Asian dance theatre through the photographic lens:

photography and the dancing body in contemporary Britain.

Introduction

This paper examines the dynamics of photography and dance

performance by focusing on photographs of dance, and of

Asian dance theatre in particular. The starting point for

this discussion of the dancing body and its photographed

representation is an exhibition I curated in early 2009, at

the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London1, as part of a series put

on by the Gallery on photography and Asia. The exhibition

was entitled ‘Asian Dance Theatre: performance through the

lens’. It was a self-contained project, which I undertook as

an independent curator. In this paper I am revisiting the

1 The name of the gallery is Brunei Gallery, SOAS where the

acronym stands for School of Oriental and African Studies,

University of London.

1

research questions underpinning the exhibition, providing an

analysis of a few examples of the images on show and drawing

some tentative conclusions about the practice of dance

photography and its subject(s). I feel that the concerns of

this project are still relevant: even now, five years on, no

discussion of photography ever deals with dance photography

as a specific genre, let alone the photography of Asian

dance theatre. I find this neglect of the photographed

dancing body and the lack of attention to the dynamics of

visuality and performativity in current discourses of

representation somewhat perturbing2.

The rationale for the exhibition was a reflection on how

contemporary imaginaries inform new styles of presentation

of the self and determine new ways of perceiving, and

consuming, Asian dance theatre as a visual medium in the UK

2 Details about the exhibition and the photographers can be

accessed through the Brunei Gallery’s website at

http://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/asiandance/

2

context. I use the term ‘Asian dance theatre’ with reference

to performance practices of Asian origin which, though often

loosely talked about as dance, do not easily fit within the

Euro-American ‘dance’ category, as they encompass dance,

acting and, sometimes, singing.

The exhibition ran from January to March 2009 and focussed

on case studies of Asian dance theatre as seen through the

lens of six UK based photographers - Chris Nash, Hugo

Glendinning, Nick Gurney, Vipul Sangoi, Helen Burrows and

Allan Parker. The time period covered was from the late

1970s to 2008. The images exhibited by these photographers

included a range of dance theatre forms, some tradition

based, others created by artists who see themselves as

working in a contemporary hybrid mode.

The idea was to present photographic images of Asian dance

theatre, that is, of dancers/performers, regardless of

whether they are soloists or dancing with touring companies

from Asia or whether they are resident UK Asian performers –

3

the common denominator was that all images were taken in the

UK by these photographers, in the context of advance

publicity shoots, editorial, portrait work and/or photo-

journalism.

The exhibition was sponsored by Akademi, a South Asian Dance

organisation which in 2009 celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Akademi was in receipt of funding from the Arts Council of

England and Natwest Bank in order to present, throughout

2009, events aimed at marking its anniversary. After some

negotiation, Akademi agreed to take on the exhibition at the

Brunei Gallery as part of its portfolio of activity for the

30th anniversary and it also contributed by lending its own

collection of photographs which it had specially

commissioned through the years, since its foundation.

Akademi additionally requested and obtained a separate

exhibition space in the foyer of the Khalili lecture theatre

in the SOAS building3. In that space, Akademi exhibited old

programmes and leaflets as also some costumes and artefacts,

all part of the celebration of the history of South Asian

4

dance in the UK, as spearheaded by Akademi, originally

founded with the name Academy of Indian Dance in 1979 by

Indian dancer Tara Rajkumar4.This paper will, however, only

discuss the photographs in the main exhibition at the Brunei

Gallery, conceived independently of Akademi’s celebrations.

The chosen photographers had all an international

reputation, as would befit a major gallery such as the

Brunei, and had been photographing dancers for several

years. The exhibition comprised 23 images, of varying sizes.

Thus, even through such a small sample, it was my

contention, as curator, that the exhibition would allow for

an identification of a local idiom in British

dance/performance photography, as an emerging photographic

genre of the latter part of the 20th century.

Simultaneously, it would account for a possible uniformity

in the photographic representation of distinct performance

genres in the opus of these particular photographers. One of

the questions underpinning the research that informed the

curatorial project was whether it would be possible to

5

identify specific aesthetic photographic conventions

relating to the performance genres photographed, and whether

a distinctiveness of representation could be acknowledged.

The exhibition was an attempt at addressing these concerns.

The exhibition project was perforce limited in its scope. It

was also constrained by financial hardship: a print

catalogue for the exhibition had been planned with essays to

be contributed by a number of leading academics, featuring

more work by the photographers, but the prohibitive costs

involved prevented us to go ahead with this plan.

There was however a colloquium,’Photographing Asian Dance

Theatre’ that took place during the exhibition period. At

this small symposium, a range of questions could be

explored, investigating the significance of the photographic

image for performers, choreographers, photographers and the

general public.5

6

The overall project, inclusive of exhibition and colloquium,

sought to engage with issues of self-representation (how

performers and choreographers choose to be represented); the

aesthetics of dance/performance photography as a genre and

how this relates to other photographic genres, such as

fashion, editorial and portrait photography – in view of the

fact that photographers may work in fashion, editorial and

portraiture as well as take photographs of performers; the

ensuing perception and consumption of Asian dance theatre on

the part of the general public, whose first encounter with a

performance is always through the print flyer and/or the

poster, produced well in advance of the performance itself

(and often even before the choreography has been finalised).

Despite the increase in the practice of emailed ‘flyers’

with video-clips for pre-view, the print flyer and brochure

continue to be utilised as marketing tools.

The point about advance publicity shoots is crucial as these

allow to understand better the dynamics of

7

choreographer/performer/ photographer interaction and the

impact this has on the choreographic process itself,

specifically in relation to Asian dance theatre forms. There

is evidence of a creative collaborative partnership between

performers, choreographers and photographers, whose outcome

is a ‘photowork’ or ‘performed photography’ as discussed by

Shanks6 rather than a photographic document in a more

conventional sense, with a working relationship that is

quite unlike that of the photographer/model relationship in

the context of commercial work, where models tend to be

directed and put into a pose selected by the photographer

and artistic director. However, it must be pointed out here

that for art photography, models do have a say: ideas for a

shoot are discussed in advance and the model is asked about

her preferences and praised for her input7.

8

Altogether this curatorial project attempted to bridge a

gap, by considering the role of the photographic image in

fostering changes in viewing practices, specifically of

Asian dance theatre, and the dialogic relationship between

choreography and its photographic representation, also in

relation to Asian dance theatre. Framed by the critical and

theoretical debates which underpin contemporary visual

culture as a disciplinary field, and thus drawing upon

methodologies deployed in researching visual culture and

visuality (Rose 2012), especially in terms of the

photographic image and its ontology (Wells 2004), the

project was concerned with the photographed dancing body,

paying special attention to Asian dance theatre and its

representation.

I was particularly concerned with how the dancing body, in

relation to Asian dance theatre, is reimagined through

photography in the British context and the issues this

raises. My expectation for this investigation was for it to

9

be a contribution to discussions in a range of fields, from

those addressing the relationship between dance, performance

and visual media, exploring the visuality of dance and

performance, to debates pertaining to the marketing and

promotion of Asian dance theatre in a global context. Among

the photographers whose work was exhibited at the Brunei,

Allan Parker, has an excellent track record relating to

design and marketing work, as does also Vipul Sangoi: the

exhibition, I felt, was a way to initiate a review of

current marketing strategies deployed for Asian performance

practices in Britain and the colloquium presented an

opportunity for initiating such a discussion.

The photographed dancing body

The academic study of photography has systematically grown

since the shift from art history to visual culture courses,

within the British university context of the 1990s, with a

number of critical studies which integrate photographic

theory and photographic practice (Sontag 1979; Barthes 1984;

Edwards et al 1992; Wells 2004, Shinkle 2008, Walden 2008,

10

Bate 2009). Some of such studies, focusing as they do on

documentary photography, the representation of the body in

photographic images, advertising and the commodity culture

and photography as an artistic endeavour, are indeed

relevant to and intersect with the concerns of my research.

There are however no specific studies of dance/performance

photography as a genre, apart from some articles, mostly

published by photographers themselves (Mitchell 1999, Lopez

y Royo 2007) and virtually no critical engagement with

photographic images of dancers and performers, though

interest in it is awakening.8 Even more so, photographic

images of Asian dance theatre have received comparatively

little attention, barring the images produced for tourist

consumption, as for example the numerous images of Balinese

dance or of the South Indian bharatanatyam dance, seen as the

quintessential Indian temple dance, which are part of

picture library collections and are printed in tourist

brochures and in-flight magazines. These images have been to

11

some extent commented upon in the context of critiques of

tourism9.

Other photographic images of Asian dance theatre, such as

those taken in the context of ethnographies from the early

20th century onwards have also received scholarly

attention10. This is however a sub-genre of

dance/performance photography that is only tangentially

relevant to my project.

As said, the photographers whose work was exhibited at the

Brunei11 were a group of relatively well known British

photographers who specialise in performance/dance shoots.

Nash’s work in particular has received some acclaim and has

been featured in some dance –themed exhibitions. These

professionals photograph Asian dance theatre as a matter of

course but also photograph other dance /theatre genres, such

as western contemporary dance, especially Nash and

Glendinning. They also work in other photographic genres,

such as fashion and editorial, thus inevitably making genre

12

boundaries very porous. Their dance/performance focused work

has not yet received full critical attention as a separate

genre of photography; instead, it tends to be looked at as

representative, more broadly, of British contemporary

photography. Nash, however has been acknowledged as a dance

photographer and has had exhibitions of his work (Mackrell

2001, online), including a current one with Hugo Glendinning

at Central St Martin’s , to celebrate 35 years of Dance

Umbrella (3-12 October 2013).

The lack of recognition of dance photography as a genre is

quite significant. In terms of exhibitions, one can

certainly say that dance photography is not really regarded

as a mainstream genre. Tony Amstrong Jones (Lord Snowdon)

has taken beautiful photographs of ballet dancers Rudolf

Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn and Darcey Bussels, yet no one would

ever discuss this work as dance photography, it would be

regarded instead as ‘portraiture’, as would the photographs

by Henri Cartier Bresson of his Javanese dancer wife, Ratna

Mohini. The 2008 ‘Vanity Fair’ exhibition at the National

13

Portrait Gallery in London12, a major display covering

almost a century of photography, featured portrait

photography by names such as Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Annie

Leibowitz, Mario Testino. Though dancers such as Fred

Astaire were featured, these images are always subsumed

under the portraiture category and this is the fate that

dance photography tends to suffer: when the photographer is

well known, he/she, with a few exceptions to this rule, is

inevitably seen as a portraitist, in the manner of a

painter, and whether he/she photographs dancers, boxers,

socialites or politicians, it is his/her gift as a

portraitist that is emphasised – the fact that he/she may

have been photographing a dancing body somehow becomes

unimportant, in the larger scheme of things.

This relative lack of interest in dance/performance

photography and lack of recognition of it as a photographic

genre is in utter contrast with the attention that dance

performance, including Asian dance theatre genres, has

received in the context of film and television (Allen and

14

Jordan 1992, Dodds 2001, and Mitoma 2003, Branningan 2011

and for Bollywood, Munni Kabir 2001, Kothari 2003, David

2010). When talking of media in relation to dance and/or

theatre, it is the film or digital video that seems to be

privileged in all accounts, perhaps because it is perceived

as being better equipped than still photography to capture

the dynamism of performance, as part of an underlying

assumption that film can document it more fully “as it is”.

Yet photography is performative. A photograph is a

performance moment, often very theatrical, at best staged by

both photographer and photographed subject, even though that

relationship can be an uneven one, heavily slanted towards

the photographer in terms of power. Dance photography has

not been sufficiently theorised, but as mentioned earlier,

it is apparent that photographers and dancers tend to work

on the basis of a collaboration and this is a significant

point of departure. Unlike other genres, dance photography

is based on this premise of collaboration, particularly if

we consider those photo sessions which are taken outside a

15

direct rehearsal or performance context, in other words,

photo shoots staged by photographers, dancers and

choreographers, in a studio- like set up, or outdoors.

Steve Clarke, a New York City based photographer, in an

article published in 2006, writes that there are at least

four reasons for photographing dance. Here I am summarising

his arguments, adding some observations of my own.

The first reason for dancers to be photographed is to do

with the need for a portfolio, for promotion and for

documentation, all of which dancers themselves, as also

dance organisations, constantly need. One can hardly

imagine, in this day and age, a dancer approaching

promoters, unless the dancer is an established name, without

a photograph of himself/herself in action and a brochure

highlighting his/her performance work record13. Dance

photographs today are part of the currency of exchange in

the economy of performance. As such, it is all dance forms

performed on the global stage and circulating globally –

16

hence Asian dance theatre too - that are in need of

representation through the photographic medium. The second

reason for being photographed, says Clarke, is to do with

the dancing itself. During the photo session the dancer may

be encouraged to try new things, thus photography can help

to develop choreographic ideas. The third reason is to do

with the dancer’s self. Photography, according to Clarke,

reveals the inner self: this is where the intersection with

portraiture occurs, for portrait photography is most prized

when the camera succeeds in capturing the sitter behind the

quotidian mask. The fourth reason, he goes on, is to help

dancers see themselves, understand how they move, thus

“assisting in self-scrutiny” photography here is seen to be

acting as a mirror (Clarke 2006:2).

Whereas some of the reasons listed by Clarke clearly reflect

an understanding of dance and of dancers derived from a

Euro-American perspective, what is interesting is that the

idea of collaboration is fully acknowledged. This

acknowledgment is a fairly unusual development: in most

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published commercial photography the name of the model is

never mentioned, the assumption being that she/he is simply

being photographed using a particular product which is the

most important element of the picture. Conversely, unlike

professional models, celebrities endorsing a product will

always have their name clearly printed.

Photographers, on the other hand, are always credited,

except in the field of dance photography, where apparently

the practice is not regularly followed. When interviewing

the six photographers, in the course of my research, they

all complained, with no exception, about images being used

by this or that organisation without their name being

credited on the flyer. This shows the relative low status of

dance photography and photographers, who also uniformly

maintain that photographing dancers is a financial loss:

“they want free images or offer ridiculously low sums,

without realising the work that goes into it” sighed one the

six photographers while we chose the images that would be

sent over to the Gallery.

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An interesting development in the context of dance

photography, in the broadest sense, and one that potentially

impinges on newer perceptions of the female body, is the

intersection between the world of fashion, advertising and

dance. This is particularly evident in occasional photo

shoots involving famous ballet dancers, such as Darcey

Bussels or Sylvie Guillem, pictured modelling high street

fashion, as opposed to haute couture. On the surface, one may

dismiss such an occurrence as being part of the celebrity

culture: Bussels achieved some celebrity status, in the UK,

while dancing with the Royal Ballet14. But the involvement

of dancers in fashion and advertising marks a shift.

In these shoots it is the idea of acquired elegance and

grace that is emphasised through the ballerina modelling

outfits available in high street department stores – the

elegance of her posture and stance is being transferred to

the garments. Here we are not seeing the impossibly young,

thin and tall woman’s body favoured by designers on the

19

catwalks, but, with either Bussels or Guillem, we see a

poised woman in her mid thirties to early forties with an

athletic body, sculpted by years of exercise. Not a waif,

but a healthy woman, in control of her body. It is a message

about real women’s bodies that cannot be dismissed even

though the body is still idealised, still a disciplined body

(Threteway 1999): what is of interest is that to be

effective it draws on the transformative power of dance.

These shifts are important and point to the role that dance

photography – in tandem with sport photography – can play

in generating a different understanding of the body and its

physicality and newer ideas of beauty, especially for women.

However, one also has to acknowledge a slippage, as the

dance /fashion connection seems to be enmeshed in a complex

and often contradictory discourse. Earlier this year English

National Ballet, as part of its rebranding, under the new

artistic director Tamara Rojo, a former dancer with the

Royal Ballet, launched a campaign in which the dancers were

photographed by fashion photographer Guy Farrow, wearing

20

Vivienne Westwood creations. Tom Sharp, Creative Director of

TBM, the agency behind the campaign, named ‘Like humans,

only more graceful’ said in a press release that it was all

about

“ taking dancers out of tutus and moving away from

conventional backstage images to show the intensity and

creativity of the dancers. The Company’s directive is

to respect the tradition of ballet but build on it, and

our copylines are designed to reflect but challenge a

perceived view of the art form. Tamara Rojo inspires

unusual collaborations so to create a campaign that

combines choreography, amazing fashion and beautiful

photography demonstrates her ethos in every single

image” (Ballet News,2013, online)

The use of fashion photography techniques to highlight the

theatricality of ballet and make it more contemporary and

appealing to a non-ballet going audience is significant as

also the emphasis on the dancers’superhuman difference,

subtly equated with the aspirational role embodied by the

fashion model – more beautiful, more graceful, more perfect

21

than ordinary human beings. Westwood’s clothes lend a

slightly subversive nuance, due to her punkish roots and the

green lighting used in some of the images is reminiscent of

la fée verte or absinthe and its historic link with Parisian

avant-garde (Lanier 1995), synonymous with creativity and

genius: altogether a masterful advertising coup.

Asian dance performers in contemporary British photographic

work

In the context of Asian dance one of the most debated

questions is to do with modernity versus tradition, what is

to be regarded as traditional and what is to be regarded as

contemporary. My research contributes to the debate by

considering images of Asian dance performers, pointing out

how such understandings (i.e. ‘traditional’ or

‘contemporary’) are framed by particular photographers and

by performance makers in subtle ways and how their

22

perception on the part of the general public is linked to

these representational strategies.

How do dance images impact on the perception of dance on the

part of the public? What do they tell us in terms of how to

place a particular performance work on the

traditional/contemporary scale? If a dancer/dance company is

photographed by a particular photographer, how will that

change the perception of their work? These questions relate

more explicitly to the concerns of the political economy of

dance and to its consumption. Photographs determine that

very first impression on the part of the audience and it is

for this reason that they are important: a savvy

choreographer will work with a photographer in a very

calculated fashion to surround a forthcoming performance

with a particular aura, by creating a whole frame of

references. Clearly the performance will either confirm or

negate the first impression but that first encounter with

the still image has a crucial impact on the viewer.

23

To clarify what I am talking about, I will examine a few

examples taken from the work of the photographers featured

in the Brunei Gallery’s exhibition. The images by Helen

Burrows which I have chosen to discuss here were not

eventually included as she opted for the Skin on Skin series15,

but I particularly liked these and I believe they represent

the range of her work more fully.

3 The issue of funding is not focused upon in this paper,

which though about an exhibition, does not dwell on

curatorship . However, funding and its source were essential

to the shape the project took. The gallery agreed to provide

the space, technical assistance, insurance and security. As

an independent curator I had to find a sponsor to cover all

the costs involved. The sponsor, in turn funded by public as

also private money, had specific requests, which had to be

accommodated, yet maintaining the curatorial project’s

integrity. This is normal practice in curation but the

negotiations involved are not often openly discussed.

24

My first example is taken from Hugo Glendinning’s body of

work. An art photographer known for his collaborations with

live artists, Glendinning was commissioned a series of

portraits of British kathak dancer Sonia Sabri, which

appeared on the British Council’s website. The entry for

4 For a history of Akademi and its role in developing South

Asian dance in the UK see Meduri 2008 and 2010.

5 The colloquium was held on 28/02/09 in the Khalili lecture

theatre, SOAS. The papers and the general discussion they

generated were recorded and they are available online as mp3

files at

http://www.soas.ac.uk/mediaandfilm/events/28feb2009-panel-

discussion-on-photographing-asian-dance-theatre.html

6 Shanks first defined photowork in 1997, and reprised

the concept in 2012 as ‘performed photography’ and further

discussing the photo-work, that is, everything that goes

into the making of photographic imagery, the mediation

(Shanks 2012, online).

25

Sonia Sabri and her company described her work “as

presenting kathak dance in a new light, through integrating

contemporary inventions and ideas into productions…relevant

to audiences of all ages, experience and educational

backgrounds”16. If we look at the two images by Glendinning

7 Alongside my academic career, I have had a parallel one as

a model and I have worked in fashion, commercial and art

photography, drawing on my dance background. These

observations therefore come from my embodied practice. For

an account of the model’s experience see Hollander 1991 and

more recently Entwistle and Wissinger 2012.

8 Dance organisations, such www.worldwidedanceuk, and

internet dance resources such as www.londondance.com pay

some attention to photography, publishing a directory of

photographers specialising in dance shoots. Dancers and

dance companies presenting their work as part of major

festivals are also often briefed on how to produce good

quality publicity images and occasional workshops are held

26

we see this idea being put across. The first one shows

Sonia’s face illuminated by a ray of reddish light which

hints at a transformation: she is seen wearing a bindi –

interestingly so, because Sonia Sabri is actually a Muslim

dancer, though she was trained by teachers in the Briju

Maharaj gharana of kathak, which emphasises the Hindu

by professional photographers to teach less experienced

photographers how to photograph dancers.

9 For Bali see Picard 1996 and Vickers 1999. See also the

photographic collection of Dutch art collector Leo Haaks

http://www.leohaks.com/2010/about_leo_haks.htm#i

10

? See the Spies and De Zoete collection, discussed by

Hitchcock and Norris 1996

11

? To this list I would like to add Simon Richardson, active

in the field of dance photography for at least two decades,

but whose work could not be included in the exhibition.

Richardson did however participate in the colloquium.

27

connection. Her hair is demurely plaited and off the face,

and she wears heavy pendants in her ears. The second

photograph shows Sonia wearing a costume which is quite

simple, a figure hugging kurta, no bells, she is performing a

12 Vanity Fair, National Portrait Gallery

http://www.npg.org.uk/vanityfair/

13 Actors too need portfolios and so do models, especially

when attending castings. The need for an updated ‘book’, as

this is known in the business, has given rise to the

practice of TF (originally Time for Prints but now Time for

Digital Images on a CD) where actors, models and dancers

agree to give their time for free to the photographer in

exchange for processed images. Model releases are usual

signed as photographers tend to use/sell the images and for

this they need the written consent of the photographed

subject.

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typical kathak gesture. Simplicity is what is being

emphasised, to a degree of minimalism, to suggest modernity.

Hugo Glendinning became famous within the British dance

world in the 1990s for his portraits of the Shobana

Jeyasingh Dance Company, at the time regarded as producing

cutting edge contemporary British South Asian dance, as also

for his very interesting takes of British contemporary

dance, theatre and live performance. His editorial work was

equally, if not more, acclaimed: his portrait of a young,

somewhat shy, teenage star footballer David Beckham is now

famous all over the world. An English literature graduate,

Glendinning did not come to photography through the art

school route, but, as he admitted in an interview with me in

2006, he was drawn to photography in a strongly cerebral way

and was primarily self-taught. Of his work he says: “In the

current digital world it is always tempting to collect large

14 Bussels was among the women selected by retailer Marks

and Spencer to head their Autumn/Winter 2013 campaign.

29

amounts of information and then filter and combine material

in order to interpret or tell stories... I will be shooting

slowly and with consideration of the changing scene before

me aiming to find a single moment that works to make visible

the true complexity of the shifting order of things before

the camera.”17

Next comes Chris Nash. I confess to having a soft spot for

Nash’s photography. I love his heavily constructed images,

which can only be achieved in the studio and with heavy

editing afterwards. I have always found the idea of

‘documenting reality’ through photography somewhat lopsided,

one which does not sufficiently recognise the manipulation

that a photograph undergoes – already so in pre-digital

days. Nash is not afraid of citing the old masters of

European painting in his work, in a very post-modern double

coded representational mode, and is also fairly close to the

grandeur of the very best fashion photography, as seen in

the work of the American Richard Avedon, for example his

30

‘Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Christian Dior’

(1955).

My chosen image by Nash is ‘Chinese Takeaways’, Bi-Ma Dance

company, 199718. As Chris Nash will say, his photographs are

not to inform but to make the image suggest more. The

photograph is a fiction. Here the image is framed by the

suggestion of length given by the woman’s arm, in the

foreground, as also the suggestion of her nakedness, which

is subtly implied by the camera angle. This contrasts with

the other figures in the background, dressed alike and

wearing loose white tunics tucked at the waist into what

seem to be baggy dark trousers. The figures, of

indistinguishable gender, appear to be pierced by long

wooden sticks – they are balancing these sticks on their

upper backs but the angle of the photo is such that there

is an illusion of pierced bodies. Maroonish hues dominate

the composition and the light seems to irradiate from the

head of the woman, whose face we cannot see. Not knowing

the dance piece it is difficult to link the image with its

title, but the power of Nash’s photography is in the way it

31

simultaneously evokes a range of ideas, reminiscences,

recollections, associations which only loosely refer to a

specific choreography. He may be illustrating a moment from

the dance or simply an idea triggered off by it and reworked

for the camera together with the choreographer Pit Fong Loh.

With Vipul Sangoi, we return to images of South Asian dance

and particularly of bharatanatyam dancer Anusha Subramanyam.

This particular image has been seen a lot throughout

London. It relates to a project by Beeja Dance, the company

directed by Anusha, entitled ‘Colour Contacts’, which

involved dancing at London Underground Southwark station.

Commissioned by the Museum of London, ‘Colour Contacts’

imagines the City of London through the eyes of its

inhabitants, exploring memories. Vipul Sangoi’s photography

is never heavily constructed in a studio setting, he loves

the performance moment. What is brought out here is a sense

of movement and a sense of time flow by having the dancers

photographed in bharatanatyam costume on a vaguely visible

platform of a London Underground station. The movement is

32

accentuated by the visualisation of the underground as a

tube of light, through the speed of the fast moving train.

The ‘tube’ is also the name by which the underground is

colloquially known in London and in this photograph we get

the very clear sense of a tube, of a narrow passage, even

though it is far from being dark.

The two dancers, one English, the other Indian, wear the

distinctive half sari costume of bharatanatyam, with some of

the customary jewellery. The emphasis is on their half

smiling faces. There are different themes that can be picked

up through this photograph: that of a traditional dance

which engages with modernity, that of cultural and ethnic

diversity, that of London, a city sprawling underground as

well as overground, that of the quick passage of time and of

course, the sense of colour which relates to the main theme

of the production, a site specific performance work. Vipul

Sangoi only photographs dancers and performers, but is also

involved in design and has created a number of websites for

artists and organisations.

33

The final images I will discuss here are by Helen Burrows. A

young, very versatile photographer, she is involved in

fashion, reportage as also in performance photography. Her

fashion images are dynamic and she is clearly interested in

the moving body. The one we see here is from a shoot of

young fashion, with a model jumping – she could be a

dancer, for all we know. The image is not necessarily taken

mid air, but constructed in the studio, against a white

background. The model is a young Asian woman, conventionally

beautiful as expected of a model, with an athletic build.

The focus is on the clothes and the boots she is wearing but

clearly the body image and the sense of dynamism are also

important, lending credence to the style of clothing, an

instance of young street fashion. The second picture is

taken in mid-performance, a festival event, featuring a

mature belly dancer, surrounded by musicians. It is a very

interesting portrait which manages to achieve a strong

musical quality rendered through visualising the rhythm of

the dance. A very articulate photographer, and a writer, in

34

all her work, Helen tries to bring out the relationship of

movement, space and emotion.

Conclusion

My analysis seems to have focused primarily on photographs

which attempt to transform tradition to make it as

contemporary as possible. This has not necessarily been a

conscious decision on my part, but one determined by the

material available, provided by the photographers

themselves19. I have discussed a small number of images, all

in digital form, which were featured in the exhibition

(barring the ones by Burrows, as explained earlier). The

exhibition featured other images as well, including analogue

photographs which are not published on websites, thus not

easily accessible. Also, the exhibition had a very specific

brief – images taken in Britain, by British photographers of

some repute. This is not to say that there is no traditional

Asian dance consumed in Britain today. But many touring

companies from Asia provide their own photographs for

posters and flyers, usually taken in their country of origin

35

– these images were not featured in the exhibition. Some of

the photographers whose work was exhibited have been to Asia

and have taken a number of images of ‘traditional

performance’, for example Hugo Glendinning has completed a

project on Japanese kabuki, with stunning photographic work

done in Japan20.

What is interesting in all this is seeing how a personal

photographic style develops in the case of each

photographer, inflected by the performance genre but also

influenced by the unique predilections of the photographer,

and how a local British idiom seems to have developed,

albeit tentatively. Without falling onto stereotypes of

national character in photographic work, differences in

other photographic genres show evidence of distinct American

and British styles, as seen in the 2007 exhibition at Tate

Britain ‘How we are now: photographing Britain’: as

Williams and Bright, curators of the exhibition, point out

in conversation with writer Nigel Warburton, in American

photography, one notices a preference for action, the road,

36

the landscape and the individual, as also a greater concern

with technical issues, whereas British photography was

influenced by pictorialism, neo-romanticism and the

peculiar combination of fashion and royalty (Warburton 2007;

Williams and Bright 2007; Schuman 2008). In the age of

globalization differences tend to be flattened, nevertheless

even in dance photography one can detect a different slant,

apparent when British dance photographic work is compared

with that of contemporary American photographers, such as

those featured in the art journal 2wice. (Tarr and Miller

2004)

The local idiom we seem to detect is determined by the

tension between two separate impulses. One is the desire of

each photographer to create a recognisably individual

photographic style in the making of photographic work,

impinging on his/her own photographic representation of

diverse performance genres. The other is to do with the

gradual crystallisation, over years of photographic

practice, of specific aesthetic conventions relating to the

37

photographic representation of each performance genre i.e.

ballet, modern dance, Asian dance forms, and this is to do

with a genre-related distinctiveness of performance

representation, sustained by the practice of imitating or

citing a known photographer’s style.

‘Asian dance theatre: performance through the lens’ was a

curatorial project motivated by questions. Some of these

questions are genre specific and to do with what a dance

photograph is about, what it tells us about dance (here

Asian dance theatre), how photographers work with

dancers/choreographers, how dance has been represented

through the medium of photography over the years, how

performers/choreographers use photographs. But there are

also larger questions, to do with the impact of aesthetic

conventions of other photographic genres on the way images

of dance performance are conceived by both photographers and

choreographers and questions to do with how such images are

consumed by audiences and the general public and whether

38

they affect the public’s perception of dance performance

and its appreciation.

There are other questions too, namely, how does photography

document dance events and the performance of dance, and what

kind of histories can a dance photograph tell? Is an

exclusively photographic history of dance at all possible?

Here dance photography enters in a dialogue with photo-

journalism and its historical import, engendering a

reflection on how photographic mediation transforms live

performance and its meaning. In this context, a history of

the photographic representation of Asian dance theatre

clearly awaits to be written.

The aim of the curatorial project was to raise these

questions, through the images themselves, rather than

provide answers, and point to gaps, some of which were

addressed through inviting a discussion in the context of

the colloquium. Thus it seems appropriate that I should end

with even more questions than when I began.

39

And if I have managed, through this paper, to make you more

aware of how a study of contemporary Asian dance practices

intersects with a study of their visual representation

through photography, how through such imagery the dynamics

of vision and kinaesthesia are played out, then the goal I

set myself through the curatorial project will have been

achieved in full.

40

Illustrations

Hugo Glendinning Sonia Sabri 1 and 2

41

42

Richard Avedon Dovima with elephants

43

Chris Nash Bi-Ma

44

Vipul Sangoi

45

Helen Burrows 1 and 2

46

47

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16 http://www.britishcouncil.org/arts-

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17 See http://danceumbrellauk.blogspot.com/2007/09/hugo-

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19 I am aware here that the categories ‘traditional’,

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For a recent discussion of such categories and of

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21.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the photographers for lending their work,

the Brunei Gallery for hosting the exhibition, Akademi for

55

acting as sponsor and the Centre for Media and Film Studies,

SOAS, for hosting the colloquium ‘Photographing Asian Dance

Theatre’ which accompanied the exhibition, together with a

special dance performance by artists Mavin Khoo and Ni Madé

Pujawati on 25/2/09.

56