Evidence

There is a new dance zine in LA called "Itch" published by Meg Wolfe and Rae (I can't remember your last name Rae, sorry). For the next issue they soliciting contributions on the topic of "evidence." I hope to submit something from India, and in the meantime, I am using the concept of "evidence" as a way to filter my experiences here. For the moment, I am thinking of evidence as proof that something happened. Evidence can be documentary, but in a court, testimony to one's personal experiences is also accepted. My testimony, including this blog is evidence.

Joy

I continue to experience these brief moments of joy. This morning as I left my hotel, I started skipping, much to the astonishment of the Indian businessmen passing by. I toned down my external behavior, but I still get a thrill when I leave my hotel and there is India before me -- and it's a rather unprepossessing bit of India -- a busy road, a decaying colonnade, dirty pavement, cars and motorcycles parked willy-nilly about and it still makes me happy.

Company

I went to the airport last night in the middle of the night to pick up my friend Ben Teller. We will be travelling together for a month. Being the person that I am, I am ambivalent about this, but the account comes out in the black. It was such a pleasure last night to tuck myself in bed while someone else moved around the room, asking questions, getting organized, while I slowly went to sleep.

I resent that I can no longer poke around when and where I will, but I am looking forward to showing Ben my Delhi, as patchy as it still is. And to be fair, I get up about 7 a.m. and he gets up about noon, so I have five hours to myself everyday. Already, I've had breakfast, explored Paharganj a little, and found this large Internet place in the basement of a hotel. It has cockroaches and the walls are in terrible condition but there is space and the street cries come down the stairs.

I arrived at the airport early and the plane was a little late so I had a lot of time to watch people arriving in India -- the group tourists, the businessmen, the people meeting family, the people resolutely doing it on their own and then the waiters, the quarreling couples, the hotel staff with their name boards, people with astonishing amounts of luggage on trolleys waiting for the rest of their party. And as they slowly trickle out of immigration and customs, the people slowly reading each sign as if they had never seen their own name before and might not recognize it when they saw it, the lone woman walking back and forth, up and down the line, "Where is my name? I don't see my name." The relief when she finally does. The variety of greetings, hand shakes, hugs, touching heads, touching feet, and all this taking place in a very large, somewhat shabby room with the bright yellow official airport signs giving everyone a sickly yellow cast. And then, the bottle neck at the one narrow exit door, the battle to get through the taxi lines, and then we are at the pickup point, and I call our driver on my cell phone and he comes and we are speeding through the dark, smoky Delhi night.

Kathak

Kathak is one of the classical dance forms of India. Last night, the dancer said there is record of kathak being danced on the banks of the Ganges in the 3rd or 4th century B.C.E. I don't think it looked much like what I have seen in Delhi. For one thing, the kathak costume is basically Mughal, brought in by the Islamic invaders -- A long shirt jacket that flares at the bottom -- for women this can become a dress but for both men and women it usually ends below the knees, and for both men and women tight-fitting trousers. Ankle bells are worn -- these I think are Hindu. What seems to distinguish this dance -- and I am basing my observations on the evidence of two performances -- is a rhythmic interplay between the dancer and musicians. The dancer lays out the rhythmic pattern using syllables relating to drum strokes. The musicians then repeat this while the dancer dances. The first kathak concert I saw began with a lecture demonstration in which the guru laid out various rhythmic lines and then danced them. He was amazing. He looked somewhat like Gloria Swanson in "Sunset Boulevard," the same strong face, dramatic eyes and over-the-top gestures. But, although he was only a couple of years younger then me, he danced with vigor, clarity and grace. The second part of the evening presented his choreography danced by four of his students. They were all dancers with long biographies and much experience, but they didn't match his clarity and skill. Kathak emphasizes rhythmic clarity, expressed by the feet, precision of movement and ending in postures that are a small, dramatic tableau. Again, this is the evidence of two performances. On the second evening, the dancer was introduced as a prima donna, and indeed she is. She has been dancing for thirty years and the audience obviously knew and loved her. Her speciality was speed and clarity. I didn't like her as well as the man from the earlier performance and she had wonderful showwomanship and was a riveting performer.

In between, I saw a dance performance from Kerala in the south in a wonderful small performing space near my hotel. It was where I saw the Urdu epic poetry. The audience for the dance performance was very small so I got to talk to the people who organize the space. It is a non-profit group that survives by renting out their space when they are not using it. They put on about two dance or music performances a month and several lectures. They pay the dancers and musicians but not the lecturers. I will go back there and would like to perform there at some time in the future.

Now I am going to look at some more state emporia I discovered on the ride to the airport and then collect Ben for lunch.