[SPAC2010]Making Folds in Asian Dance Cultures: In Search for Inner Contacts_Daisuke Muto

Making Folds in Asian Dance Cultures: In Search for Inner Contacts
Daisuke Muto

1. From an Image to an Entity

"Asia is one" is the well-known opening line of The Ideals of the East by Tenshin Okakura, a Japanese philosopher and art historian, published in London in 1903. Evidently, he is telling an ideal here, not describing the fact. It is because nobody believed that Asia is one that he asserted so. Okakura's claim aroused positive responses widely from intellectuals like Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet, but later, suffered horrible abuse in the upheaval of Japan's military deviation. Since then until present, it has become difficult for Japanese to speak of Asian alliance without careful reflection.

Needless to mention, "Asia" does not have any substantial body. It is hardly defined as an articulate geographic area and impossible to find out single common character in its cultures of numberless peoples having extreme diversity of religions, languages, and habits. But even so, "Asia" has been repeatedly called out to serve as a vehicle for different thoughts and strategies. Nowadays, in the context of international relations, regional frameworks like "Southeast Asia" or "Asia-Pacific" are at work. We have also "ASEAN" or "East Asian Community" as economic blocs. But it seems nonsense to deal with some cultural unity of Asia after all.

"Asia" was nothing but a by-product illusion invented when "Europe" was conceived as a unit of people of Christianity, in other words, it was born just as a shadow of a stout cathedral. However, since the great European voyages of discovery, this imagery became substantialized on the globe in the modern period. Peoples in the region had to confront with Europeans and Americans and identify themselves as Asians. What was shared among Asian people was not a religion, nor a culture, but merely a historical situation which pushed Okakura to become an advocate of the united Asia.

In the modernization triggered by the Euro-American impact, Asia has become a real shadow which won't exist without the presence of Europe. Whether it follows and keeps imitating its master (Westernization), or seeks for independence and its own identity (nationalism), there was no difference in that those choices had been made in relation to the West. Meanwhile, people's communication within Asia diminished. Asians have become far more ignorant and indifferent about their neighborhoods, especially their diverse cultures, compared to ancestors in earlier centuries.

2. Asia, not as a Fantasy of Identity, but as an Ideal of Disidentity

In the global arena of contemporary dance, the Asian presence is increasing obviously. However the framework of "Asia" seems remaining unchanged: Europe's "other" or an exotic representation via the European gaze. The Asians themselves tend to confine their behavior within this limitation. There seems to be only an antinomy of "to be Western or to be national," or some witty solution to reconcile both at most, for most of contemporary Asian artists. But once they turn their eyes to Asian neighbors, I believe, the new dimension for creative spirits must be broad enough to overcome pressures for national identity. Through unburying past relations of cultures seemingly divided by current national borders, observing how transnational phenomena happen and how diverse its cultural translations are, analyzing how natural environment influences human culture in invisible ways, we would discover many meaningful subjects, which should greatly inspire artists’ creation and their audience, since Asian cultural heritages in its long, intertwined, and disregarded histories are immense.

I wonder if we can re-define "Asia," not merely as Europe's other, but as something more fertile in this decentralized 21st century. It doesn't make sense to look for its cultural identity, but what if we, renouncing essentialist way of thinking, regard it as an amorphous site just like streets which are crowded with numerous people and cultural differences? This region, always noisy and bustling, has been characterized for its openness for difference of cultures and values and their ceaseless transformations, loosely organized around some axes of great civilizations like China or India since long time ago. There is no identity of Asia but it has infinite disidentity. Then "Asia" could be re-imagined as a symbol of the diversity and its dynamic motions. As Clifford Geertz formulates paradoxically, Asia can suggest the idea of "identity without unison" to the world.

3. Prospects and Problems to Tackle

Even though the globalization enabled communication between people and cultures on the earth, exchange within Asia is much underdeveloped. In any international dance festival in Europe, a day will rarely go without Asian artist. Yet why don't Asians pay attention to each other? They are still facing to Europe, even unconsciously, and even conditioned institutionally, ignoring neighbors.  (When Akram Khan, with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, first visited to perform in Japan, the host theater confused Kathak and Kathakali and introduced Khan as a classical Kathakali dancer. Moreover, this wrong information could circulate among mass media without notice by anyone.)

Setting aside the historical politico-cultural tendency, there is more physical barriers between Asians. One of them is transportation problem. Compared to the easiness of land transportations in Europe, Asia is vast and segmented by sea and mountains. However, these years, Asian networking projects are becoming a major argument among some festivals, theaters, and presenters, to decrease the transportation and production costs. For example, international co-production approach may function to an extent. Taking advantage of currency exchange rates, you can allocate processes in multiple parts such like: creation in a relatively low-costing place like Indonesia, sponsorship from Korea and Singapore, and Asian tour throughout dance festivals in Bangalore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Manila, Seoul and Tokyo. This kind of technical solutions is not everything for sure. We have to discuss more how to develop richer environment which enables people to appreciate, understand, and contribute to diversity of Asian values and cultures. Where philosophy is absent, Asian dance won't be anything more than a novel product for consumers like ethnic cuisines. Elaboration of ways to present and represent dances in Asia is necessary to cultivate real interest in cultural diversity, to deepen understandings of different people's lives and histories, and to stimulate new artistic imagination.

Dance is nonverbal language, but shows cannot be organized without verbal language. Here is another huge obastacle in Asia. Unlike Europe where a few, relatively similar, languages serve your communication, Asians have to rely on English as a "global language" for the present. In Malaysia, a new dance magazine comprehending Asian dance called Asia Dance Channel started last year, in English. Global tools are powerful but often hiding a pitfall: more almighty it looks, more effectively it conceals its limit. If you don't suspect the "global" reign of English, local matters would escape your scope. If you google in English, it shows you no result of Thai, Hangeul, nor Japanese texts. "Global" utilities missing "minor" informations and signals might be nothing more than a natural process, but we need to take care how we misleadingly become unaware of those facts of missing. It might be a test and a mission for Asians, who always notice this risk, to search for alternative idea of communication to vindicate cultural diversity to the maximum.