Improvisation and canon: is freedom and creativity possible in the traditional art?

Материал из HEPTACHOR.

FREEDOM OF IMPROVISATION AND THE FRAMEWORK OF CANON: IS FREE CREATIVITY POSSIBLE IN THE TRADITIONAL ART?

E. N. Shapinskaia (Moscow)

With all its styles and varieties, the Indian classic dance is one of the most refined and well-elaborated dance systems. In this work I will consider only one kind – kathak – which exemplifies the conflicting relationship between the rigid canon and free improvisation.

In the Indian classic dance, the rhythm and tune frameworks are given to the performer. What is called “the artist’s freedom of creation” in the West, in the Indian classic dance, based on the canons of the "Natya-sastra", does not and cannot exist. In the classic treaty on drama, music and dance, "Natya-sastra", which is the basis of all subsequent schools of dance, all expressive means are defined. The latter include 9 basic emotions and 4 auxiliary ones, a fixed number of gestures for one and both arms, kinds of walks, etc. The performer, it seems, is no more than a translator of the positions coming from a sacred tradition.

Through historical time, the rules became less rigid, but the musical and rhythmical basis of the dance remains well defined. Kathak, which had experienced various cross-cultural influences, in many ways abandoned the fixed character of the gestures. Yet it developed a highly elaborate rhythmical base (tala) and tonic base of the vocal and/or instrumental accompaniment (raga). Familiarity with and fluency in tala is obligatory for a performer of the “pure” dance (nritta). As to the expressive elements of dance and the meaning of the poetic composition, important for performing kathak, the dancer has considerable freedom. Some gurus of kathak were famous for interpreting one line of poetry for an entire hour. Surely, such an interpretation requires a prepared audience from a shared cultural context. This makes the Indian classic dance hard to watch for an outsider. And it is for this very reason, and because Indian dancers want to perform in front of an international audience, that the fixed, simplified and decorative compositions replace the traditional improvisation.

Clearly, the problem of interaction between the traditional canon and the freedom of creative art is important for understanding Western as well as non-Western art, which itself is a feature of contemporary multiculturalism. Besides, this issue is interesting from the point of view of the processes of “remythologisation” and “secondary ethnicity”, as a result of which some traditional texts become a kind of “tourist artefact”, reproduced for the global culture.