the sins of such wonderful flesh (2019)
“the sins of such wonderful flesh” is inspired by Maud Allan, a white female North American dance artist who toured her “Oriental” dances — most infamously her Vision of Salome — in Europe at the turn of the 20th century. “the sins of such wonderful flesh” asks: what would it mean for a brown female spectator to perform desire for Maud Allan-as-Salome? What is the difference between desire and identification (aka self-exotification)? How might we flip or blur the roles of “spectator” and “performer”? How might the erotic charge and fluid reciprocity of South Asian abhinaya complicate the power dynamics of looking? How might deep rootedness in South Asian performance aesthetics disturb or cut against the grain of Orientalist appropriation and exotification in Allan’s work?
Photo by Nikolay Maslov, Courtesy of UC Riverside ARTS
Photo by Shyamala Moorty
Photo by Cynthia Ling Lee
Photo by Nikolay Maslov, Courtesy of UC Riverside ARTS
Created by: Sandra Chatterjee, Cynthia Ling Lee, and Shyamala Moorty with contributions from Meena Murugesan through the Post Natyam Collective’s long distance process
Sound Design: Loren Nerell
Music: Richard Strauss’ “Dance of the Seven Veils,” “Misirlou”
Text: Sandra Chatterjee, Cynthia Ling Lee, and Shyamala Moorty; various reviews of Maud Allan’s The Vision of Salome
