Dance Ethnography and Global Perspectives

Identity, Embodiment and Culture

L. Dankworth, A. David, L. Dankworth, A. David

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137009449
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Danza

Dance Ethnography and Global Perspectives presents the work of dance scholars whose professional fieldwork spans several continents and includes studies of the dance and movement systems of varied global communities.

Part I
Issues of Tradition, Modernity and Authenticity

1

Embodied Traditions: Gujarati (Dance) Practices of Garba and Raas in the UK context

Ann R. David

Nine o’clock in the evening in a hot, crowded, hired sports hall.

On entering the space, one’s senses are assaulted by the blaze of colour and sound and the extraordinary vision that meets the eyes. About three hundred women are filling the large arena, moving almost as one, to the beat of the music. They progress in concentric circles, anti-clockwise around a central shrine with rhythmical steps, hands moving naturally to clap on the three dominant beats of the pulse, as if they have moved forever in this way. Their traditional Gujarati outfits are a blaze of differing colours: full skirts to the ground and long shawls flowing as they move, and glinting jewellery as the bodies pass by. Young and old join in this joyous celebration to the Hindu goddess, Devi.

(David, 2001: Fieldnotes, 25 October, London)

Setting the scene

This brief description of one of the nine nights of the autumn Hindu religious festival Navratri, a pan-Indian festival in praise of the feminine power of the divine, raises certain questions about the codified movement systems of a society within the context of religious practice. The group selected here, celebrating the festival in Britain with folk dance and music, are part of the large Gujarati UK community.¹ The majority of this group forcibly migrated to the United Kingdom from East Africa in the 1970s after Idi Amin’s mass expulsion of non-African people from Uganda, but their origins lie in the state of Gujarat in north-west India. Questions provoked by this festival time of Navratri relate to the use of movement/dance in the expression of migrant identity, to the adherence to a religious faith, and to the transmission of cultural beliefs and values. These enquiries form the main focus of this ethnographic research and subsequent writing. The chapter maps the rather particular nature of British Gujarati practice, showing not only the dominant performance of these folk dances at religious festivals, but also noting their place in social events such as parties and weddings, as well as in competitive staged displays and more commercially, in the world of Bollywood films. Thus it examines the layered and complex concepts of migrant identity and enculturation through an analysis of different types of Gujarati garba and raas performance, as well as discussing the history and settlement patterns of the UK Gujarati groups. Additionally, I consider the way, at religious festivals, sacred space is constructed through such folk dance movements.

The chapter firstly analyses these Gujarati folk dance practices at UK Hindu religious festival events, particularly focusing on the town of Leicester, in the East Midlands, that supports a large community of Gujarati groups. It raises the prevailing issues about tensions between tradition and modernity seen at such cultural events, as well as discussing the contrast between classical dance and folk dance forms and their meaning to the community. Despite the fact that the British Hindu Gujarati population has been well documented in sociological, migrant, and religious studies (see, for example, Dwyer, 1994; Jackson, 1981; Knott, 2000; Marett, 1989; and Wood, 2008), very little has been written to date about the community’s cultural displays through movement and dance. In this analysis, I highlight the folk ‘dances’ of garba and raas that are an integral part of religious festivals, particularly the autumnal Navratri celebrations, as well as social and community events such as wedding parties. Are these social and cultural forms of garba and raas expressing an essential ingredient in being Gujarati, whether in India or in the diaspora (as I note elsewhere in David, 2010b). Due to constraints of space, I briefly note without going into full detail the significance of garba and raas in competitive events for the younger generations. Finally, I examine the display of these Gujarati folk forms in Bollywood film dance and their potential influence on the construction of a diasporic ethnicity amongst the young.

I use, with some hesitation, the Western term ‘dance’ to describe the movement forms examined in the research. Anthropologist Adrienne Kaeppler notes the problematic nature of the concept of ‘dance’ to describe the movement practices of other cultures. She warns that ‘categorizing the movement dimensions of a religious ritual as “dance” can easily lead to misunderstanding across, and even within, cultures’ (1999, p. 14). Dance scholar Mohd Anis Md Nor stresses the same point, noting how, in the past, Malay structured movement systems ‘had numerous terms of reference […] that are local and reflect specific forms or styles […] peculiar to a region, dialect group or community’ (2001, p. 238). It was only with colonial rule that the Malay term tari as an equivalent to the English word ‘dance’ was introduced. These cautions apply here equally to the UK Gujarati groups and the garba and raas forms displayed at religious festivals such as Navratri. Such movement practices are never

termed ‘dance’ by Gujaratis, as the word does not relate to movement practices embedded within a religious tradition. The word ‘dance’ in Gujarati (nruitya) refers to other dance forms or dance as part of a staged performance, and is considered an inappropriate movement term for a religious occasion, my Gujarati acquaintances told me (David, 2002: Fieldnotes, 19 October). Experience from observation and participation in the Hindu Navratri festival has shown me not to use such a term for the folk movements practised. One ‘plays’ the steps of garba (circular folk dance steps, see Figure 1.1) and raas (stick movements), and in Gujarati the expression is garba ramavo or simply garba (playing garba). ‘Are you playing garba tonight?’ is the question asked.

In researching and mapping the cultural practices of Gujarati Hindu communities, movement systems that are commonly invisible to the general public have been brought into focus and made visible, yet as sociologist Andrew Ward points out (1997, p. 6), it is a paradoxical situation as, in writing, the movement is divorced from the written product. Yet to use a rational means to examine a non-verbal activity is essential if we are to enquire into the dance and movement systems of human society and to ‘argue for the inherent meaningfulness of dance and for the place of dance as an essential human practice’ (Ward, 1997, p. 7). Hence an ethno­graphical methodology,² despite its complexities, remains a direct and effective tool for engagement with people and their embodied praxis, as also for its inscription of both narrative and theory in a ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973, p. 6). The participatory approach undertaken is invaluable in gaining experience and reflective insights from a movement perspective; for example, in the garba folk dances where the repetitive, circular movements created a focused, inward, quiet attention, not necessarily so obvious from an onlooker’s position. My embodied participation has fed into the ethnographic description and led to greater insights in the cultural understanding of human movement (Ness, 2004). I argue here for engaged, emplaced ethnography that might allow us, in differing ways, to watch, feel, experience, and to listen to the body and understand through the body, whatever movement practice is under consideration. Embodied participation furthers, too, the paradigmatic shift in cultural approaches to dance witnessed in the last decade.

Figure 1.1 Women playing garba at Navratri, London, October 2001 (credit: A. R. David)

Urban cultural life

Leicester, a city approximately two hours north of London, exhibits characteristics of a small metropolis that need to be considered in an examination of urban dance and movement practices in a contemporary setting. Features such as the fragmented, dislocated features of an inner city area; the struggle to maintain coherence of the community; the pressures of time, work, and survival; and the creation of unfamiliar living conditions impact on the lives of any community and are, to some degree, revealed in their dance practices. Added to this are the specific considerations of a migrant community, despite its settlement over a 40-year period. Dance writer and critic Sanjoy Roy, in his analysis of ‘otherness’ in contemporary Indian dance in the Western city, describes the city as ‘a place where a profusion of peoples, goods, histories and languages circulate, intermingle and interfere. A multiplicity of nationalities and ethnicities inhabit and traverse it’ (1997, p. 69). The city of Leicester, as a field site for ethnographic work in South Asian dance provides rich resources and multiple levels of understanding.

Leicester is the largest city in the East Midlands and the tenth largest in England, whose South Asian population of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs comprises nearly 50 per cent of its inhabitants. The differing origins (that is, direct early migrants from India; East African refugees; Pakistanis and Bangladeshis), the contrasting religious faiths, language, caste, and customs create a multi-dynamic ‘community’, and one that cannot be examined or considered simply as a single, homogenous unit. It is also one of the most thriving Asian communities in Britain, which receives committed support from its City Council. New civic initiatives that have been developed in Leicester include a £14.4 million community centre, the Belgrave Baheno Peepul Centre (opened in 2005 but threatened with closure in 2008)³ and a new multi-million pound performing arts centre, the Curve, completed in 2008 and opened by the Queen. The Curve centre is part of a new ‘cultural quarter’ that brought regeneration to a dilapidated area of the city with a film and media centre (Phoenix Square), a contemporary visual arts centre, and studio spaces for artists and crafts people (Leicester Creative Business Depot). Discussions were also underway (in 2004) to establish a production base in Leicester for Indian films made in Europe, backed by the City Council.⁴ These initiatives indicate a positive, vibrant, and visionary move to counteract the fragmentation and dislocation inherent in city and in immigrant lives. Leicester is ‘today internationally recognized as a model of civic multiculturalism, and […] is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the European Union’ (Martin and Singh, 2002, p. 7). Over the period of the last 40 years, a strong and confident relationship has developed between the Asian peoples and the City Council, both economically and socially, resulting in over 1500 successful Asian businesses in the city and the election of two Asian Lord Mayors, one MP, and numerous councillors. The majority of the Hindus in Leicester are originally from Gujarat in north-west India and many are twice-migrants, having arrived in the United Kingdom after being expelled from their homes in East Africa over 40 years ago (as noted above). Prior to this, their families had initially migrated from India during the nineteenth century to work for the British on the construction of new railways in East Africa. Factors of immigration and resettlement are therefore a dominant aspect of community life in Leicester, and make a significant impact on areas such as the transmission of dance and culture.

Evidence from my research in Leicester has revealed some dance and music events connected with the Hindu temples on a regular basis, but during Hindu religious or cultural festivals, dance (mainly folk or film) is dominant. At some Gujarati Hindu events, dance is positioned as a spectator activity, where the audience will watch items of Indian classical dance such as Kathak and Bharatanatyam, or folk and film dance performed on stages; at other occasions such as the very prominent Navratri celebrations I discuss, and at community weddings, the dance form is wholly participatory. There is significant evidence now that the dominant dance form is changing, with less emphasis on the classical forms of Kathak and Bharatanatyam and a strong, burgeoning interest of the young people in Bollywood⁵ film dance (David, 2010a), which I shall examine later in the chapter.

Leicester’s Gujaratis

The fact that the majority of Leicester’s large Hindu population is of Gujarati origin lends a very particular flavour to the dominant aspects of social and religious life, cultural transmission, and business practices in Leicester. Figures quoted by sociologist John Mattausch (1998) estimate that the East African Gujarati community accounts for three-fifths of the British Gujarati population, the total number being over half a million people. Earlier numbers in 1983 (Vertovec, 1994) show that 90 per cent of all the Hindus in Leicester were Gujarati-speaking.⁶ Not only did the arrival of the mainly Gujarati East African settlers in Leicester influence the financial and business practices of the existing smaller Asian community, but their presence greatly affected the spatial and demographic character of the city, as well as the social and religious practices undertaken. The wealth that many of the Kenyan immigrants brought with them and their arrival in many cases as complete families, sometimes comprising three generations, enabled them to move quickly from rented to privately owned property. This group was not forced to buy into the cheaper, more dilapidated housing of the inner city, as other Asian refugees were. As geographer Deborah Phillips notes:

The East African refugees differed greatly from the immigrants who had hitherto settled in the city. Predominately from Gujarati trading communities, many came to Leicester equipped with entrepreneurial skills, a good education and some knowledge of English.. Their initial demands for housing were therefore substantially different from predecessors.

(Phillips, 1981, p. 108)

The East African Asians brought with them (in 1969 from Kenya, and 1972 from Uganda) a considerable background of experience in business and commerce, and soon ‘began to make an important contribution to the Leicester economy as entrepreneurs, helpi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Notes On Contributors
• Introduction: Global Perspectives in Ethnographic Fieldwork, Theory, and the Representation of Traditional Dance
• Part I Issues of Tradition, Modernity and Authenticity
• Part II Issues of Cultural Identity Through the Influences of Social Dance Events and Tourism
• Part III Dance in Psychosocial Work, Gender and Textual Representation
• Index