SUBVERSIVE GESTURES

          queering Indian dance

Subversive Gestures is an evening of interdisciplinary performance that queers Indian dance, where gender-bending super-heroines, deconstructed mudras, and lesbian fantasies of courtesan-ancestors descend upon an unsuspecting audience.  Created and performed by Cynthia Ling Lee and Shyamala Moorty of the Post Natyam Collective, Subversive Gestures uses queer tactics of parodying and personalizing received legacies of gendered performance in a compelling mixture of contemporary Indian dance, multimedia, theater, and audience interaction.  Subversive Gestures is part of BEHOLD!, Highways Performance Space’s queer performance series. 

The evening's offerings will include:

Super Ruwaxi: Origins (world premiere)

A live comic-book story in which Ruwaxi, the dutiful daughter of Chinese immigrants, discovers her true super-identity as the Hairy Arm-Pitted Feminist, armed with magical body odor that can change the course of patriarchal oppression.  Story by Cynthia Ling Lee, choreography and performance by Cynthia Ling Lee and Shyamala Moorty.

29 Subversive Gestures (world premiere)

A serio-comic tribute to Joe Goode's iconic 29 Effeminate Gestures (1987), which re-contextualizes the original piece's investigations of the queer, gendered, dancing body for Indian classical dance.  Concept and artistic direction by Shyamala Moorty, movement and performance by Cynthia Ling Lee, music by Ravindra Deo.

Snow and Leather (working title) (world premiere)

Fierce and feminine, the striking imagery of this dance-for-camera video combines blinding snow, black leather, and the stylized gestures of Indian classical dance.  Choreography and performance by Sandra Chatterjee, camera and editing by Peter A. Pfaff. 

Mixed Bag (2011)

Oriental dolls, dominatrix gurus, helpless victims, and mail-order brides duke it out in a satirical world where nothing is sacred and identities/costumes can be changed at the drop of a hat.  Mixed Bag collides contemporary Indian dance with political performance art, as the performers explode sexualized, exotified stereotypes of women.  Their tools?  Black leather, audience lap dances, bad accents, plastic mannikins, classical Indian rhythms, and an extra-large dose of belly laughter.  Choreography by Cynthia Ling Lee, Shyamala Moorty, and Anjali Tata, music by Ravindra Deo with Loren Nerell.

s k i n (2010)

Inspired by the conflicted image of India's dancer-courtesan, words mysteriously mark and melt on the landscape of an eroticized yet vulnerable female body in this dance-for-camera work.  Concept, choreography, and performance by Cynthia Ling Lee, director of photography and editing Sangita Shresthova, music by Loren Nerell.

Ranri (widow/courtesan) (2011)

Combining contemporary abhinaya (emotional expression in Indian dance), intimate video projection, poetic text, and haunting electro-Hindustani music, Ranri (widow/courtesan) evokes the story of Rasulanbai, a child widow from the 1960s who resisted abuse by her in-laws by escaping to become a courtesan.  Sensual and poignant, the courtesan’s world is unexpectedly revealed as a place of woman-centered power and queer female-female love.  Rasulanbai’s story was taken from Veena Talwar Oldenburg’s fieldwork on the last remaining courtesan communities of Lucknow, India.  Choreography, text and performance by Cynthia Ling Lee and Shyamala Moorty, music by Ravindra Deo and Loren Nerell, video by Cynthia Ling Lee.

photo credits: Michael Burr and Cynthia Ling Lee