second phase, we will analyze two of the styles that arose from the roots of Tandava dance, once it left the celestial courts and set foot on the earth. We will see how, depending on the landscape, the dance developed different repertoires and competencies, the basis for the communities that arose around them, which acquired autonomy,  thanks to them. In the south, the construction of large temples devoted to Shiva fostered the development of what is known today as Bharatanatyam and the appearance of the community of Devadasi (Devoted to God). In the north, the arrival of the Mongol Empire developed a dance, known today as Khatak, that was not danced in temples but rather in courts (or Durbars), and its dancers were often also concubines.

In the third phase of our session, we will see how, due to being fenced off (all Indian artistic expression was marginalized when British Law was declared), Indian dance underwent a change of landscape (the dancers had to leave the temples and courts), and the dancers lost their competencies (gurus were no longer able to teach dance because they lost their subsidies). With a few exceptions, dance was abandoned and forgotten. Until the 1930s, when the birth of a new national consciousness led to an attempt to recover dance as an expression of Indian identity. Dance was institutionalized, refined,  and classified into two styles: classical (considered high culture, related to sacred texts) and folk (an expression of the common people). Instead of revitalizing the generativity of these dances, the new academic approach subjected them to strict rules that hindered their development and kept their repertoire stagnant.

The fourth and final phase of this study will be devoted to the dance used by the Indian film industry in its films. As its audience is broad and unfamiliar with the sophisticated language of classical Indian dances, “Hindi films” simplified their repertoires and fused them with fragments of other folk and Western dances, such as Flamenco and Hip Hop. After almost a century on the big screen, and through the contributions of choreographers such as Uday Shankar and Saroj Khan, for some years now, Hindi Film Dance has been considered as a dance form of its own, that is, a new pattern language, that originated from a change in landscape (from temple to film set; from a community of the faithful to large audiences).

However, the generative play among repertoire, placements and landscape in the case of Hindi Film Dance lives on outside movie theatres. In India, but also in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the North of Africa, former Eastern bloc countries, and, recently, in the USA and Great Britain, there are communities that have made this dance their own, adapting it to their placements and landscape. This is how Bollywood Dance came into being. This new commons is being developed in three types of landscapes: metropolitan (in India and other countries, at dance schools, in shows, etc.), in the Diaspora (first and second generation Indians who do not live in India), and in the “subaltern” (India and neighbouring countries, at weddings and festivals).

Through a study of the choreography of Dola re Dola in the film Devdas, we will analyze the transformation of Hindi Film Dance into Bollywood Dance. We will finish our session by reflecting on the loops, continuities and modal breakdowns that have taken place during the long route from Tandava dance to Bollywood Dance, taking a deeper look at the patterns of the former that live on in the latter, twenty centuries later.