Abhinaya as Practice-as-Research

Abstract

What does a collaborative process of an artistic creation entail? How does the individual components of text, music, and dance weave in a solo choreography? This article brings together the voices of the dancer (Sarkar), the choreographer (Dandavate), and the music composer (Mirle) who has also sung and is the curator of the project called Nachi Meera. This project has commissioned multiple artists working in different dance techniques to present Abhinaya-esque (meaning expressive dance works) expositions on songs by the renowned historical saint-poet Mirabai. Sarkar, Dandavate, and Mirle reflect upon their collaborative journeys in this reflective essay where the process of creating an Abhinaya is theorized as research. The dance piece itself stands by itself as a scholarly product with historical, performative, and artistic research methodologies informing the process. This article documents the collaborative process borrowing from scholar Robin Nelson’s Practice-as-Research (PaR) methodology and argues how the artistic product weaves verbal, kinesthetic, and aural communication in an iterative process of ‘doing-reflecting-reading-articulating-doing” (Nelson 32). Movement layers the intricacies of South Asian aesthetics or the Rasa theory that governs the mood of execution by the dancer. Improvisation through choreography supplements Mirabai’s lyrics and Mirle’s musical composition.