Turning the Corner from Epistemic Myopia to Gnostic Rasa: Dances From South Asia and Postsecondary Dance Programs

ABSTRACT

The need for a shift in approach to dance education and non-Eurocentric dance forms in postsecondary dance programs is apparent. This paper begins with a fundamental why and then offers the frameworks of gnosis (knowledge by perception) and episteme (knowledge by systematic study) and process-based teaching-learning as viable approaches to inclusion. Embracing values such as inquiry, plurality, and reflection is essential to postsecondary dance programs including South Asian dances, whether in formal academic structures or informal spaces of partnership. Simultaneously, South Asian dancer-collaborators take on response and responsibility in this work and reflect deeply on what we know, as we share our knowledge. This paper enumerates possible manifestations of including South Asian dances in postsecondary education, which depend on dance programs fully embracing new approaches in education. Together with South Asian collaborators, programs can perform their work so that all participants relish the rasa (profound engagement) of the experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy
• higher education
• rasa
• South Asian
• collaboration

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Many decades ago, my grandmother remarked to me that the pronoun i is only capitalized and so frequently used in the English language. It was then that i adopted the practice of not capitalizing it in my own writings in English, making it possible to include my Bengali—and Indian—self in my daily expressions as a second-generation American.

2. Filmi is an adjective used in Hindi and other Indian languages meaning “of film,” which when used as an adjective for dance, indicates dance that we see in Indian films. The popular dance style is not called Bollywood, Tollywood, Kollywood, Lollywood, etc. in Indian languages, but dance of Hindi films, Bengali films, Tamil films, or Pakistani films, respectively. This Hollywood-ization is a further example of colonized thinking, both imposed and internalized. (Refer also to: https://www.india-seminar.com/2003/525/525%20madhava%20prasad.htm).

3. Authorless ancient Hindu texts; in this work, specifically, Upanishads, late Vedic texts dealing with philosophy & ontology.

4. Rasa is a Sanskrit word, also found in many South Asian languages, that literally means juice, essence, flavor. In Natyashastra (2500+-year-old treatise on dramatic arts), rasa is the goal of any performance, i.e. the performer must evoke rasa for their audience. The Samgitaratnakara (13^th c. CE text on music and dance) says the performer is the vessel from which the audience tastes the rasa (Sarngadeva 1976). This concept likens the performer’s responsibility to communicate the essence of their art to their audience to preparing a feast for one’s guests; the audience, also, must be ready to deeply engage with the art and performer. In my work, i define it as a “profound engagement” between the artist and the rasika (audience, one who savors, delights in~) through the medium of the art form.

5. Bharata-Nrityam is different from the more visible dance form of Bharata-Natyam. Its pedagogy includes the movement vocabulary and technique delineated in the ancient Natyashastra in addition to the more recently codified technique of Bharata-Natyam. It was developed by Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam starting in the 1960s; other transliterations include “Bharatanrityam” or “Bharata Nrityam.”

6. See the making of Kriti at https://vimeo.com/dansense/makingofkriti

7. Based on mission statements and values that academic institutions publish, such as the following: https://president.asu.edu/asu-mission-goals#charter-video, https://www.virginia.edu/statementofpurpose, https://www.temple.edu/about, https://chancellor.charlotte.edu/about-unc-charlotte/mission-statement, https://www.utexas.edu/about/mission-and-values, https://provost.ucr.edu/, https://twu.edu/about-twu/purpose-mission-vision-values-principles/.

8. Chatterjea also highlights this erasure of plurality in her continued struggle to be recognized as a contemporary dancer in a field beleaguered by “Eurocentric and nationalist dominance…[where] moments of un-meeting, the subtly played exclusions…” These drive her “commitment to bring voices of alterity to this field…”