At
this very time of the year in 2011 Kavya Krishnan, a PhD scholar in Cultural
Studies had made a presentation of her important work on gender performance and
dance. She had analysed how dance, specifically looking at Mohiniattam in
Kerala, becomes a site for gender performance and how it disciplines and orders
the female body into certain gendered performances of femininity. The ideas
that she had shared with us as the Feminist Workshop in Kerala stayed with me
for a year. Yesterday, when watching Rama Vaidyanathan perform the classical Bharatnatyam
repertoire of Allaripu, Varnam and Tillana at TISS, things suddenly became
clear to me. Taking off from Kavya’s core ideas on gender performance and
dance, I would like to briefly trace how dance, especially Bharatnatyam, has
been critical in forming a certain gendered identity in my life.
I
started learning Bharatnatyam, a classical dance form, at the age of 10. I was
never really good at it- I could not co-ordinate my arms and legs, my body was
stiff. Dance was a means then to loosen up my body and make it suppler. Despite
my inability to dance I continued, with the support of parents and a patient
teacher.
During
that period, from pre-puberty, to teenage years, I maintained very short hair. We
called it ‘boy-cut’ since it was cropped short like those that boys were often
forced to have. I never wore makeup, nor accessories and preferred shorts. Skirts
were for special occasions, and while my friends were complimented on how
pretty they looked, signs of distinct femininity, I was told how smart I looked,
a gender-wise ambiguous statement. Most mistook me for a boy and family and
friends all lamented as to when I would become a ‘girl’.
I
was fairly comfortable in what I wore and the way I looked, I could not make
myself grow my hair or wear other sort of clothes. Because I was amongst the
taller girls in my class and there were few boys, I was given the boy’s role in
dance, plays and even in dance-dramas. Strangely, I found that unfair. Why couldn’t
I wear frocks and saris and dresses like the other girls? Why did I always have
to wear a dhoti, a suit and pants on stage? Despite being typecast into certain
performative roles and judged by the strict codes of what being a ‘girl’ meant,
I continued to learn dance.
Dance
and school plays were also the only spaces which upset the non-‘girly’
existence that I led. Dance performances were the only time when I wore
lipstick and make up and it made me feel very weird. Suddenly I had to don jewellery,
put flowers in my hair and I must admit that it was all in good fun, like a
fancy dress party. It was through dance performance then that I first wore
makeup and it was only in those spaces that I was suddenly made to perform the
role of normative femininity. Dance was also the only activity for which I bought
my first salwar kameez, a dress which women historically wore in certain parts
of north India, and which has now come to typify a certain type of Indian femininity.
I wore that one dress only for practicing dance and not otherwise. Thus dance
became the only space which made me perform a certain gender identity which
differed from my daily gendered existence.
When
I was 17, we performed for a small audience of parents and teachers. After the performance,
a parent approached me and said “You dance so well, but why don’t you look like
a girl? If you grew your hair it would be so good, it would add to your
performance”. That was the moment when I ‘sold out’. I grew my hair, not long
and thick till my hips, but long enough to occasionally reach my shoulders. Being
more like a ‘girl’ was what would make me a more convincing dancer. One could
say it was because of dance that I experienced a shift in my gender identity. Dance
constructed my non-conformative gender into a more normative feminine one.
The
other occasion that dance had to shape my gender identity was when we performed
the dance drama Naukacharitam by Tyagaraja. By then I was twenty and I got the
role of a Gopi, a female devotee of the Hindu god Krishna. The role of the gopi
required me to flirt, romance, be gentle, and most importantly act coy. These were
behavioural traits I didn’t know and which did not come ‘naturally’ to me. I
had to learn them. I had to learn how to be coy and flirt. I had to learn how
to bat my eyelids and lower my head in modesty. These where normative feminine
traits which I learnt during that dance drama. And it was very difficult learning
to be feminine. It was difficult learning to act coy. It was alien, just as
playing the male role in the previous dance dramas and theatre plays were.
I
realise now that the male roles and the female roles in dance and theatre were
both alien to me. I was not comfortable playing the man, nor the woman. Dance,
like most patriarchal social structures, has these strict dichotomous divisions
of what is masculine and what is feminine. Anything in between, or outside of
it does not exist. It also has a defining category of what is feminine and
masculine, not allowing space for a fluidity which marks most gendered
existence. It upsets those, who do not subscribe to and occupy the fluid spaces
in between, who do not confirm to either one definite category but float in the
interstices.
