Dance Theatre Journal: Multiple Choices – a profile of Shobana Jeyasingh

What is Shobana Jeyasingh’s choreography about? [Please tick]

❑ Cultural hybridity
❑ Diaspora identities
❑ Female identities
❑ Updating tradition
❑ An Indian woman in Britain

And the correct answer is:

❑ Other [Please specify]
Shobana Jeyasingh’s choreography is about form, structure, the shape of movement, the qualities of the medium. In short, it’s modernist.

It’s a trick question, of course: you can tick any of the boxes. The point is that reactions to Jeyasingh’s work often focus on cultural issues to the neglect of  the formal concerns that are clearly central to her artistic vision. It is perfectly valid to talk about her work in wider cultural terms (I’ve done so myself, and so has Jeyasingh); too often, however, the dance itself then becomes merely a symptom of something else, and consequently is interpreted in terms that don’t do it justice (‘East-West collaboration’, ‘Indian/contemporary dance fusion’); or sometimes the dance is simply passed over altogether. Jeyasingh the choreographer fades into the background in favour of Jeyasingh the Indian woman in Britain who engages with questions of migrancy, diaspora, race, heritage and so on.

Continue reading here: https://sanjoyroy.net/1997/09/multiple-choice-shobana-jeyasingh/

Sanjoy Roy – Writing on Dance