Ruptures in reformation: Embodiment revealed

Abstract

Abstract This article reflects on the author’s practice of three South Indian disciplines (Bharatanatyam, astanga yoga and kalaripayattu). Their distinct methodologies modulate the rhythm, direction and force of the doer’s actions to evolve particular virtuosities. This article, however, focuses on moments of rupture during the author’s intercultural hybridization. It examines these incidents of trauma as moments revealing the friction generated when hereditary and localized pedagogies meet the contemporary mobilities afforded by immigration, emigration and international travel. These incidents also suddenly expose the subtle and gradual processes of radical human reformation secreted in these powerful pedagogies. Jo Riley, in her study of Chinese theatre, describes training as an emptying and dissection of the performer’s body to be replaced by a ‘role’ body. This ‘opening’ process is called kaiguang, which means ‘opening to let the light shine out’. This article proposes that ruptures in processes of embodiment can strand the practitioner betwixt the primed pre-expressive self (or Eugenio Barba’s ‘fictive body’) and Riley’s role body (extended here to consider the performer’s social as well as dramatic function).