The intangible heritage of dance

I believe everyone literate enough to be reading this would agree that it is worthwhile to preserve intangible cultural heritage. Beyond the overarching concept of valuing current and past human achievements, there are varying views on what is culture as well as how to preserve it.

Culture is far more than simply traditional customs, it is certainly not timeless and distinctions between high and low culture have long been discarded.  I quite like MIT Professor Edgar H. Schein’s perspective that the values that produce visible artifacts and intangible creations, including dance, arise from basic assumptions that are taken for granted, actually pre-conscious.   One needs the focused inquiry of an outsider to bring back awareness of the unconscious assumptions by asking the right questions.

A perennial question is whether preservation means documentation for posterity or rather for life support of endangered dance forms, or both and in what balance.  Another inherent question regarding archival preservation of artifacts, whether photographs, realia,  audio-video or paper documentation, is what responsibility the archives accepts to share as well as preserve.

My personal experience of accessing dance archives in New Delhi is that some have unfortunately poor cataloging, let alone meta-tagging, so finding what is needed depends almost entirely on staff memory. Other archives follow the Vatican library model in the philosophy that preservation has nothing to do with providing any access.

The most organised and accessible archive for the intangible dance and music heritage of India that I am aware of is the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) in India. The inspiration for this archives was the fact that scholars from around the world conduct significant ethnomusicology research in India. This recorded intangible heritage then returned to home countries.  The creation of ARCE enabled scholars and collectors of all nationalities to voluntarily deposit copies of their collections for personal safekeeping and choosing what level of access others would have.

All of these have all been meticulously documented, and are complemented by a superb library that includes books, journals, and dissertations relevant to the field of ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology in general and with a particular focus on India.  I am happy to have been the contributor no. 2 with music and super-8 videos of Manipuri, Chhau and Odissi recordings from the 1970’s. A particular focus has been the repatriation of collections held in archives abroad for access to Indian scholars and institutions.

A facility of the American Institute of India Studies (AIIS), I fondly recall convincing the AIIS director at the interviews for ARCE director its inception to wait for Dr. Shubha Chaudhuri who was not available till many months later.  Under her able guidance, ARCE also holds seminars, workshops, special programs and is involved in research projects such as Archives and Community Partnership which involves field work in Rajasthan and Goa.

Of course, internationally there are superb archives in several countries with the New York Public Library (NYPL) for the Performing Arts perhaps at the top.

Core of Culture, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of ancient dances, Noh and Cham among them, was founded by Joseph Houseal in 2001. I have written about his motivations earlier and here want to share some of the results.

In partnership with the Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Core of Culture produced a 500-hour archive of Bhutanese dances with a searchable index. NYPL catalogued the entire database and published it online, free to the world, preserved into perpetuity. Houseal said it was the project of a lifetime.

I was particularly taken by the fact the museum exhibition which toured Europe and America left no traces once dismantled, except for the NYPL archives.  Everything in the exhibition returned to lender; the catalogue was sold out and out of print.  But the project of art conservation and dance preservation conducted during the last five years of the absolute monarchy in Bhutan created a pristine baseline of ancient dances existing  nowhere else in the world and in  near complete isolation for more than 400 years.

Bhutan’s 374-year-old Wangdu Phudrang dzong at Bhutan’s  Tiger's Nest Monastery (Taktsang Palphug) tragically burned to the ground in 2012. Fatefully, CoC had earlier been allowed into the most sacred altar room, the Goenkhang, where an amazing mural depicting an invisible conjured dance existed and given permission by the Royal government to photograph it and write about it — the first and only time it was ever photographed. These photos were then requested by the Bhutanese government to be used to replicate the murals for the Dzong’s restoration.

Cham dances are primarily forms of Tantric meditation in movement. Transmission is primarily oral and forms disappear and are replaced by changing masters even in the Indian side of the Himalayas after the disruption to continuity of China’s efforts to crush Tibetan dharma practices.

Core of Culture, Chicago, USA, with the permission of His Holiness, Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, produced an English and Tibetan publication of The Snow Lion’s Attributes: An Introduction to the Essence of the Drikung Vajra Dances. Based on ancient dance texts, it was prepared for the inauguration ceremonies of the Drikung Kagyu Institute near Dehradun.  The inauguration re-created the 1669 performance performed before the Dalai Lama the entire repertory of Drikung Vajra Dances.

This slender dance shastra of Cham, a rare Buddhist dance treatise, is widely appreciated in Tibetan monasteries of Uttarakhand and Ladakh. This is an excellent example of a culturally sensitive, action- oriented intervention to ensure the survival of ancient dance practices. Sustaining as part of preservation means dancers should be instrumental in saving threatened dance forms.

It is obviously difficult to imagine what a Dance Database might encompass so I looked into what CoC donated to the NYPL.  I found they surveyed every gompa in Ladakh and Zanskar for what they called a rapid inventory to determine the current status of Cham, a 1200 year-old dance form in the regions.

They also have documented the mountain dances of Pakistan of the Kafir-Kalash tribe, many of which have not been documented or even seen outside the region.

Houseal’s CoC also documented one of the world's greatest archeological treasure troves of ancient dance art and artifacts, Dunhuang Magao Cave Grottoes.

The five years of documentation for the exhibition The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan was an historical opportunity to give the world a heightened sense of the importance of ancient dance traditions.

Houseal was delighted to share, “Within a month we had secured the Drikung Kagyu Nuns from Ladakh, a Tantric Vajracharya priest from Kathmandu, and from Kyoto, a troupe of Japan’s finest Noh actors...” Houseal’s interests in preserving ancient and endangered dances extend to ever-widening horizons. Recently he was in Jammu and Kashmir exploring possibilities of preservation for the traditional Bhand Pather dance drama.

Clearly, preserving the intangible heritage of dance requires collaboration of dancers, art experts, practitioners, museum directors, film and video producers, technology innovators, and scholars in dialogue with politicians, humanitarian bodies, and the commercial sector in an endeavour to involve them directly in dance-related discussions.

This is the mission of Core of Culture under the inspired vision of a professional dancer rooted in Western classical dance with wings from the East. CoC does not speak for its primary constituents involved: villagers, monks, healers, and martial artists. Rather, it facilitates their access to the discussion.

CoC represents “dancers working with dancers,” movement to promote an embracing vision of dance that enriches and unites dancers of all kinds; from Himalayan villagers to dancers working in New York.

Small wonder that CoC has advised, and interfaced with, many institutions including Oxford University, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dance Division, National Geographic, Smithsonian Institution, the Banff Centre, Taiwan National University of the Arts, Honolulu Academy of Arts, and The Arts Club of Chicago.

As we in India strive to preserve and support our cornucopia of traditional performing arts genres, I would love to see the take-away of CoC efforts to resolve tensions between economic profit and cultural preservation; how tourism can help not only bolster cultural pride but also encourage high levels of performance without, as they put it, “degradation of dance as ritual in service to short-term tourism revenue.”

Dance is irreplaceable cultural capital, as vital as our seed banks and worthy of mindful multifaceted approaches to watering the roots for the next 1,000 years of continuity and change.

Sharon Lowen is a respected  exponent of Odissi, Manipuri and Mayurbhanj and Seraikella Chau whose four-decade career in India was preceded by 17 years of modern dance and ballet in the US and an MA in dance from the University of Michigan. She can be contacted at sharonlowen.workshop@ gmail.com