Dance performance as product and culture

[this is a short essay I wrote last year in a different blog. Just read it again and seems pretty decent.]

To truly appreciate the nature of the product, we must first look at what dance is to the consumer. We may try to define dance at its broadest sense. A generic definition would be “any patterned, rhythmic movement in space and time.” Although this definition may be too broad to be useful to today’s usage. But the term itself is being use in a metaphorical sense by poets and writers to describe inanimate object, non-human and human.

Dance originated from a ceremonial and ritualistic environment. Our ancient ancestors dance for the spirits, deities, celebration and also as social activities. Ritual, ceremonial, and folk dancing are the most common of the earlier form of dance. Ritual dancing has been depicted on pottery found in China during the Neolithic Yang-Shao culture dated 4000 BCE. Egyptian tomb with painted dancing figures were dated back to 3300 BCE. The kind of dance we see today or at least the perception of what dance is to modern society is very much different from the ancient. The history of dance would be an important starting point to understand our perception of dance performance as it evolves into what we know today. As our society become more multicultural, it is also important to not only look at the history of western dance but also the history dance from different cultures. Indian classical dance for example has gone through a complex series of transformation that was fuelled by nationalism, regional chauvinism, national revivalism and the inherited patriarchal system.

All dance forms are interconnected in some way with other form of dance or ritual or ceremonial practices. The symbolism and meaning are codified into the dance movements when it was first conceived and later evolved. To take the Indian classical dance bharatha natyam, as an example. How would the symbolism and meaning of sadir as what it was named before the reform, and the history of devadasi affect our perception of Indian classical dance? For modern audience, the cultural history is hardly relevant. We can romanticise about how it used to be but we can only relate to what our modern culture feed us. When the bharatha natyam first removed itself from the confine of the temple and being performed on stage, the tie to the symbolism is broken. But we do recognise from history that art form can be transported from a religious stage to a secular stage without losing much of its characteristics. Bharatha’s Natyashastra has more to do with dramaturgy, artistic expression than religious intent. We can’t change history. We’ll never know what is the fate of the dance form today if it remains in the temple and taught only to female dancers.

The sensitivity of the audience to cultural history is often overlooked and understated in marketing planning. Such ignorance can result in negative publicity for the artist and the performance. One such example was the uproar from Indian-American community caused by popular singer Madonna’s performance at 1998′s MTV awards shows where she wore a transparent white T-shirt with three Indian Odissi dancers in their classical regalia. Support from such community in promoting Indian dance performance in the United State would in turn can generate positive publicity.