Description
A humanoid figure performing an Odissi dance sequence in three-dimensional space. The figure is clothed in material that approximates the shape and arrangement of an Odissi dance costume, though the material appears to be inflated white plastic and tan canvas rather than brightly colored silks. The body itself is absent; the clothing appears to be moving on its own. The clothing rests on the absent body as the folds of a Sari echoing, billowing, and landing with the moves generated by Sarkar’s Odissi curves. Layered over the focal video in the top right corner is a smaller video of Kaustavi Sarkar performing the Odissi dance sequence from which the motion-capture movement data was generated.
Analysis
This professionally composed video provides a distinct contrast to the other three videos, amateur and professional alike: though animated by the same movement data, the figure consists entirely of clothing-like material rather than an integrated body. The dance is thus performed not by a body, but rather by the absence of a body, with the plastic- and canvas-like material emphasizing both the dance movements and the movement of the material. The clothing appears in the overall form of a traditional Odissi dance costume, with a sari, loose pants, and bracelets, but with material far distinct from the typical brightly colored silks and jewels of traditional Odissi ornaments.
This video, like the amateur variations, possesses its own unique representational affordances and constraints. On the one hand, this video is a high-quality production born of a creative collaboration between a dancer, an animator, and a fashion designer, all of whom have stakes in the final product and shape it in some way. This form also shows the fluid, connected movements of Odissi— the subtle movements between each choreographed movement that connect the poses as a continuous flow even when the dancing figure momentarily pauses. On the other hand, this video erases the dancing body altogether, which is troubling (or perhaps symbolic?) in light of the historical erasure of gendered, racialized Odissi bodies of the Mahari. The video also draws attention to the movements of the dancing body through the ornaments surrounding Odissi dance rather than the dancing body for its own sake (one of Kaustavi's concerns to avoid in initially generating the mocap data and stripping away other communicative channels).
As Kerry notes in his interview, his and Amber's goals in focusing on animated clothing were to explore a "modern look" for Odissi mocap data representation in a way that was still "culturally true." While we want to push back against an implied dichotomy between Odissi as "traditional" and digital as "modern" (particularly in light of the political complications around Odissi's twentieth– century retrospective rhetoric), we see this variation (the result of dialogue between an Indian scholar/dancer and two Netherlands-based creative professionals, with a web "stage" designed by an American digital media researcher) as a performance of "Odissi across cultures" (Gardner, 2012) generated out of a continuum of media technologies (digital and otherwise) for composing the Odissi body.
