Sara Regina Fonseca

ANTHROPOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE: DEFEATING A COMMON ENEMY

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1. Motivation

When I moved from Colombia to Sweden, I became more aware of the

postmodern phenomenon by which a great number of cultural products from non-Western

cultures were accessible for appropriation and use by Western artists and art consumers.

This understanding was shocking because I felt that the velocity, facility and superficiality

with which these cultural forms were used caused a weird effect: traditional meanings

grounded in organic and long processes were of no interest, and that which was a symbol of

spirituality or sorrow for many people at one end of the world, could rapidly become a toy

for entertainment or a simple decorative object to be consumed at the other end of the

world. At the midst of this judgmental attitude I had a further revelation: Artists who are little

less than idols for me were using ‘exotic’i performance forms in their work! Furthermore, I

was myself performing intercultural representation in my own dance pieces, without

questioning the ethics of my process! These revelations have been the strongest motivations

for writing this paper all the way through.

1.2. Argumentation and Purpose

Regardless of their purposes, intercultural performance and cultural

anthropology have a common ground in their procedure: they study and represent a defined

‘other’ii. This procedure gives both disciplines the power to construct a view of ‘the other’ in

ways that run the risk of enhancing colonialist attitudes. Thus, I would like to argue that

cultural anthropology and intercultural performance share a common enemy, whose

invisibility and pervasiveness makes it hard to defeat. This enemy is colonialism, and it is

manifested in different kinds of ethnocentrisms and exploitations that provoke the arousal of

ethical discussions about issues like the exotization of non-Western cultures or the

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advantaged position of Western academics and artists over the ‘native others’. As it usually

happens with ethics, a discussion about the fairness of intercultural representation in

anthropology and performance is hardly a straight forwards one. However, I believe that the

input of postcolonialismiii in the theory and practice of anthropology from the 1960’s

onwards, shows us that a constant auto-criticism is not only relevant but also fruitful in the

fight against colonialism. Indeed, postcolonialism has not only been influential in

anthropology but also in performance, to the point that there have emerged genres such as

‘postcolonial performance’iv. Besides the political agenda of postcolonial criticism, other

humanistic and aesthetic concerns have led to significant interdisciplinary exchanges

between anthropology and performance studies, giving birth to hybrid areas of study such as

‘theatre anthropology’v. It is my purpose here to contribute to such exchanges, thereby

presenting and discussing arguments which are directly concerned with the ethics of

intercultural representation in theatrical performance.

1.3. Methodology and Disposition

In general, my methodology will consist in using existing literature on

anthropology and colonialism in order to clarify concepts and identify issues that can be

relevant for a discussion about ethics of intercultural performance. My starting point is the

argument that the process of representation implicit in cultural anthropology and

intercultural performance can enhance colonialist attitudes and prejudices. For this same

reason, the argument goes that these two disciplines can share strategies in order to defeat

the colonialist attitudes that pervade them. After comparing and exchanging postcolonial

criticisms to anthropology with postcolonial criticisms to the work of distinguished artists, I

will test the usefulness of this comparison thereby using the questions discussed in order

challenge the creating process of a specific dance work.

Thus, the disposition of this essay will look like this: In the following chapter ‘Making

Connections’, I will present a theoretical and historical framework in order to introduce

notions of anthropology, universalism, race, culture and colonialism, among others. In the

same chapter, I will try to establish possible relationships between anthropology, colonialism 2

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and art, providing grounds for further discussions about the ethics of intercultural

representation. In the third chapter ‘The Ethics of Representation in the Work of Eugenio

Barba and the Odin’, I will focus on the work of Eugenio Barba, first discussing concepts like

historicity, language and meaning, and then looking closer to activities organized by the Odin

like the ISTA, the barters and the festuges. Finally, I will use the production of The Million in

order to provide a postcolonial criticism of it. The last chapter ‘Defeating Colonialism:

Cumbia-Kumbé, is a personal account of the creative process of a dance work, in which the

ethics of interculturalism have been a main concern. In this chapter, I hope to visualize ways

of applying the discussions developed along the paper to the actual making of a dance work.

2. MAKING CONNECTIONS

2.1. Anthropology, Colonialism and Art

The institutionalization of modern anthropology in Europe is often claimed to

date back to the 17th and 18th centuries, the European age of the Enlightenment and the

emergence of modern sciences. During this time, European thinkers developed the

principles of Rationalism, defending the individual’s right and capacity to self-governance

and ethic judgment. In this vein, Immanuel Kant wrote his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point

of View, advocating for an anthropology which aimed at knowing:

what ‘man, as a free agent makes, or can, or should make of himself…knowledge of man as a citizen of the world.vi

Kant’s view of anthropology and his sympathy with the Enlightenment ideas

are often seen in relation to the concept of ‘cosmopolitan’, and the belief in the search for

international agreements which secure justice, freedom and peace for mankind. However,

the very assumption of the existence of universal principles has been and is the centre of

diverse criticisms that question the evolutionist ideas implicit in such an assumption. In his

discussion about universalism and evolutionism, scholar Adam T. Smith describes

evolutionism as:

A prospect on human history that visualizes an overall shape to social human development, a progress towards increasing complexity that can be explained in reference to a set of rational determinants.vii

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Further in his discussion, Smith explains the problem of the universalist-evolutionist

perspectives inherited from the Enlightenment, claiming that:

Paradoxically, the hope for human freedom (within an evolutionist framework) rests on enslavement to an overriding metahistoryviii.

In the context of evolutionism, a ‘meta-historical’ polarization of the ‘primitive’

versus the ‘civilized’ appears, putting the ‘primitive’ non-Western societies at the beginning

of the developmental line, and the ‘civilized’ Western societies at the end of it. Hence, it is

often claimed that the universalist ideas of the Enlightenment served and still serve as a

justification for European colonization and for imperialism in general, thereby assigning

Westerners the mission to civilize the rest of the world. It is significant that notwithstanding

the strong influence of the Enlightenment premises about freedom and justice in Europe,

Spain had achieved its greatest colonial expansion in America by the 18th century, and Britain

and France had respectively colonized India and most of Africa by the 19th century. Needless

to say, colonial expansion meant natural, human and cultural exploitation in the form of

military invasion, ideological imposition and slavery, among others. In his historical

perspective of the Enlightenment, Joan Vincent argues that:

The almost excessive ideological emphasis that Enlightenment scholars placed on reason in the global affairs of human kind alert us to the problematic political and economical conditions around them that appeared to rest on neither reason nor recognition of the unity of mankind. Among them were slavery and the slave trade, wars of religion between European nations, and struggles between them for territorial possessions in the Americas and the Orient, an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor in the civilized Western European world, and an even wider gap between the civilizations of the Western Atlantic nation states and the savagery and

barbarism of those its citizens encountered in the world beyond their shoresix.

The complex relationship between the Enlightenment and colonialism can be

said to have constituted a dynamic force in numerous and nuanced discussions that remain

alive in contemporary cultural studies. One of the important results of past critical revisions

of the Enlightenment thought is the broadly accepted use of the concept of ‘culture’, which

was put at the centre of discussion by Kant’s disciple Johann Gottfried Herder, among others.

‘Culture’, as we know, is still a central concept in anthropology, history, sociology and most

of human sciences nowadays. Thus, instead of advocating for universalist ideas that might

justify the violent imposition of Europe over the rest of the world, the concept of ‘culture’

gives recognition to the diversity of paths taken by different groups of people according to

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their particular views of the world. This premise sets the basis for pluralistic understandings

of human kind and for more contemporary concepts such as ‘multiculturalism’. However,

other scholars believe that the cultural relativism flagged by Herder and later by Franz Boas

in the 19th century maintains the evolutionist perspective which these pioneers claimed to

criticize. As Dell Hymes put it:

But Boas and the Boasians remained evolutionists in the typological sense. The Boas who wrote The Mind of Primitive Man to demonstrate the potential equality of all mankind still retained a clear conception of “primitive” vs. “civilized”…When Leslie White and others pointed out the obvious and inescapable after the

World War II, there was a collapse within a position of science. Now almost everyone could be a cultural evolutionist again.x

Indeed, a simplistic identification of the Enlightenment with the evilness of

colonialism has been problematized, among others, by means of theoretical challenges to

the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘identity’. During his life-long commitment to postcolonial

activism, Edward Said denounced the danger of fixing identities, and declared a need to

abolish the separation between West and East in political and cultural termsxi. Similarly,

contemporary anthropologists like Keith Hart propose a return to Kantian ideas about

cosmopolitanism as a way towards a ‘socially engaged anthropology in the 21st century’.xii As

we have seen, the movements of thought that fed the development of Anthropology during

the Enlightenment are diverse and complex in their relationships. However, we could say

that, in general, discussions about the commonalities and differences between peoples, the

capacity of every human being to discern what is good and bad and the right of certain

cultures to scrutinize, judge and control other cultures have long been at the centre of

anthropological enquiry.

Let us now try to put art within this puzzle, going back to one of the main

features of Europe during the 19th century: the development of Romanticism. Often

explained as a reaction against the prevailing supremacy of reason and the consequences of

industrialization in Europe, the Romantic Movement encouraged artists and intellectuals to

turn their attention towards remote societies with pre-industrial values. These societies

were seen as being positively contrasting to civilization in their embodiment of the

instinctive, the organic, the magic, the sensuous, and of other aspects which were oppressed

and therefore desired at home. The Romantics, one could say, were inspired by a desire for

what Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s called the noble savagexiii; a desire which was in tune with

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their opposition to the ideological basis underlying the enterprises of the Enlightenment,

including the industrialization and colonization of societies. Ironically, it was the industrial

development which made it physically possible for several Europeans to travel abroad to

colonies or ex-colonies in order to get new inspiration for their intellectual and artistic work.

It was in the 19th century that French artist Paul Gauguin lived in Thaiti –by then a

‘protectorate’ of France- and developed his primitivist style, which would continue to

influence artists of the 20th century and even artists of today. Similarly, some Romantic

ballets of the 19th century are good illustrations of the exoticxiv fantasies prevailing at the

time. Their exoticism is manifested, for example, in the evocation of next door ‘others’, as in

the Scottish context of La Sylphidexv, or in Fanny Elssler’s personification of a Spanish-

Moorish woman in La Cachuchaxvi.

Indeed, there exists a substantial work of critical analysis which relates the

vision of Romantic art to exoticism and imperialistic mentality. One of the most influential

criticisms in this direction is the work of Said in Orientalism (1978) and later in Culture and

Imperialism (1993). Followed and furthered by a great number of scholars, Said’s criticism

has also been attenuated by scholars like Mohammed Sharafuddin, who considers that

reducing Romantic art to its relation to colonialism is an error:

Beckford, Byron, Conrad and Kipling, among others, were products of their imperial culture…but if we judge them to be no more than that, then we have condemned a segment of society as a bunch of authors who were misguided by their ambitions and imperial conspiracies. This accusation, attractive as it is to modern audiences

concerned mainly with change and radical opposition, is not only faulty, but also misleading, as it obliterates certain important aspects of authors who would otherwise be viewed as rebels against their age’s prejudices

and blindness to other cultures.xvii

Not exclusive of the 19th century, exotic fantasies are central themes in the

dance history canon of the 20th century, which provides several cases of cultural

representation of distant ‘others’. Minding the differences between their works, the

orientalist styles –as understood in Said’s orientalism- of Vaslav Nijinsky and Ruth Saint-

Denis are two common examples of this kind of intercultural representation during the 20 th

centuryxviii.

Being aware of the great complexity which underlines the diverse relationships

between anthropology, colonization and art; I will now dare to choose a position that will

hopefully serve as point of departure for further discussion. In their ideological rejection to

the values inherited from the Enlightenment –like the objectivism of sciences and the

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industrialization of societies-, Romantic artists turned their attention to people, countries or

cultures which they could have never thought of without the advancements of colonialism,

industrialization and modern sciences. Furthermore, the Romantic disgust for reason and the

desire of the ‘noble savage’ might have implied a support to colonialist attitudes which

strived to maintain the opposition between the ‘civilized’ and ‘the primitive’; an opposition

without which artists would have run out of their ‘virgin’ sources of inspiration. My

immediate reflection is: Should not intercultural artists –the Romantic, the Modern and the

i The term ‘exotic’ should be understood with certain scepticism in this context. Something is ‘exotic’ when its appearance fulfils the expectations of being different, unknown, fascinating, and somehow impossible to grasp in its totality. Thus, something is not essentially ‘exotic’, but is made exotic when it is put outside its context and adapted to the expectations of certain viewer.

ii In intercultural art and cultural anthropology, ‘the other’ is usually related to cultures which are foreign to the artist or to the anthropologist. In anthropology, ‘the other’ is represented in a documentation and accurate analysis known as ‘ethnography’. In intercultural performance, ‘the other’ is represented in a performance.

iii The term ’postcolonialism’ should be understood not as a chronological moment in history which succeeded the times of colonial properties, but as a multi-phased and decided resistance against remaining imperialistic attitudes which pervade contemporary discourses, power structures, and social hierarchies. Thus, a scrutiny of ethnocentric attitudes, prejudices and actions in anthropological and artistic practices can be considered to be a postcolonial approach to the study of these disciplines.

iv There is indeed a significant amount of literature dedicated to ‘postcolonial performance’. At the moment, I can recommend two books: Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins Post-colonial Drama (1996), London; and J. Ellen Gainor(ed.), Imperialism and Theatre, (1995), London.

v During the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a wave of academics and artists who drew connections between anthropology and performance. Some notable authors are Richard Shechner, Victor Turner, Irving Goofman Clifford Geertz, and Eugenio Barba, who funded in 1979 the International School of Theatre Anthropology, ISTA.

viImmanuel Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View quoted by Joan Vincent in Vincent, Joan (ed.) The Anthropology of Politics A Reader in Ethnography, Theory and Critic, Oxford (2002), p.22

vii Adam T. Smith, The Political Landscape, California, (2003), p.33

viiiIbid

ix Joan Vincent (ed.), The Anthropology of Politics, A Reader in Ethnography, Theory and Critic. Oxford, (2002), p.17

x Dell Hymes in Reinventing Anthropology. New York (1969), p. 27

xi A main figure in the political and intellectual postcolonial movements of the 20th century, Edward Said developed the theory of ‘orientalism’, claiming that the way in which the West understands, imagines and represents the East –principally the Arabic Muslim societies- as being essentially opposite to the modern West, embodies imperialist interests and prolongs the historical domination of the West over the East. This theory

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Postmodern- ask themselves why they have had the privilege of going to other countries to

find ‘inspiration’, or why they have had the possibility of observing remote cultures in their

hometowns? Pablo Picasso did a great deal of his observations of ‘African Art’ at

ethnographic museums in Paris at the time in which the French empire was expanding into

Africa. Similarly, contemporary performers make great use of ‘world music’ found at local

libraries and of ‘ethnic’ dances taught at local dance schoolsxix, out of their fascination for

non-Western, undeveloped countries. Now, once a historical awareness of colonialism is

became broadly known and influential through his book ‘Orientalism’ (1978).

xii In his lecture ‘Anthropology and Globalization’, Keith Hart mentions Emmanuel Kant’s approach to Anthropology in the 18th century as well as Jean Jacques Russeau’s thoughts about modern society as sources of inspiration for his own view of Anthropology in the 21st century. Key work in youtube: Keith Hart. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukFe9IpTCYk

xiiiThe concept of the ‘noble savage’ maintains the opposition between ‘the primitive’ and ‘the civilized’, but it reverses its values. Disappointed with civilization, Romantic artists idealized ‘the savage’ by converting the negative aspects of the stereotyped non-Western people –the stereotypes so strongly criticized by Edward Said- into positive aspects of which Westerners were sadly deprived. In his article ‘Discourse on the Arts and Sciences’, Jean-Jacques Rousseau refers to the American Indians in this way: ‘The example of savages, most of whom have been found in this state...’ – an ideal state posterior to ‘the primitive’ and prior to ‘the civilized’- ‘...seems to prove that men were meant to remain in it, that it is the real youth of the world, and that all subsequent advances have been apparently so many steps towards the perfection of the individual but in reality towards the decrepitude of the species’. Rousseau quoted by Ronald L. Meek in Social Science and the Ignoble Savage. Cambridge (1976), p. 82.

xiv Here a definition of ‘the exotic’ from a postcolonial perspective: ‘An exoticist perspective constitutes ‘the other’ as the domesticated and known other, positing the lure of difference while assimilating its object to the circuits of consumption (of ideas, experiences, objects, images, and so on). It constructs the other, or projects otherness, from the point of view of the hegemonic Same, the known, the familiar’. ‘The New Exotic? Postcolonialism and Globalization’. Conference by the Postcolonial Studies Research Network, University of Otago, (2009). http://www.otago.ac.nz/humanities/research/networks/postcolonial/#forthcoming

xv The original version of La Shylphide was choreographed by Filippo Taglioni and starred by Maire Taglioni. It was first shown in Paris in 1832, when Scotland was considered to be an exotic country within Europe.

xvi La Chachucha is a folkloric dance from Andalusia which became widely famous through the choreographic interpretation of Romantic ballerina Fanny Essler around the 1830’s. Historian Carol Lee explains that ‘Essler studied folk dances of Spain, thus adding a colourful dimension to her work. She incorporated the lively spirit and rhythms of Spanish dances into her own staccato style...’.Carol Lee in Ballet in Western Culture, London (2002), p.156

xvii Mohammed Shafaruddin in Islam and Romantic Orientalism. London, (1994) p. viii-ix

xviii A postcolonial analysis of Ruth Saint-Denis’ and Vaslav Nijinsky’s works might lead to very different results. On the one hand, Saint-Denis introduced her dances as representations of Oriental dances, denying what many

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acquired, what are artists supposed to do in order to be ethical? And when are they entitled

to represent ‘others’?

I will come back to these questions later on. Meanwhile, I would like to suggest

that the relationship between intercultural art and colonialism is comparable to the

relationship between anthropology and colonialism. About the latter, Talal Asads states that:

The knowledge they produced –anthropologists- was often too esoteric for government use, and even where it was usable it was marginal in comparison to the vast body of information routinely accumulated by merchants, missionaries, and administrators. But if the role of anthropology for colonialism was relatively unimportant, the reverse proposition does not hold...It is not merely that anthropological fieldwork was facilitated by European colonial power...it is that the fact of European power, as discourse and practice, was always part of the reality

anthropologists sought to understand, and of the way they sought to understand it. xx

Similarly, we could claim that intercultural artists create art based on their

fantasies about an ‘other’ which has been determined within colonial and imperial systems.

Furthermore, we could claim that intercultural artists, like colonialists and anthropologists,

need an ‘other’ which in a Western context is often imagined as being mystical, eternal,

mysterious, savage, spontaneous, instinctive and essentially non-modern. Thus, whilst

colonialism exploits natural and human resources by means of militarism and slavery,

anthropology and intercultural art might run the risk of perpetuating cultural exploitation by

means of ethnocentric ‘representation’. As Michael Foucault and later Edward Said have

critics see as a highly subjective and Western interpretation of the Orient. Her Western audiences, in turn, seemed to have legitimized her works as genuine Oriental dances. On the other hand, Nijinsky’s works seem to have been perceived by audiences as very personal –and insulting- interpretations of an ambiguous ‘other’. The exotic features of his ballets might be more related to the exotic context given by the Ballet Russes, and to the fact that audiences saw Nijinsky as an exotic character outside the theatre as well as inside the theatre. In her essay ‘Man as Beast: Nijinsky’s Faun’, scholar Penny Farfan claims that: ‘Although the Faun's mythical origins were in ancient Greece, Nijinsky's Faun was, for European audiences, an exotic and eroticized "oriental" other’. South Central Review 25.1 (2008), http://muse.uq.edu.au/journals/south_central_review/v025/25.1farfan02.html

xixThe labels of ‘African’, ‘world’ and ‘ethnic’ are telling of a Western perspective which separates the West

from the rest of the planet. Thus, Africa is seen as a homogeneous whole, and anything that is not Europe and

North America is seen as ‘the world’, a big generalization. In a more respectful approach to cultural difference,

‘ethnic’ usually emphasises variety, alas one which is stereotyped as colourful, sensual and traditional.

Needless to say, ‘ethnic dances’ are only those dances practiced by minorities in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

xx Talal Asad (1991) in his "Afterword: From the History of Colonial Anthropology to the Anthropology of Western Hegemony" in Colonial Situations: Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge (George Stocking, ed). http://instruct.uwo.ca/anthro/301/asad.htm

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warned us, language and representation are far from being innocent, objective or passive. In

this sense, we could say that performance and ethnography work as specific constructions of

reality which might be appreciative or deplorative about the represented ‘other’.

Given this similarity, I would like to argued that anthropology and intercultural

performance can exchange and share strategies to fight the common enemy of colonialism.

On the one hand, intercultural artists can learn from anthropologists and other social

scientists that arts are part of socio-political contexts and historical power relationships,

regardless of the personal wishes and intentions of individual artists. On the other hand,

anthropologists can learn from artists that the objective language of sciences might be

incomplete and even fallacious, so that biased views are erroneously understood as universal

truths. Indeed, anthropology has gone through more or less radical auto-critical revisions

along its history, providing different kinds of strategies in order to counter-act the privilege of

Western researchers over non-Western people who serve as subjects of study. These

strategies include for example cultural relativism –which restricts the judgmental power of

Western researchers-, reflexive ethnography –which recognizes and visualizes the subjective

position of the researcher-, multi-textual ethnography- which includes various and even

contradictive voices- and advocative anthropology- in which researchers take a position and

participate actively in the improvement of the society he or she is studying. As far as I have

understood it, anthropologists have been much more concerned about fighting colonialism

than intercultural artists have. It is precisely for this reason that I find it important for

intercultural artists to make connections like the ones I have tried to make above.

2.2. From Race to Cultures of Choice

The only affinity connecting Theatre Anthropology to the methods and fields of study of cultural anthropology is the awareness that what belongs to our tradition and appears obvious to us can instead reveal itself to be a

knot of unexplored problems. This implies a displacement, a journey, a détour strategy which makes is possible for us to single out that which is ‘our’ through confrontation with what we experience as ‘other’.xxi

The anthropological endeavor of studying ‘the human being’ can be said to

imply a comparative approach which requires the determination of an ‘other’ that is

xxi Eugenio Barba, The Paper Canoe, London (1995), p. 10-1110

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somehow contrasting to ‘us’. Even the more complex and politically aware anthropology of

the last five decades needs an ‘other’ which can be encountered, exchanged with, identified

with, questioned, etc. That which has changed significantly through the history of

anthropology is the conditions under which the ‘other’ is determined, and with this, a

reconsideration of the power structures which frame this discipline.

Thus, the concept of ‘race’, which was accepted in the 19th century as a

biological determination and as basic criteria for hierarchical differentiation between human

beings, was questioned and nearly abolished in Europe during the 20th century. The

consequences of fascism and Nazism showed that ‘race’ as a concept was not only

scientifically dubious but also disastrous at a human level. After the second War World,

scholars with universalist views claimed that all human beings belonged to one spicy,

promoting fraternity among peoples from different nations and cultures. As it had happened

earlier with Kant’s cosmopolitan ideas, this well-intended universalism was questioned for

supporting Euro-centrist ideas in the name of universal values. A renewed interest for the

recognition of diversity aroused, but the concept of diversity based on ‘race’ was and

continues to be strongly questioned. There is not, one had learnt, biological determinations

of human superiority or inferiority. Based on this new understanding, new cultural theorists

claimed that the role and value of human beings were concepts constructed within certain

social structures and power relationships. This claim has an important implication; namely,

that social roles and hierarchies can be modified by means of political agency. In this context,

‘the others’ are different from ‘us’, not because they are born different, but because they

belong to ‘different cultures’.

Replacing the more segregating and negatively charged concept of ‘race’ for the

concept of ‘culture’ usually implies a celebration of diversity, ideally in equal terms. As

Western powers like Great Britain and U.S.A. are populated by non-European ethnicities- like

descendants from African slaves- and by people coming from different countries –often ex-

colonies-; policies are adapted in order to handle ‘plurality’ and the idea of ‘diversity in

unity’. At this point, when ‘the other’ is at home, the operation of ‘multiculturality’ consists in

encouraging the harmonic cohabitation of different and well-defined cultures within the

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boundaries of the nation state. Arguably, diversity is controlled by clear classifications, where

the other non-white can be defined and predictable. The problem that many critical theorists

have identified here is that the non-Western cultures –read as non-white European- are

usually stereotyped and fixed into the old models of the primitive and the exotic. Sadly

enough, these stereotypes are easily materialized in the so-called ‘ethnic’ music and dance

that many artists make use of. At a higher or lesser degree, the multicultural world expects

from a Brazilian to dance samba and from an Argentinian to dance tango. Rustom Bharucha

points out this problem saying that: ‘Be othered or perish’ would seem to be the sine qua non

of multicultural survival’xxii. Hence, several scholars argue that the biological determination

underlying the concept of race runs the risk of being replaced by a socio-cultural

determination which underlines the concept of multiculturalism.xxiii

Cultural theorists like Richard Schechner and David A. Hollinger have reacted

against this problem proposing models like ‘interculturalism’ and ‘post-ethnicity’. These

models share the basic idea of ‘cultures of choice’ or ‘cultural affiliations’xxiv. In these models,

cultural diversity is celebrated, but cultures are not biologically or historically determined,

nor are they as strictly defined as in the multicultural model. Instead, this model claims that

people should choose which culture they want to belong to. The flexibility allowed in these

models encourages cultural exchange and fluidity, where ‘hybrids’- people with various

cultural backgrounds or affiliations- have a place. However, the challenges of interculturalism

and post-ethnicity are not completely denied by their authors and other writers. Regarding

the cultural hierarchies which still exist in America, Hollinger points out that:

A time when all Americans are equally free to exercise their ethnic option is the ideal of post-ethnicity. xxv

xxii Rustom Bharucha in The Politics of Cultural Practice, London (2000), p.41

xxiii This argument has been developed, among others, by scholars like Lila Abu-Lughod in her article ‘Writing against Culture’, in Richard G. Fox; Lila Abu-Lughod, Arjun Appadurai, Jose F. Limon, Sherry B. Ortner, Paul Rabinow, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Joan Vincent, Graham Watson and Richard G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, New York (2001).

xxiv David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America, New York (2000)

xxv David A. Hollinger, Postethnic America, New York (2000)P.3912

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Similarly, a profound criticism of Schechner’s concept of ‘cultures of choice’ is well

articulated by more radical writers like Bharucha:

I would contend that it is harder for artists and cultural workers of the Third World to work against the strictures of ‘cultural insiderism’ for the simple reason that there are fewer opportunities for

employment outside the ethnic stereotypes.xxvi

Another problem identified by Bharucha and other writers as Bonnie Marranca,

Gautam Dasgupta and Schechner himself, is related to the descontextualization,

transportation and appropriation of cultural meanings in a society that promotes

intercultural fluidity. I will dedicate the next sections to this issue.

3. THE ETHICS OF INTERCULTURAL REPRESENTATION IN THE WORK OF EUGENIO BARBA AND THE ODIN THEATRE

3.1. Interculturalism and Historicity

One of the most common criticisms to intercultural practice is the tendency to

underestimate historical and cultural specificity. This, of course, implies ignoring specific

socio-political conditions which have made the emergence of certain performance forms

possible, as well as ignoring the constant transformation of these forms and the significance

that they have for the people who practice them. This criticism is more or less fair in different

cases. I will not talk about commercial exotizations of non-Western cultures where this

criticism suits well quite obviously. Instead, I will take the example of the rigorous and

internationally recognized work of Eugenio Barba and the Odin Theatrexxvii.

In 1979, Eugenio Barba created the International School of Theatre

Anthropology ISTA, with the aim of studying principles underlying the art of performance at a

level that he calls ‘pre-expressive’. This is a level which lies before language and meaning;

namely, a pre-cultural level. According to Barba, ‘good’ performances follow some basic and

universal principles which render the performers alive on stage. This applies regardless of

socio-cultural contexts and regardless of what these good performances might mean to

xxvi Rustom Bharucha in The Politics of Cultural Practice, London (2000), p.p. 40-41

xxvii Eugenio Barba founded the Odin Theater in Oslo, Norway in 1964. Later on the Odin moved to Holstebro, Denmark.

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express. Given his great interest in the ‘secret Art of the performer’xxviii, Barba’s research is

aimed at identifying some ‘good pieces of advice’xxix thereby observing the work of the Odin

and of various actors the around the world, most notably Asian performers trained in forms

like Kathakhali, Nõ and Odissi. Judging by Barba’s postulations and ways of working, one

could say that the director believes theatre to be an alternative reality where one can create

the world anew, with its own ‘universal’ laws of behavior and human relationships. Barba’s

description of concepts like ‘Third Theatre’ or ‘Floating Islands’ remind us of Hollinger’s

model of cultural affiliation. This time, an affiliation across geographical boundaries and

historical epochs as defined in socio-political terms; an affiliation to the culture of theatre:

There are people who live in a nation, in a culture. And there are people who lie in their own bodies. They are the travelers who cross…a space and time which have nothing to do with the landscapes and the season of the place they happen to be travelling through. One can stay in the same place for months and years and still be a “traveler”…journeying through regions and cultures thousands of years and thousands of

kilometers distant, in unison with the thoughts and reactions of men far removed from oneself…The discovery of a common substratum which we share with masters far removed in time and space; the awareness that our

action through theatre springs from an attitude towards existence and has its roots in one transnational and transcultural country.xxx

Hence, Barba’s ‘floating islands’ are independent from national bonds and their

historical contingencies, but their history and ‘roots’ are attached to the lives of people who

are and have looked for a certain kind of ‘cultural transcendence’ in the extra-daily, the

artifice, the preconditions for expressivity, the reverse of the ‘minimum effort maximum

result’xxxi formula. Thus, we could say that the history of the ‘floating islands’ is a particular

history of the aesthetics of performance with its leaders, developments -even if not clearly

linear- and thematic coherence. Within the nation of these ‘floating islands’ there exist the

xxviii One of the key books of Barba is, Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savaresse A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology The Secret Art of the Performer, London (1991).

xxix ‘Good piece of advice’ is an expression often used by Barba in verbal interviews and written texts. The expression has been one of Barba’s Achilles tendons for criticism.

xxx Eugenio Barba quoted by Richard Schechner in the foreword of Ian Watson’s Towards a Third Theatre. London (1993), p.xv

xxxi Eugenio Barba often explains the use of ‘extra-daily’ techniques in performance as using energy in an opposite way to the way we use energy in daily life. Thus, whilst we attempt to use the minimum energy for maximum effect in our ordinary actions, on stage we invest the maximum of energy to perform seemingly simple actions like standing and walking.

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rebels, the masters who have energized the history of theatre now and then, and who are

outstanding figures in a culture that Barba sometimes calls the ‘culture of transition’.

Certainly, Barba’s research focuses on theatricality, applied to the context of

theatre. Even narrower, he focuses on the context of what some would claim to be

‘technique’ and Barba calls ‘pre-expressivity’. Arguably, his research goes deep into details

instead of broad, and in this operation, Barba deliberately loses sight of extra-theatrical,

socio-cultural and political contextsxxxii. What Barba seems to do is an intercultural,

comparative and highly detailed observation of the micro-cosmos of the performers’ bodies.

He searches for transcultural principles underlying the way in which performers acquire their

extra-daily presence. To find these principles, Barba observes, among others, the alignment

of spine and legs, the muscular tensions and distensions, the transition between movements,

and the dilations of actions in time and space.

A question at this point could be if one should demand from Barba to consider a

wider socio-cultural and political context in his research. If the answer is affirmative, we

could ask: For the sake of what should we ask him to have this consideration? Of artistic

excellence, of ethical principles, of political awareness? Are artistic, ethical and political

questions inseparable? Does each aspect determine the meaning of the other aspects? Is

theatre giving meaning to its wider social context or is social context giving meaning to

theatre? I would like to suggest that these questions are somehow at the heart of

disagreements between Barba –as well as other interculturalist artists and theorists like

Schechner- and scholars like Rustom Bharucha and Philip Zarilli. Bharucha expresses it well

when he says:

Movements, however abstract or disembodied, cannot be separated from concepts of the body and the universe. Once again, I repeat, is the substratum of life that gives meaning to dance, not the anatomy of the

performer, which is itself a reaction to particular tendencies in history. xxxiii

xxxii I say ‘deliberately’ because it is clear that Barba acknowledges the ‘historical-cultural context’ as one of ‘three levels of organization’ which define the performer’s profile. This level – second in his classification-, is more specific than what Barba calls the ‘pre-expressive level’, the third level of organization and the main subject of Theatre Anthropology. The other level of organization–first in Barba’s classification- corresponds to: ‘the performer’s personality, his/her sensitivity, artistic intelligence, social persona’. Eugenio Barba, Paper Canoe, (1995), p. 10.

xxxiii Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world: performance and the politics of culture, New York (1993) p.58 15

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Clearly, for Eugenio Barba the world of theater, although undeniably

interrelated to its wider social context, can be observed, analyzed and understood

intrinsically. When criticized by Zarilli for his ‘ahistorical’ approach, Barba has answered that:

The importance of studying the social and cultural contexts of a specific theatre is obvious. But it is also obvious that it is not true that one understands nothing of the theatre if one does not consider it in the light of its

sociocultural context…A good method is that in which the context is pertinent to the questions which have been put to the object (Barba 1998)xxxiv

The ‘object’ in Barba’s case is undoubtedly theatricality at the level of pre-expressivity. The

context of such an object will thus be framed so that it remains relevant to his specific

aesthetic search. In his discussion about the Odin’s work, Bharucha somehow takes distance

from his primarily ethic concerns, making some comments about the artistic consequences of

Barba’s ‘ahistorical’ approach:

In a production like Marriage with God…I …felt that Barba’s actors were working so hard to shape energies through deflection, opposition, collision, transition, metamorphosis and switches of character, that they were overwhelmingly energetic. I was numbed by their virtuosity. But the strangest thing of all is that they left me

entirely cold. I was not moved by their particular uses of the body…At risk of emphasizing the banal in theatre, I must affirm the need to see human beings on stage, however much they may ‘deform’ their bodies in the

interest of their ‘presence’.xxxv

Apparently isolated from the rest of his arguments, Bharucha discusses here

Barba’s work in Barba’s terms; this is, in terms of theatrical artistry. Two years after the

English publication of Bharucha’s comment in his book Theatre and the World, Barba’s

makes, also in the English publication of Paper Canoe, a comment about the difference

between the life of the performer and his/her virtuosity:

The difference between this life and the vitality of an acrobat… is obvious…The acrobats shows us ‘another body’ which uses techniques so different from daily techniques that they seem to have no

connection with them. In other words, there is no longer a dialectic relationship but only distance, or rather, the inaccessibility of a virtuoso’s body…Daily body techniques are used to communicate; techniques of virtuosity are used to amaze. Extra-daily techniques, on the other hand, lead to information. They literally put the body

into form, rendering it artificial/artistic but believable. Herein lies the essential difference which separates extra-daily techniques from those which merely transform the body into the ‘incredible’body of the acrobat and the

virtuoso. xxxvi

What Bharucha observes in Odin actors and Barba observes in acrobats is, I

insist, a concern of the aesthetic field. It is a problem that philosopher Edward Bullough xxxiv Ian Watson, Towards a Third Theatre, London, (1993), p. xiv

xxxv Bharucha, Theatre and the world: performance and the politics of culture, New York (1993) p. 60

xxxvi Eugenio Barba, Paper Canoe, London, (1995) p.1616

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formulated in his aesthetic theory of ‘psychical distance’xxxvii as a case of ‘over-distance’, in

which the spectator fails to have an aesthetic experience due to the impossibility of relating

the artistic object to his/her personal reality. What is interesting here, I believe, is the way in

which Bharucha connects this aesthetic concern with his own ethical and political concerns.

The ‘overwhelmingly energetic’ Odin actors are, according to Bharucha, a product of Barba’s

obsession with the stylization of traditional Asian theatre, where he identifies the secret to

combat the lifelessness of much modern theatre. Bharucha sees this obsession as well as

Barba’s rejection to realistic theatre as a position which could only come from a Western

avant-garde artist; a position which somehow reinforces the image that the West has of the

East as being traditional, timeless and wise:

I resist the equation of ‘Indian Theatre’ with those ‘traditional’ laws of pre-expressivity and extra-daily behavior that seem to preoccupy Barba. Certainly, I am aware of the traps of realism and the limits of proscenium, but I

believe that there are possibilities contained within them that Barba has assumed and rejected. The point is that he can afford to reject this theatre of ‘daily behaviour’ because it has evolved in his culture over a long period of time. Whether I like it or not, I cannot afford to do so. I am compelled to question the colonial ‘roots’ of realism

in the Indian theatre and to see how it has incorporated ‘indigenous’ material and modes of expression.xxxviii

Where do Barba’s aesthetic preferences come from? Why does his

Anthropology of Theatre focus on the pre-expressive level? What Bharucha shows us openly,

is that he fails in having an aesthetic experience when watching the Odin actors because his

Indian background and consciousness determines his sensitivity. Thus, his sensitivity –and

any spectator’s sensitivity- cannot be separated from his/her socio-cultural background. Even

though Barba’s dialectical and open approach to meaning allows for a great diversity of

interpretations, this very open approach might be argued to belong to a socio-culturally

rooted, Western avant-garde theatre. In other words, the level of pre-expressivity might be

less universal than what Barba would wishxxxix. Arguably, the concept of pre-expressivity is

linked to a particularly Western way of understanding ‘representation’, ‘language’ and, at the

centre of all this, the issue of ‘meaning’. Let us give a further thought to this issue.

xxxvii The theory of Psychical Distance was developed by Edward Bullough in 1912, and is substantially influenced by aesthetic-attitude theories from the 18th and 19th centuries. According to this theory, aesthetic experience consists in a particular attitude of the spectator which is defined by a balanced distance between the appearance and content of an ‘art object’ and the personal background of the viewer. Ideally, the art object will encourage an ‘outmost decrease of Distance without its disappearance’. In this sense, Bharucha’s perception of Odin actors and Barba’s perception of ‘the acrobat’ can be said to fit the case of ‘over-distance’.

xxxviii Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world: performance and the politics of culture, New York (1993) p.5217

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3.2 The Issue of Meaning

The language turn of deconstructionism and its underlying idea that ‘There is

nothing outside the text’xl has influenced the development of a great deal of Western dance

and theatre from the 1960’s on. Concepts like ‘representation’, ‘literalness’ and even

‘expression’ have been looked at with skepticism, and they have been radically fought against

by a great number of postmodern performance artists. In the cannon of Western dance

history, Merce Cunnigham and the American generation of ‘the postmoderns’ have become

icons of this language turn, where there are not true meanings which should be read in, or

beyond dance. The meaning is, within this paradigm, in the factual aspects of the body in

motion. Dance expresses itself. Hence, the task of the artists is to re-create language,

challenging the belief in absolute or transcendental ‘truths’. Realistic art or art that attempts

to represent an accepted reality is seen as authoritarian art, which encourages passive

attitudes from the side of the audience. In an anti-representative campaign, postmodern

performance presents –rather than represents- a world which might appear illogical,

fragmented, absurd, surprising and complex. Playing with the form of language - where the

act of playing deserves all respect- is a way of playing with arbitrary meanings, a way of

deconstructing what exists in order to reveal reality’s vulnerability to change. As Roland

Barthes proclaimed in his famous article ‘The death of the author’, meaning is not

preconceived and fixed, but rather conceived in every encounter between a text and its

reader. This paradigm has affected, as it should, the way in which people understand the

world, and therefore the way in which artists from the West understand and the arts of non-

Western cultures. Such an understanding is critically seen by scholar Anuradha Kapur, when she

claims that:

xxxix A similar criticism has been made by scholars like Phillip Zarrilli who attended the 1986 ISTA. At this point it might be interesting to point out that Zarrilli consciously uses arguments which are familiar to the critics of ‘universalism’ within the field of cultural anthropology. Indeed, one of Zarilli’s strongest criticisms to Barba is that the director dismisses most of the theory and practice existing within the field of academic anthropology, inventing his own and inconsequent version of theatre anthropology: ‘Barba’s voice remains single, essential, comprehensive and authoritarian’. Phillip Zarrilli quoted by Richard Schechner in Ian Watson, Towards a Third Theatre, New York, (1995) p.xiii

xl Jacques Derrida quoted by Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, London (1983), p.82

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In mounting an attack on mimesis, postmodernism claims as its territory non-mimetic forms from all over the world. Thus theatre from the ‘Third World’ comes to be defined by the needs and uses of

postmodernism; forms from different cultural contexts become evacuated of subject matter and are seen as a series of formal options.xli

How can Barba fit into this postmodern paradigm of performance? Arguably, his

cultural distance from Asia allows Barba to perceive and analyze the physical actions of Asian

performers separately from their cultural contexts. This is an operation which Bharucha is

unwilling or unable to do, partly because of his Asian background and partly because of his

postcolonial awareness. This is how Barba himself describes his relationship with Asia:

It is sometimes said that I am an “expert” on Asian theatre, that I am influenced by it, that I have adapted its techniques and procedures to my practice. Behind the verisimilitude of these commonplaces

lies their opposite. It has been through knowledge of the work of Western performers- Odin Teatret actors- that I have been able to see beyond the technical surface and the stylistic results of specific traditions. xlii

In other words, Barba sees Asian performance with the eyes allowed to him by

his personal and cultural background, and this, I would suggest, is manifested in his approach

to meaning and language. Let us look at the Theatrum Mundi, a work created during the

concluding sessions of each ISTA, under the direction of Barba and in collaboration with

theatre masters from Europe and Asia. Comparing his dramaturgical method with

‘Romanesque architecture’, Barba explains that he intertwines the autonomous styles of the

performers, finding the connections between them at the pre-expressive level. This is:

..within the domain of rhythm and contacts, technique and relationships. The fragments then become actions which can interact, thus creating a context… I do not interfere with the fragments proposed by

the actors, I choose them and make connections between them.xliii

We could argue that even when Barba does not interfere or alter the form of

the actions, the new context created by his ‘Romanesque dramaturgy’ implies interference in

the meaningful content that these actions might have in isolation, or within their traditional,

usually Asian, contextsxliv. Certainly, a dramaturgy based on the ‘pre-expressive’ level will

create a work with strong focus on formal qualities rather than on meaningful content.

Furthermore, we should remember that Theatrum Mundi is usually presented within the

frame of the ISTA, where audiences have been prepared to perceive theatre at a pre-

xli Anuradha Kapur quoted in Helen Gilbert and Joanne Tompkins, Post-colonial Drama, London (1996), p.p. 9-10

xlii Eugenio Barba, Paper Canoe, London (1995), p.7

xliii Eugenio Barba, taken from the Odin Theatre webpage, http://www.odinteatret.dk/ista/ista.htm19

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expressive level. This, in my opinion, is a systematic and throughout interference in the

symbolic realm of performance forms in which the meanings expressed through theatrical

actions might be of paramount importance otherwise. Now, it would be unfair to charge the

responsibility for such interference to Barba alone. As it is known, the ISTA is thought of as a

space of collaboration between European and Asian theatre masters. Thus, even if the focus

on pre-expressivity has first been suggested by Barba, one should think that the Asian

masters have accepted this collaboration on the grounds of a common interest. In this way,

the interference of the ‘Romanesque method’ in the meaningful content of theatrical actions

from diverse performance traditions might be seen as the result of an artistic and human

encounter where European and Asian artists are equally active participants.

Now, concerning his work with the Odin actors, Barba explains that the

‘meaning’ of his productions is as a dialectic tension between the meanings of the director,

the actor and the spectator. In turn, this dialectic provides a tension which is solved by every

individual engaged in the performance: Barba, every actor and every spectator. The

meanings read by these persons are aroused by the physical actions of the performers, in

relation to each individual’s external and personal references. However, it seems obvious

that Barba’s work is more engaged with an intrinsic research on the physical actions of the

performers than with a research on these actions in relation to external concepts or to the

viewer’s extra-theatrical context. Barba shares with other postmodern artists a skeptical

attitude towards ‘expression’:

Abstract meanings derive from ikebana through the precise work of analysis and transposition of a physical phenomenon. If one began with these abstract meanings, one would never reach the concreteness and precision of ikebana, whereas by starting from precision and concreteness, one does attain these abstract

meanings. Performers often try to proceed from the abstract to the concrete. They believe that the point of departure can be what one wants to express, which then implies the use of a technique suitable for this

expressionxlv.

xlivMost of the styles ‘intertwined’ in Theatrum Mundi are traditional Asian styles heavily based on storytelling. In 1986, for example, Theatrum Mundi was ‘a spectacular anthology of female characters, played by male and female masters like Sanjukta Panigrahi and her elderly master Kelucharan Mahapatra, famous for his interpretation of female roles; the Kathakali dancers Sankaran Nambodiri and K.N. Vijayakumar; the Balinese dancer Swasthi Bandem, Ni Puti Ary Bandem, Desak Made Suarti Laksmi, Ni Made Wiratini; The Japanese Buyo dancers Katsuko Azuma, Kanho Azuma, and Kanichi Hanayagi, a Kabuki actor, specialised in female roles (onnagata); a very young trio from the Peking Opera of Taiwan, Tracy Chung, Ivonne Lin, and Helen Liu, and finally the great Pei Yan-Ling - the most famous interpreter of male roles in the classical theatre of the People's Republic of China’. Link to the web page of Odin Theatre: www.odinteatret.dk/ista/Productions/mundi.htm

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An abstract meaning, advises Barba, is not a good point of departure. Similarly, ‘expression’,

understood as a translation of abstractness into language, is a process likely to fail. It seems

to me that for Barba and the Odin actors, abstract meanings are relevant as far as they work

as internal motivations for theatrical presence.

In his autobiographical notes, Barba tells us how he remembers the fully

present stillness of the women praying at church in Gallipoli, the Italian village where he grew

up. He remembers the ‘immobility of the believer’, as a dynamic projection of the self,

something magical which Barba would continue to research in his Theatre Anthropology. The

director compares this life stillness with the stillness of the soldier, whose body is faking

obedience and respect whilst his mind is being and wishing something else. The difference

between the believer and the soldier, explains Barba, lies in the internal motivations that

they have for their stillness –devotion for the former, fear for the latter. Interesting enough,

these motivations seem to have a lot to do with socio-cultural context, which Barba is often

blamed for dismissing. Arguably, Barba found a motivation for this ‘life stillness’ in the

context of theatre, or in the country of ‘floating islands’ as he sometimes call it. His faith in

God and his devotion to church have perhaps disappeared, but his interest in the ‘immobility

of the believer’ remains, now as an aesthetic interest.

The more general issue of transporting ‘the sacred’ to ‘the secular’ is not

uncommon in intercultural practice. Even when Barba can be said to transport attitude or

‘physical principles’ rather than the whole enactment of existing rituals –as Schenchner and

Brook have attempted to do-, we could claim that Barba is performing a kind of sacred-

secular transportation. In his critical view of interculturalism, Bharucha exposes his

skepticism towards assumed equivalences between the concentration and consciousness of

the actors, and the concentration and consciousness of the believer. Concerning this

transposition from the sacred to the secular, Bharucha asks:

What happens to the faith in rituals once its ‘actions’ are performed in a theatrical context? Is faith transportable? I believe that if one has to reproduce rituals in theatre , particularly those associated with

spiritual contexts, a confrontation of their ‘meaning’ is as important as an examinations of their ‘actions’xlvi

xlv Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology. London (2006) p.15

xlvi Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world: performance and the politics of culture. Oxon, (1993), p.3421

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It seems to me that Barba has dedicated his life to transporting the faith culture

he was part of in his childhood to a culture of theatre, in his devoted dedication to his work

with the Odin. Perhaps one of Barba’s biggest achievements is to have been able to extract

from the ‘culture of faith’ and many other cultures, the very element he is interested in.

Diving consistently into that particular element has led him to provide a solid body of work

which he has shared with theatre practitioners of West and East. Not only has Barba declared

this transportation of faith to have been highly significant for his work, but he also sees a

similar process of transportation happening among cultures he does not come from:

In India, the hasta mudra… originated in sacred statues and in prayer practices. When used by performers to emphasize or translate the words of a text or to add descriptive detail to them, the mudra

assume, above and beyond their ideogramatic value, a dynamism, a play of tensions and oppositions whose visual impact is decisive in determining their believability in the eyes of the spectators…Balinese performers,

although belonging to Hindu culture, have lost the meanings of the mudra, but have kept the richness of their micro-variations and the vibrant asymmetry of the life they contain.xlvii

It remains to ask what this change of function –from sacred to secular- implies,

and under which conditions it occurs. According to Bharucha, this transportation of faith is

ethically questionable when it violates the significance that certain texts or rituals have for

the people who practice it or believe in it. The ethical problem, claims Bharucha, does not lie

in the attempt to establish intercultural dialogues or in the essential impossibility of achieving

a complete understanding of ‘others’. The fault of a great number of intercultural artists,

explains Bharucha, is their lack of concern about cultural meanings and about the very

practical and economical conditions under which ‘cultural transportations’ take place. More

often than not, Western artists benefit themselves from non-Western cultures’ precious

heritage, without giving back any significant economical or symbolic recognition.

One of Bharucha’s most critical expositions of this case is his analysis of Peter

Brook’s Mahabharata, where he denounces the banalization of the classic Indian text, as well

as the disengaged attitude of Brook’s team towards the Indian collaborators in the mega

production. According to Bharucha, Brook’s Mahabharata was not only a symbolic violation

but also an economical exploitation of Indian people; a good example of the fallacy of

intercultural practice and its utopia of encounter and mutual enrichment. Following

Bharucha’s reasoning, a production like Brook’s Mahabharata could be compared to an

xlvii Eugenio Barba, Paper Canoe. London (1995), p.p. 26-2722

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ethnographic product; alas one which privileges the anthropologist’s fantasies and

economical interests over the perception and wellbeing of his/her ‘informants’ –Bharucha

lets us know that the budget of Brook’s production was huge, and that the ‘Indian flavor’ of

the work was a predictable commercial success in the West-.

Hence, our concern here is the ethical implications of cultural

descontextualization and recontextualization in intercultural practice. What happens to non-

Western cultures when their products are isolated and scrutinized by anthropologists and

intercultural artists? Could we blame Barba for taking Asian performances out of their

context for the sake of artistic research? What have been the consequences of his research,

let us say, for practitioners of Odissi dance in India? How mutual are the encounters between

‘European and Asian artists’ in the University of Euroasian theatre? How equal are the

economical conditions and benefits for the Odin actors and their collaborators? What kind of

human relationships are created and developed during the ISTA sessions and the barters?

Unfortunately, a close examination of these issues is beyond my possibilities at this stage. For

the time being, I will content myself with having pointed out some questions which could

lead our discussion towards less philosophical, more concrete issues. I will finish this section

by quoting Bharucha once more, regarding the lessons that intercultural artists can learn

from anthropologists:

It is at the level of interactions that the human dimensions of interculturalism are, at once, most potent and problematic. Tellingly, they are almost never confronted in theatre research, quite unlikely the

recent trends in anthropology, for instance, where the racist and Eurocentric dimensions in representing other cultures have been extended beyond the writing of ethnography to the actual social relationships- personal,

social, and professional- that are initiated between anthropologists and their subjectsxlviii.

3.3. ISTA, Barters and FestugesTheatre can change only theatre; it cannot change society. But if you change theatre, you change a small but

very important part of society…When you change theatre you change for its audience a certain way of seeing , a change in perception, a certain kind of perceptivity.xlix

If Barba can be criticized for his ahistorical approach to traditional performance

forms, it is more difficult to criticize him for social disengagement. Primarily, Barba sees

xlviii Rustom Bharucha, Theatre and the world: performance and the politics of culture. Oxon, (1993) p. 84

xlix Eugenio Barba quoted by Ian Watson in Towards a Third Theatre, London, (1993), p. 3123

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theatre as an encounter between individuals and as a way of constructing social bounds

between people from different parts of the world. The ISTA, the barters and the festuges are

all theatre events which encourage encounter within more or less determined frames.

As we have mentioned earlier, the ISTA consists in an empirical research on the

art of the performer, which is carried out by masters from all over the world. The research

might include informal and continuous communication between ‘the masters’, but it takes its

most concrete forms during intensive sessions in which all the members gather for

discussions and public demonstrations. Even though the basic concept of ISTA is a creation of

Barba, and ‘the masters’ who research are invited by Barba himself, the ISTA sessions seem

to be an open arena for participation. From an ethic point of view, it seems to me to be

significant that the ISTA sessions have included scholars from different disciplines – including

anthropologists, sociologists, and feminists among others-, who have published critical texts

about Barba’s approach to theatre anthropology. Barba, I would claim, has strong

convictions, but he is open for discussion and criticism. Indeed, I believe that Barba’s

openness has contributed a lot to the abundance of interesting discussions about his work,

being the criticisms by theatre scholars Rustom Bharucha and Phillip Zarilli some of the most

outstanding ones.

Let us know discuss the ‘barters’. In the 70’s, Barba and the Odin created a new

kind of theatrical event in which performances were exchanged. Thus, the Odin travelled to

different places, offering street performances and receiving local performances as a

payment. Part of the concept is that the performances are not the most important thing of

the event. What matters is instead the encounter, the process of exchanging. In this way,

theatre is treated as a cultural product rather than as an aesthetic product. The dilemma that

Barba finds between the social and the aesthetic functions of theatre is interesting:

Theatre can, in a way, destroy its artistic quality and become a sort of cultural instrument. By cultural I mean an instrument for creating relations, especially among persons who could never be able to

create a dialogue between them.l

The social concern that underlined the ‘barters’ led the Odin to offer its

performances in exchange for not only local performances, but also material goods that

l Ibid, p.2924

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would help satisfying needs of the hosting communityli. Hence, audiences paid with books,

musical instruments, or with information which would contribute to the creation of libraries,

archives or publications about the community’s region. Such a will to help solving the

problems of the ‘studied’ or ‘visited’ community echoes postcolonial approaches to

anthropology, in which the ethnographic research is expected to benefit not only the

researcher’s community, but also the community which is been studied. As Gerald D.

Berreman put it:

This is the substance of the searching questions of the peoples of the third world and others: namely, ‘What has been the effect of your work among us? Have you contributed to the solution of the

problems you have witnessed? Have you even mentioned those problems? If not, then you are part of those problems and hence must be changed, excluded, or eradicated. lii

When questioned about his social commitment, Barba has often tried to explain

that his political and social concerns are manifested not so much in the meaningful content

of his productions, but rather in the human conditions and relationships created around

these productions. Indeed, the Odin is well known for being a community with an

idiosyncratic life style, almost an island with its own ethical principles and social rules. liii

Somehow agreeing with Barba, I believe that the weak point of the director is the apparent

lack of historical and political awareness manifested not in the context, but rather in the

content - or non-content- of his theatre productions.

Let us look at other kind of event. Since 1991, the Odin has been organizing

‘festuges’, which are celebrations that include performances, videos, films, exhibitions and

li It is important to point out that Barba and the Odin have carried out their barters in different ways. Arguably some of them are easier to criticize than others. Unfortunately I do not have the mediums to offer a deep analysis and an ethical discussion about this intercultural practice at the moment. For a postcolonial view of the ‘barters’, look at Nicholas Arnold’s article ‘ The barter concept and practices of Eugenio Barba’s Odin theatre: Cultural exchange or cultural colonialism?’ in The European Legacy, Volume 1, Issue 3 May 1996, pages 1207-1212. The reason why I won’t discuss this article is that I lack a subscription that allows me to access it.

lii Gerald D. Berreman, ‘“Bringing It All Back Home”: Malaise in Anthropology’ in Dell Hymes (ed), Reinventing Anthropology, New York (1969), p.90

liii I could myself experience the community feeling of the Odin during a one week workshop about the relationship between voice and movement. Ready to be disappointed given my high expectations, I was surprised by the community feeling at the isolated house of the Odin, in the isolated Danish village –getting to Holstebro was rather complicated-. As soon as I entered the building I understood that I was in a kind of sub-society with its own rules: rules of trust, generosity, sharing and hard work.

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concerts performed by and for the people of Holstebro. The ‘festuge’ is an event that

synthesizes Barba’s reflections about theatre as a cultural encounter and as a form of human

relationship. In a letter written to Schechner Barba writes:

We remained in this non-man’s land for nine days and nine nights’ dissolving the theatre into the town and absorving the reality of the town into the theatre. But mixing with others puts the consistency of one’s own borders to the test. It is a way of deepening the differences and of defining oneself. When performers throw themselves into the daily life of a street or a market, they are not blending with the local people; they don’t establish a communion with them. They are merely solidifying their own identities, and therefore their own

differences. This leads to the possibility of creating a relationship.liv

Granted, the event as a whole and what people actually experience during its

nine days and nights might be plausible in terms of community building. What strikes me

however, is the ‘themes’ chosen by the Odin as red threads of these events. In his letter to

Schechner, Barba does not even mention ‘the theme’ of the festuge that he so emotionally

describes. I suspect that the ‘theme’ is of little importance to Barba and that it is precisely in

the ‘theme’ where Barba’s criticized lack of historicity and political unawareness might be

most visible. Describing the ‘festuges, Ian Watson writes:

The ‘theme’, “Culture Without Frontiers”, was inspired by the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the new world. As the press release for the event described it, the festuge was concerned with the “Danish Columbus”, those Danes who had spent time abroad and had returned to their native land”…enriched

by experience and with a new perspective, which gives impulse and ‘life’ to society at large (Odin Teatret/Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, 1991). lv

Having been born and raised in Colombia, and having been introduced into

postcolonial studies, I find the quote above a little more than indignating. Certainly, America

can only be seen as a ‘new world’ to be ‘discovered’ from the point of view of European

colonizers. Moreover, the ‘enriching’ experiences caused by the arrival of Columbus to

America can only be celebrated by an ethnocentric and imperialistic mind. On the one hand,

I find it disturbingly strange that a person with the intellectual competence of Barba can be

so uncritical towards the ‘themes’ he selects. On the other hand, I do not find it surprising

that Barba is fascinated by Columbus, given his identification with ‘the traveler’, with ‘the

culture of transition’, with ‘the floating islands’, with ‘the no-man’s land’, and in general, with

the adventure of encountering other cultures. In my opinion, the ‘theme’ of this first festuge

liv Eugenio Barba, Paper Canoe. London. (1995), p. 144

lv Ian Watson, Towards a Third Theatre. (1993) London, p. 17926

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is coherent with Barba’s consistent aesthetic interests, as much as it is coherent with his

occasional lack of political and historical awareness. Another case in which meaningful

content might be controversial from an ethical and postcolonial perspective is the production

of The Million. I will discuss this further in the next section.

3.4 The Million: An Irony?

In terms of process, content and form, The Million seems to be a work

especially vulnerable to postcolonial criticism. Briefly told, Odin actors went into a three

month sabbatical during which most of them trained in performance genres from foreign

cultures. At their return to Holstebro, the actors had acquired skills in kathakali, pentjal,

legong and capoeira among other performance forms. These skills and the experiences of the

actors during their trips became raw material for the production of The Million. The work was

first performed in Aarhus in 1978 and it remained in the Odin repertoire until 1984. As Barba

himself tells us, the creative process of The Million happened during a time in which the

director was starting to find key questions that would become the core of the ISTA about one

year later:

Bewildered and skeptical, I watched these flashes of exotic skills, hurriedly acquired. I began to notice that when my actors did a Balinese dance, they put on another skeleton/skin which conditioned the way of standing,

moving and becoming ‘expressive’. Then they would step out of it and reassume the skeleton/skin of the Odin actor. And yet, in the passage form one skeleton/skin to another, in spite of the difference in ‘expressivity’, they

applied similar principles.lvi

These sessions in which the actors showed Barba their ‘hurriedly acquired’ skills

led not only to reflections about pre-expressivity, but also to the creation of The Million. The

title of the work refers to the nickname given in Venice to Marco Polo, whose descriptions of

Asia were always a ‘million times’ more exaggerated than what anyone had ever imagined.

According to Watson, the characters depicted in the The Million:

Played a variety of exotic character…included Balinese dancers, a lion form the Japanese kabuki, clichéd versions of a Mexican in a huge sombrero with a rifle that would not stop firing and a Moroccan in

Arabic-style robes, the Hindu Monkey King, a macho Latino in an immaculate white..lvii

lviEugenio Barba, Paper Canoe. London (1995), p. 6-7

lvii Ian Watson, Towards a Third Theatre, (1993) London, p.115-116 27

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Similarly, the music included an Indonesian gamelan, as well as Western popular tunes like “I

left My Heart in San Francisco” and “Oh Susana”.

The multicultural look of The Million should not be so surprising if one thinks

that this work was produced precisely at the midst of a revealing moment for Barba, when

the director started to see that the most specific and apparently unrelated performance

traditions shared some basic and vital principles. The Million is perhaps a celebration of this

common ground among diversity. At least this seems to have been the perception of New

York Times critic Mel Gussow who described the work as a ‘vividly theatricalized carnival of

all nations’lviii, and also the perception of The Times critic Ned Chaillet who called the work:

..a dazzling celebration of theatricality that brings together striking images from such places as Bali and Indialix.

Judging by these comments and by my own experience of watching a video of

The Million, I would argue that by the time of the creation of this production Barba had not

yet come up with a way of using what he saw then as underlying principles of performance.

Or paraphrasing the director, Barba had not yet managed to cook in his own way what he

had taken from the outside. In my opinion, The Million presents short fragments of

performances which are exotic to the Western world, coloring them with a rather hysterical

and exaggerated vitality that touches the limits of superficial humor. Echoing Bharucha’s

criticism of Brook’s Mahabharata, I would like to suggest that the cultural transportation

performed The Million resulted in a virtuosic, alas banal reproduction of cultural products

like the kathakali or the capoeira.

Perhaps a more sophisticated appreciation of The Million could provide us with

other tools for interpretation. However, I believe that the literality with which the work

represents cultural stereotypes not only inhibits a nuanced reading of the work, but it also

reinforces colonialist prejudices towards non-Western cultures. Suggesting that there is

more about The Million than a superficial celebration of multiculturalism, Watson quotes a

comment by Danish critic Henrik Lundgren:

lviii Mel Gussow in his article ’Stage: ‘Million’ by Odin group of Denmark’, in The New York Times, May 10, 1984. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/05/10/theater/stage-million-by-odin-group-of-denmark.html

lix Ned Chaillet quoted by Ian Watson in Towards a Third Theatre (1993) London, p. 11628

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The production contrasts run the gamut from the capricious to the aggressive, but its underlying tone is one of fertile, sharp edged ironylx

Interpreting The Million as an irony seems to me to be a rather easy way of justifying the

exotizations performed in the work. Moreover, if we suppose that The Million spoke an

ironic language which contradicted its own celebratory tone, we could still say that

audiences were likely to miss the point, thereby running the risk of interpreting the work in

an undesired, colonialist way. Furthermore, having discussed the way in which Barba deals

with meaning in his works, it seems most unlikely that he might have planned to convey

some specific message in the form of a complex irony. As far as I understand, Barba stands

for free and diverse interpretation of meanings, thereby legitimizing the reading of those

spectators who saw in The Million a celebratory and humorous display of exotic cultures. Is

The Million and irony? I do not think so.

4. DEFEATING COLONIALISM

4.1. Cumbia-Kumbé

Some people say that one becomes more nationalistic when one lives abroad. I

am not sure I have become more nationalistic whilst living in Sweden, but what I can say is

that I have experienced an increasing need to ‘talk about Colombia’, and more recently, to

‘talk about’ what it means to me to be Colombian. Starting as a sheer infatuation with the

folk music and dance from the coast regions of ‘my country’, the process of creating Cumbia-

Kumbé has grown into a self- attempt to decolonize myself, denounce exotization, perform

political activism and question my own subjective position in the middle of all this. If I find it

relevant to bring up this process here, is because the development of Cumbia-Kumbé has

been accompanied and affected by my studies on postcolonialism, and lately by my entrance

into the field of anthropology. As I stated in the first sections of this essay, I believe that

anthropology and performance walk similar paths in their aim of defeating colonialism.

Cumbia-Kumbé can then be an example of how this interdisciplinary collaboration can take

place.

lx Henrik Lundren quoted by Ian Watson in Towards a Third Theatre, (1993) London, p. 117 29

Sara Regina Fonseca

In its first versions in 2004 and 2005, Cumbia-Kumbé was thought as homage to

the native Americans and Afro-Colombian people, whose historical suffering and cultural

resistance have blossomed into the most moving and vibrating dance and music forms, being

the cumbia one of the most representative ones. A good number of reflections have followed

this first, deeply felt motivation. One of the earliest ones came when I realized that the

concept of the ‘other’ was confusingly relative, causing different kinds of exotizations. Being

a Colombian recently arrived in Sweden –when I started making the piece I had been in

Sweden for about two years-, my cumbia was appreciated by Swedish people as my voice of

difference, equating my cultural identity with this dance. lxi Being used to think a lot about

what I want ‘to say’lxii, this time I decided to let my guts and instincts go –whatever this might

be-, choreographing the piece without questioning too much what the movements could

mean. My decision was strengthened by the emotive response I got from several spectators,

something difficult to resist. However, the process continued and I started to ask myself if I

was actually entitled to dance cumbia and if I was doing it correctly, this is, like the Afro-

Colombian people do it in the Atlantic coast of Colombia. Quite obviously, the doubt made

me see that in a Colombian context, performing the cumbia would be representing ‘the

other’. I come from the Andes region of Colombia, where the African influence is minimal and

the folklore is extremely different from the folklore in the coasts. I realized that I was

exoticizing myself –and the rest of Colombians- in Sweden, as well as exoticizing Afro-

Colombian people in Colombia. My dance seemed to strengthen stereotypical characteristics

like the ‘organic’, ‘animalistic, ‘melancholic’, ‘resistant’ and ‘celebrative’. I, like many

Europeans and Colombians, imagined these characteristics to be typical of Afro-Colombian

people. My antidote to this reflection was to add a layer of auto-criticism. I would open a

forum after the performance, in which the audience could criticize my piece using tools from

postcolonial studies. The forum would be guided by Doctor Yael Feiler, who is expert in the

matter. In the only forum I have had the chance to organize, I realized that the feedback of

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the audience was telling not only about my exoticizing clichés, but also about the spectators’

prejudices about Colombia. They were, as in the first version, fascinated by the strength,

vitality and emotionality of the piece; but it did not occur to them to think that this

fascination had another side, the cost of exoticism.

What did I really want to achieve with the piece? Inform? Seduce? Give a moral

lecture? Move? I believe that the power and the danger of performance, is the multiple

layers and levels of signification that it allows for. I decided to elaborate these layers in order

to create a more nuanced vision of Colombia. So far, I had partly managed to inform, seduce

and move some spectators. The work was lacking a political dimension, a power of

transformation that could affect the conceptions of the audience and my own conceptions. It

lacked a confrontation with the exotic elements which were the key of seduction. Illuminated

by Edward Said, I started checking the stereotyping features of the piece, and I made the first

changes. My choice of ritualistic music from Ghana and folk music from the Atlantic coast of

Colombia gave a sense of what postcolonial critics have identified as ‘eternal’, ‘non-modern’,

‘ahistorical’ or ‘fixed in the past’. Out of this reflection I changed the music and decided to

dance to a recorded text instead. This text questioned the relationship between me, the

auto-represented Colombian woman, and the witnesses of this representation, the

audience.lxiii I believe that this change made the piece start looking less as a folk- inspired

dance, and more as a conceptual contemporary dance work. One does not need to be

folkloristic to make a piece about Colombia.

In the meantime, other layer was been added to the piece. Feeling that self-

knowledge and intellectual exercise were not enough reasons to make use of Afro-Colombian

cultural heritage, I decided that it was important to try and give something back. This came, I

would say, as a good lesson from what are called applied and advocative anthropology -

often exchangeable concepts, applied anthropology aims at affecting policy, whilst

advocative anthropology takes party in order to join a cause-. By this time I was coordinating lxi Ann-Marie Wrange wrote: ’Sara Regina Fonseca med kraftful colombianskt patos i Cumbia-Kumbé’, Dans Tidningen, nr5/2007, p20.

lxii Wanting ‘to say’ something through dance is, for me, an artistic choice. I am aware that dance does not work as a literal translation of verbalized thoughts, but I believe that dance equals language in its communicative potential, a potential that can be ignored, avoided or consciously used. The latter is my choice.

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a project of dance and social intervention called Kriget och Festen –War and Feast-. In some

way, working in this project has become for me a way of participating in the solution of

problems, giving something back to those who are inspiration for my work in Sweden.

Furthermore, I have often been told that a way of helping the victims of violence in Colombia

is spreading information at international levels. Cumbia-Kumbé has become a way of

contributing to this too.

Keeping in mind that the piece should give a sense of present and evolution –as

opposed to ancestral and ahistorical-, and willing to make the audience feel part of the

ongoing violence in Colombia, I found a powerful symbol: Chiquita Bananas. The usual exotic

picture of Colombia includes its tropical weather and its generous nature. When one is trying

to avoid the obvious ‘bad sides’ of Colombia- namely corruption, poverty and violence- one

talks about its rich culture, nice people and delicious fruits, among others. These marvels are

true to a great extent, but they are, I believe, not necessarily the opposite side of the ‘bad

side’. In some way, fixating Colombia with its reach culture, fruits, etc; is negating its

problems and also negating the relationship between the ’positive sides’ and the ‘negative

sides’. Exoticism and colonialism are at the centre of this. I come back to my example:

lxiii This was the second version of the text: ‘Cumbia-Kumbé/You are a child of many Gods/Of greed, compassion, of mystical souls/White skin black heart/An instant of love in a foreign land/The other who scares but charms/Flesh in the lips/Faith in the heart/Dark in the soul/Pride in the dance/That panther now worships one God/That Virgen now dresses in extravagances/Cumbia Kumbé/Black skin white heart/A land which was foreign for both/Encounters of blood and love/That panther now dresses in white/That Virgen now dares to be glad/You cradle the pains/You sing, you dance/The daughter of all/Cumbia-Kumbé’. It is clear for me now that this text reveals my romantic vision of Colombian cultural syncretism: the native Americans, the Spanish conquerors and the African slaves. This romanticism consists in being pride of our ‘universal cultural heritage’ which makes Latin American culture a very complex one, full of contrasts, underlying meanings, resistances, emotional paradoxes. I still have this romantic idea, but I am more aware of its vulnerability. Six months later I changed the text again. The romantic paradoxes remain, as I still feel they are true, but I juxtapose them with an awareness of the presence of the audience and the question of difference. Am I different from them? Why do I want to be ‘the other’? Why do they want me to be the ‘other’? I started to think that this ‘differentiation’ was a political decision more than an essential fact. Here are some extracts from of the text ‘I am an unfinished deal of war and love/Of greed, compassion, of mystical souls/I have died many times/Many times have been reborn/I dance to forget, to remember, to resist/You look at me from the distance/ To escape from yourself/And perhaps, to escape from me...I keep looking inwards/To defend myself...A discrete Jaguar, an exuberant Virgin/Once, I hated the sword/But fell in love with the mother of God/Here I dance my rage/ There I dance your soul / Hold tight my dance /It’s bleeding my children/It’s singing to life/I whisper the scars of my present/I show you the gaps of my past/You look from the distance/And I have to say/Despite of my dance/And your life away/You and I DO BELONG TOGETHER‘

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Chiquita Brands, with its Afro-American woman stock on each fruit, is emblematic of the

‘good sides’ and the ‘bad sides’ of exoticism. The successful multinational company

marketing is based on all the ‘positive’ clichés about the tropic, whilst its bosses are pursued

for their involvement in massacres of unionists, as well as for having paid 1.7 million dollars

to terrorist groups in the banana zone of Urabá Colombia. lxiv Maintaining the exotic picture of

Colombia, in the case of Chiquita Brands, is directly linked to maintaining the violence in this

country. Both strategies are supportive of neo-colonialism in its most undesirable forms.

Besides working as a historical account and as an emotional embodiment of cultural

syncretism, Cumbia-Kumbé would hopefully work now as a straight forwards denunciation of

the role that each of us plays, eating Chiquita bananas, in the violent situation of Colombia.

Finally, I would like to point out another aspect which lies at the cross-roads

between anthropology and performance; namely, the questions of subjectivity and

objectivity. On the one hand, contemporary performance theory and practice move between

a tendency to focus on the factual physicality of the body - a concern which had a strong

influence in the Western world via Merce Cunningham and the group of ‘the postmoderns’-

and a concern with emotional expression and representation of content – a tendency of

which the work of Rudolf Laban, Kurt Joss and Pina Bausch are emblematic-. A good example

of a dynamic play between subjectivity and objectivity might be the work of British company

DV8 Physical Theatre, whose last piece ‘To be straight with you’ could be said to border the

limits of a journalistic documentary on homophobia, with an equal load of physicality,

emotionality and information delivery. On the other hand, anthropology, in tune with the

insights of deconstructionist approaches to language, has evolved a critical view of its

apparent objectivity. As a result, reflective ethnography emerges as a way of not only

recognizing but also exploring further the subjectivity of the researchers. This dynamic

between objectivity and subjectivity, I suggest, is often enriched by interdisciplinary

encounters like those between anthropologists and performers. In some way, a sense of

responsibility has encouraged me to use a kind of anthropological approach to my artistic

process. Thus, I have used historical and ethnographic material in order to learn more about

lxivThe links between violent massacres in Latin America and Chiquita Brands Company has a long history, and the articles and documentaries about it is well known within activist groups. I provide here one link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONCTOiKT42U

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the people I am talking about, and I have even presented some ‘factual information’ –with

the due skepticism towards objectivity- during the performance.lxv

This border-line between subjectivity and objectivity, between emotion and

knowledge, puts anthropologists and performers in an interesting situation. I will talk from

my own experience. After almost five years of reflections and intellectual questioning, I

wonder if I am willing to give up that deeply felt, first motivation that made me start working

on Cumbia-Kumbé. To be honest, I am not quite willing to do so. But, should I do so? In a

way, I would like to argue that my emotional- romantic if you want- relationship to Colombia

is still as true as it was before. The intellectual approach I have gained during the last five

years has added complexity, rather than abolished my earlier subjective approach. An

approach which is clearly embodied in my physicality- I have not yet changed the original

movement material in a significant way-. Consequently, I do not think I ‘should’ give up that

instantaneous physical and emotional response to the subject I am talking about. I have

come to believe that the political potential of performance lies in the possibility of

juxtaposing parallel processes: one can embody emotionality and at the same time comment

critically upon it. Perhaps, one of the reasons why the concept of art has survived a long

history is that art elicits subjectivity, imagination and pleasure with a minimal amount of

skepticism. As a dancer, I believe that embodied emotions are real, no matter how

questionable they might be from an ethical point of view. Having said this, I also believe that

intellectual questioning can transform those emotions with time. At the end of the day, I

believe that the confrontation between embodied emotions and intellectual questioning is a

unique strength of performance, with a great potential to unveil colonialist assumptions. My

next step with Cumbia-Kumbé, I have decided, will be to add an auto-biographical layer to

the work. Learning a lesson from reflexive ethnography, I want to make the following

statement: ‘Everything you are witnessing here is, after all, a very personal view and a

subjective judgment. For the same reason, everything you witness here is very real and has a

lot to do with you’. For some universal reason, it seems to me that when we identify big

issues with specific individuals, we are more capable of finding personal connections with

lxvThe last scene of Cumbia-Kumbé is a festive dance. I open the scene by running among the spectators distributing bananas, and announcing the party. Each banana has a paper-made banana leaf attached, with printed information about a number of facts related to Chiquita Brands’ violation of human rights in Colombia.

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those issues. A reflexive note? I will end this essay by quoting Bharucha once more, regarding

his process as director of Gundegowda, his Indian version of Henrik Inbsen’s Peer Gynt:

I realized, not without a sense of irony, that in criticizing orientalism, one does not necessarily have to suppress one’s own fantasy of the Arabian Nights. This would be the surest way of denying ourselves an ‘Orient’, which we are in a position to laugh at…The problem, therefore, had to do less with ideology than with

fantasy: I was censoring my Orient.lxvi

5. CONCLUSION

The relationships between intercultural art, cultural anthropology and colonialism are

complex and paradoxical at times. On the one hand, the colonialist world existing between

the 17th and the 20th centuries has created certain conditions in which the First World has

established its economical and allegedly cultural superiority over colonies or ex-colonies of

the Third World. Being a part of this puzzle, anthropologists and artists have often

reproduced and even reinforced colonialist fantasies about the ‘other’, ‘primitive’, ‘savage’,

and ‘exotic’, as being fascinating, threatening and non-modern. On the other hand, these

very fantasies have been used by several anthropologists and artists in order to criticize and

even reject the ideology and the practices of the First World, not least of the colonizing

enterprise of Europe. Thus, Romantic and Modern artists somehow kept the stereotyped

opposition of the civilized vs. the primitive, but they inverted the values. In this context, the

‘other’ was noble, respectable and even desired. It is my belief that these apparently

contrasting reactions towards non-Western cultures –namely rejection and love- are two

sides of the same coin. The coin of colonization in which the separation between West and

East or First and Third Worlds implies or is implied in a structure of power where the rich

countries shape the way in which the poor countries are supposed to behave, be imagined

and be consumed. In the work of Eugenio Barba and the Odin, I would argue that a

colonialist attitude is evident in only certain aspects. One of those is Barba’s conception that

there is a universal way of perceiving performance, in which certain power created by

physical principles overrides cultural specificity and meaningful content. This specific power,

called ‘pre-expressivity’ by Barba, is problematically ethnocentric when it is uncritically

lxvi Rustom Bharucha, The Politics of Cultural Practice, London (2000), P. 84 35

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understood as being ‘universal’. Harmless as it seems to be, pre-expressivity implies

significant modifications and even annulations of the cultural meanings embedded in the

performance forms which Barba ‘plays with’ during typically Western postmodern

dramaturgical processes like the ‘Romanesque method’. Another aspect which shows a

colonialist mentality is Barba’s celebrative representation of historical colonialism in America

and of exotic stereotypes of non-Western cultures. This is evident in the themes and raw

material chosen by Barba for the Odin’s first ‘festuge’ and for the production of The Million.

In general, Barba can be said to maintain a paradoxical position in which his search for the

universal, transcultural and the pre-expressive- in theatre depends on cultural differentiation

that allows for encounter and exchange with ‘the other’. The ‘other’ in this case, is usually

the Asian performer, who Barba tends to identify with ‘traditional’ performance forms and

with a kind of universal wisdom arguably scarce in Western theatre; an ‘other’ that we could

see as a special kind of ‘noble savage’. Finally, drawing from this brief analysis as well as

from postcolonial approaches to anthropology and art, I would like to suggest that practicing

intercultural performance can become a way of fighting ethnocentrism and colonialism,

when artists consciously make use of certain strategies such as reflexivity, auto-criticism,

social engagement and juxtaposition of layers which allow for nuanced visions of ‘othering

the other’.

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