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Abstract


This project is a theoretically informed stage for composing the dancing body in digital space while allowing cultural movement practice to conceptualize and choreograph the 3D environment. At its heart is Odissi, a classical Indian dance tradition, and its translation into digital data. Kaustavi Sarkar, a classical Indian dancer and dance scholar, recorded a segment of her Odissi dance performance using motion-capture (mocap) technology. Once the movement data was captured, she explored a range of choices for translating the moving body in 3D simulation, joined by collaborators in professional animation, fashion design, and multimedia scholarship. We investigate four representations ("Skeletal", "Avatar", "Stone", and "Cloth") of Kaustavi's recorded movement data and explore these variations' affordances and constraints as avatars for the embodied Odissi dancer. These performances are framed by Kaustavi's reflections on her experience as both dancer and digital composer, with additional reflections from other collaborators ("Process") and a consideration of the issues at stake in capturing and representing the Odissi dancing body ("About").


Skeletal | Avatar | Stone | Cloth

skeletal variation: a humanoid figure comprised of lines and small squares stands on one leg facing left with the other knee bent, arms raised and outstretched avatar variation: a brown-skinned humanoid figure dressed in a long-sleeved black shirt and pants faces right, knees bent and shoulders turned almost square to the front; the figure appears to be balancing an image of a lit candle on one hand stone variation: a humanoid figure of a nude, monotone tan female who appears to be made of stone; she stands on one leg with arms raised and crossed above her head, with one leg bent at the knee and parallel to the ground cloth variation: a humanoid figure comprised of a plastic-like sari and canvas pants wrapped around an absent body; it stands on one leg, knee bent, with arms raised above its hooded head


In analyzing these renditions, we complicate a simplistic understanding of the Odissi body as historical and motion capture technology as contemporary, given the complex development of Odissi in the middle of the twentieth century retrospectively attributing itself a two-thousand-year-old history for political and nationalist ideals (Banerji, 2012). Without necessarily foregrounding the temporal disjuncture between ancient movement and progressive technology, we hope to understand the varying ways in which movement influences the digital environment through modes of shaping bodies, costume, and space. In that vein, although we appreciate our animation collaborators' perspectives and creative expertise, we simultaneously vet their intentions to explore a “modern look” with a slightly critical bent so that we prevent ourselves from reorientalizing the historical and cultural body with the forces of western technology.


Our collaborative project alternates between individual and collective perspectives. Unless otherwise specified, "I" refers to Kaustavi and "we" refers to the co-authors.