None of us had been prepared to dance. Perched on the benches at the studio perimeters, I half hope observation counts as participation. We, audience and guests are gathered beneath the bright arches of La Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie de Lyon, for Fangas Nayaw and River Lin’s ‘Workshopping Indigenous Peoples’.
Soon we are stood in a circle. Holding hands and swinging arms, we begin to step clockwise. This is not a lesson, cleaved into counts and sequences, but an invitation to watch and follow. One dancer leads with rhythmical stamps. I constantly readjust a sweaty grip in the palms of my neighbours. I watch feet, absorb the rhythm, a cog in this mighty circle, try not to stumble, smile shyly upon eye contact with others, stumble, let the sounds of singing wash over me, judge myself, get over it, master the step, relax enough to hear the nuances of overlapping voices, the call biting the tail of the response, wonder when it might end, realise I don’t want it to. The state of the world has me looking for joy wherever I can, and about 10 minutes into this dance, I find some.
‘Workshopping the Indigenous Peoples’ is a participatory experience led by Taiwanese Indigenous Amis artist Fangas Nayaw and dramaturg/translator Betty Chen. As both disclaimer and footnote, Chen emphasises that in uprooting and relocating ancestral Taiwanese dance, something fundamental is lost. How do you preserve tradition so embedded in its place of origin, when presenting it in a foreign context before a Eurocentric gaze? How do you make knowledge accessible without diluting its essence? Nayaw’s interdisciplinary practice explores the dilemma of adjusting to the realities of globalisation while preserving tradition. The Forum, too, names these challenges and hopes the exchanges its programme offers are nevertheless fruitful in experiencing ‘what is indissociably specific to the particular place where they come from, perhaps so much that the place does the work.’
Chen’s brief disclaimer reinforces doubts about the complexity inherent to an invitation of indigenous artists to the Biennale, about issues of power imbalance and structural barriers, of exoticisation and care. The idea that a ‘western’ festival with its definitions of contemporary dance might inherently filter out and ‘other’ indigenous movements is a conversation that warrants far more words than this text allows.
In Original Bomber Crew’s MARGIN (Brazil), many audience members started filming, recordings no doubt shared and further estranged from their context, which risks reducing movement that has emerged from deep, lived experience to fleeting visual spectacle – a feature of all dance in our times. Nayaw’s workshop resisted such estrangement; when in it, you feel in your body the commonalities shared with a culture, even if very different from ours. When reworking dance that has been nurtured by Indigenous cultures, Aboriginal dance artist Joel Bray too seeks commonality between the origin of the dance and a new context. Even the feeblest of connections can illuminate common grounds without minimising the stark differences in lived experiences and perspectives.
The sliver of opportunities offered to Indigenous dance on the global stage can create a narrow, stereotyped view of its themes and aesthetics. Even as a moving participant, and not a viewer, I am aware of the sheer depth of context and storytelling that I may be missing. Fragmented experiences like the Forum by their nature, leave loose ends and questions unanswered. We lack time to excavate the topics that sprout from crammed festival settings. Perhaps then, I must be content with the crash course. And it is true that movement transcends language barriers: even if we didn’t understand a lot, we understood something, and something is not nothing
The smooth wood of the studio floor is incongruent beneath our bare feet as we receive movement deeply rooted in contested indigenous earth. Once Nayaw and his dancers sense we have relaxed, the circle breaks off into parts. In lines of 5 or so, led by a dance leader, we skip, shunt, swivel and stamp, snaking around the room and around others. Finally, we are instructed to follow our impulses, lead or be absorbed by another. We fall into pairs, trios, groups, before breaking off solo again, all to the incredibly triumphant vocals of indigenous Taiwanese band, Paliulius 樂團.
Nayaw’s communal workshop was a hint not only of what we do not or cannot know about other dances, but of the invitation to connect that dance can offer regardless. Is the body in practise and presence what made this workshop so uplifting, or was it just me, once again looking for joy in the world where it might be found?
Resource: https://on-the-move.org/resources/library/cultural-mobility-flows-report-international-circulation-indigenous-creatives