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Dance is Architecture is Dance

Reclaiming Heritage through Movement

 August 8, 2021(https://indigenousweb.com/2021/08/08/)

Guest Author: Shinjita Roy

F
ive years of studying architecture in college followed by
another five years of working in the field have given me a sense
of what architecture is, but I struggle to define the term. I have
been training to be a dancer since the age of five, and continue
to learn, make and perform the art form till date. Yet, I don’t think I can put
into words what dancing means. I see them as intertwined, embodied
experiences. When I dance, I design movements in space, sculpting space
with my body. In architecture, I design built and open spaces that allow,
interact and shape movement flow. My brain cannot process one without
the other, and at this crossing of dance-architecture, I have experienced
magic. Magic that I can feel and perform, but somehow struggle to
articulate in words. My work – in the shape of practice, research or simply
what I do and how I interpret my findings – attempts to explain to myself
the relationship between these two entities, or perhaps it is a journey to the
realization that they are not two separate entities after all.

Old buildings, fort walls, Islamic arches have always made me feel bigger
than myself. They seduce me with their hidden stories and trapped
memories, mysteries awaiting unraveling. As a tourist and a curious
explorer I have always looked for unknown, abandoned heritage sites on
my trips to different parts of India – and not a single place ever
disappointed me. Every city, village, even looking outside moving trains
and tiny stops by the highways have offered hidden gems offering a
gateway into a surreal world of the unknown. As a child travelling on tight
travel itineraries with my family, I always craved for more time at the
faraway fort where the bus did not stop, and I could not help but take a
quick chakkar (pirouette) at the centre of the courtyard, or wait for the
crowd to disperse to bend my spine along the curve of the arch and look up
at its centre. Something about the architecture of the forgotten is romantic,
liberating, and magnanimous.
 Khirki Masjid experiments (Image: Author, 2013)

I decided to formally enquire about these longings for the purpose of an

undergraduate Architecture Dissertation project during college. I
researched histories of different dance forms of the world in relation to the
spaces they have grown out of. From the Neanderthal caveman to the
avant-garde and postmodern artist – human bodies have been mapping
spaces and making memories through their body movements all along.
During this research, I got introduced to the world of site-specific dance – a
genre in Western Contemporary dance that is designed to create
performances for ‘alternative’ spaces, outside the conventional proscenium
theatre setting. As an Indian classical dancer who has for most of her life
learnt to wear costume and make up and perform on a stage facing an
audience in the dark, this genre opened up a whole new world of
possibilities, allowing her to dance anywhere and everywhere, just like she
always wanted. One thing led to another, dots started to connect, and a few
years after graduating from college, I left my nine to forever-o-clock
architecture job to create site-specific performances for heritage
architecture with Indian classical dance.

Getting down and dirty with my favourite spaces, I soon realised there was
a lot more to this than the romanticism that meets the eye. At that time I
was living in Delhi, surrounded by exquisite Islamic architecture with their
rhythmic geometry and poetic beauty. I was exceptionally attracted to the
Khirki Masjid near Saket, and kept revisiting the site for months, every
weekend, taking along friends and artists of different disciplines to my
‘laboratory’. It was more than having a fun-time or getting a few interesting
photos – it seemed like we were developing an intimate relationship with
the space. We sang, danced, drew, brainstormed and ideas kept flowing.
The space inspired creativity in us, and we wanted to share it with the
world. As we pursued that thought, we faced the reality of the situation that
this was a layered space, with multiple agencies of authorship and
ownership – are ASI-owned sites public spaces? Who decides how this
space can or not be used? Do beautiful Islamic architecture that once bred
brilliance as the likes of Khusrao and Tansen not allow people today to sing
or dance in them? What is my role, responsibility or credibility to be
inscribing memories in this space? Are these spaces celebratory, despite
holding memories of centuries of casteism, classicism, brutal politics, and
gender inequalities? As sites of the past, what role do these spaces play in
the urban contemporary of today?
Clearly, these enquiries ask for more than a project over weekends with
friends. I had felt the magic of these sites in my body already, and not
dealing with the above questions was not going to be an option. Hence, I
embarked on the massive mission of addressing these enquiries through
my practice-led graduate research in the form of a master’s degree and
now a PhD. My line of enquiry falls at the crossroads of architecture, Indian
dance, site-specificity, heritage conservation, locational identity, and
corporeality. These might be different disciplines as per the Western
education system, but for anyone who has been a student of Indian
classical dance, the connections happen very naturally. Bharatnatyam and
Odissi are known to be ancient forms of temple dances. Kathak comes from
a lineage of story-telling and community development through it. The
Indian performing body is an archive of its social, cultural, and
architectural past as designed by Bharat Muni’s Natyashastra. I find both
Vastushastra and Natyashastra to be based on the alignment of energy,
emotion, and our everyday stories, aiming towards a more fulfilled and
meaningful life. Indian classical dance styles weren’t designed for
proscenium theatres. They speak the stories of the sites they came from –
being inherently site-specific in nature. We jumped on the train of
modernism and globalisation, fitting our lives to feel and look like the
rulers of the world, and somewhere in the journey, the beautiful essence of
locating our practices to the context of our land lost its meaning. My
practice is not based on any innovative original idea but only tries to
reclaim public activity at sites that once served to hold public gatherings. It
is only relocating the arts to where they belong, using them as a tool to
engage with the lonely heritage spaces. It is trying to ask someone who
likes to work out of a café at Khan market to feel the difference by working
from Safdarjung tomb, to ask the guards at Safdarjung tomb to allow said
person to sit on its platform and create, to ask the authorities to train the
guards and empower them to be agents of responsible usage of pristine
space. Sometimes being in the space, breathing in its age and experience
teaches us a lot more than reading a book or watching a documentary
about it. I hope my praxis endeavours would one day contribute to making
these spaces available as creative and collaborative platforms, add more
Indian voices to the discourses of site-based arts and generate a culture for
more aware and responsible usage of heritage sites. I imagine India to
become that destination, where you find dance workshops, art classes, and
jamming sessions happening at heritage sites, where you can taste food in
 arts festivals with immersive and interactive experiences, where heritage
sites become an extension of museums, theatres, and studios – hoping one
day my work turns this dream into reality.

(All photographs: The author)

An architect and dancer, Shinjita has found her calling in

the field of site-specific performance making. Through her
dual lens, she creates performances from architecture and
design spaces for flow of movement. Her practice-led
research aims at creating a platform for site-specific
explorations in Indian dance forms for Indian heritage
spaces. Currently, she is a PhD student at VCA Dance
(University of Melbourne).

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