Execution, Embodiment and Empathy : Beyond performance and performer

"Ini enna pechu irukkidhu po po, ellorukkum nagai paichudu" What more is there to say- please go. I am the laughing stock of the entire town

A woman spurned by her lover and embarrassed by the town gossiping about her being stood up. She is rather upset.

"Yaarukkagilum Bhayamaa? Summa sollatum. Idil enna ragasiyamaa - summa sollatum" Am I to be afraid of anyone? Let them talk. I have no secret to hide - let them talk.

A woman out to meet her lover; cares a damn about what the town folk are gossiping. 

Two women, rather different from each other. Two songs that are commonly placed in the Bharatanatyam repertoire. As students of an art form such as Bharatanatyam, we spend several years learning and executing learnt movement and grammar. Exactitude is a virtue only to a certain extent though. A performer comes of age and is accepted as an exponent only when he/she/they can graduate from mere execution of movement and mimicking of character to a space of embodiment. The level of  internalization of a movement or of a character must be to such an extent that the actual performance then happens almost extempore. This is the ideal one aspires towards as a performer fine tuning one's mettle.

The almost intuitive organic process that ensues between teacher and student towards this ideal is not articulated often. It is through innumerable experiential learning hours that the student begins to emanate a sense of embodiment. Very often this is not logically gaugable by the student but is only discerned by the audience. 

And it is in songs such as the one you read above that a dancer begins to learn and perfect the art of embodying movement. When I first came across these poems as a young adult, still in a phase of executing what my teachers had taught, I automatically leaned towards the second one. I found the character a lot more free and progressive. I quite didn't like it that the woman in the first poem would let town gossip get to her. I didn't perform the first poem for many years because I couldn't connect with this character and labelled it regressive. 

But as I began to understand the HOW of exploring poetry, it led me to peeling back multiple layers of tune, music, text and character. Multiple layers of contexts, society, character hues, notions of love, fidelity, morality, myth, legend, metaphors and more, the complex interplay of character and its ecosystem, multiple interpretations of several veteran artistes over time- all made one thing apparent. That it is impossible to place labels on these characters. People are multi-dimensional and complex  and labels are too simplistic and narrow. 

Discovering this simply allows you to let go off your judgement. But here is another dilemma that I came across during my years of transition. The body is a dancer's tool and needs to be the ideal tool of expression. My dilemma was this- As much as I was able to cerebrally or intellectually acknowledge the nuances of character, I found that certain gestures and movements in my body were forced. That's when I realised that my conditioning and my prejudices and viewpoints were so hardwired in my body that it was difficult for the mind to convince my body to become the character. So in many ways, I was continuing to stay in an 'execution' state while in my head I presumed I was embodying the character. And this is the worst kind of lie that a performer tells themselves. 

For true embodiment to happen, unlearning my bodily tendencies was essential and it happened slowly only when I as a person began to unlearn my prejudices and rigid presumptions. Constant exercises of portraying  characters that were unlike me gave me a freedom of a different kind - one in which I had become an observer to everybody - including myself. This kind of dispassionate observation means that you don't have to let go of your ideals but you simple acknowledge all kinds of ideals as they exist around you. And that is where empathy is born.

Of course, this exercise of embodying characters or persons unlike us has much value beyond the performance space- it can become a tool of becoming aware of our own notions and values, it can be a tool to understanding the mind and body as intrinsically connected entities in this context and it can be a tool to helping us truly empathise with the other.  

And from this empathy that I have to the person next to me-  will be born a celebration of every kind of person and character I discover - in texts, music and society.  

Presented at the Western Academy of Management Conference 2021