tamsin haggis: December 2014

Speak to me about the making of images

Without a knowledge of the art of dancing
the rules of painting are very difficult to understand

Please speak to me about the rules of dancing

The practice of dancing is difficult to understand
by one who is not acquainted with music
Without music, dancing cannot exist at all.

So tell me first about music

Without singing music cannot be understood
He who knows the rules of singing
Knows everything properly.

At the beginning of the long period that the dancers have been attempting to come into my paintings, I was fascinated by South Indian Chola Bronzes (c.8th century) of Nataraja, the version of Shiva who is always portrayed dancing. At that point, I rejected the idea of working with images of Indian gods because it seemed to be too far a stretch in terms of the Anglophone/European context. By this I mean that as most people in this context didn't have any sense of the complexity of the cultural context of Indian gods and their images, using these images was going to take people's interpretive frames too far in what for me was the wrong direction.

I thought that my current dancers had appeared as a manifestation of ordinary, luscious life, which India has always celebrated in a variety of fulsome ways (contrary to many popular ideas, the Indian textual tradition fully accepts worldly engagement and encourages its full embrace, albeit in the right way and at the right time of life...).

Recently, however, I noticed that in the traditions of painting that I was studying the women were covered up, and yet all the women on the temples at Belur and Halebid (the research I did last year in Karnataka) had exposed breasts, and sometimes exposed whole bodies (though they're not naked, they're adorned/protected by heavy jewellery, more on this another time....). Eventually I remembered the tradition of the devadasi, women who were dedicated to the temple at a young age, whose purpose was to dance as an offering to the temple deity. This tradition was, like so many others, misinterpreted by the British and their disapproval eventually transformed the understanding of that tradition, both inside and outside of India.

So now I'm back in the temple compound, even though my dancers are quite clearly ordinary humans. And I am suddenly in the midst of what dance means in the larger Indian tradition as a whole. Not so much that Shiva danced, but the fact that as the creator and destroyer of the universe, the One, omnipresent God danced (don't trouble yourself with how Shiva can be the One, omnipresent God when you know about Krishna or Devi, just take my word for it. The 'Western' understanding of India's multiplicity of gods has suffered the same problems as the temple dancing tradition..).

I just came across a description of a series of temples in South India which relate to a Shiva legend.

'The Thyagarjar Temple as Tiruvarur is famous for the ajapa thanam (dance without chanting) that is executed by the deity itself. According to legend, a Chola king obtained a boon from Indra and wished to receive an image of the deity presiding in the temple. Indra tried to misguide the king and had six other images made, but the king chose the right image. The other six images are installed at six other temples.

All seven images are said to dance when taken in procession.'

(abridged from wikipedia)

Here are the dances which take place in the seven temples:

Dance without chanting, resembling the dance of Shiva

Dance of an intoxicated person

Dancing like the waves of the sea

Dancing like a cock

Dancing like a bee that hovers over a flower

Dance like a lotus that moves in the breeze

Dancing with the gait of a swan