Yes to each other!: Collectivity–coalition–collaboration and the Post Natyam Collective*6 *(6)
Cvejić’s contestation of “unison,” her insistence on making difference central and her demand to go beyond the “theatre dispositif” (Cvejić 2005) (*10) resonate with Post Natyam Collective’s commitments to multivocality, dialogue, and process over product. While Cvejić’s (as well as Rogoff’s, Terkessidis’s, and Ziemer’s) theorizations were written in European contexts, the Post Natyam Collective was founded in a Californian context where we have been engaging with various identity-based and grassroots political activist communities, such as diasporic (South) Asian and Asian American, “people of color,” feminist, queer, and LGBT community formations.*7 *(7) However, the range of identifications within the collective*8 *(8) problematizes*9 *(9) a given community’s base in identity politics. In addition, we also hold sometimes conflicting aesthetic and political values, which we bring in dialogue with each other, but do not aim to combine into a “unison” voice (cp. Chatterjee and Lee 2012a) (*6). In line with feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty we choose to refer to our collective as a coalition, rather than a community. In our manifesto, we define coalition with reference to Mohanty as a “viable oppositional alliance […] a common context of struggle rather than color or racial identifications” (Mohanty 2003: 49). (*12)
Our motivation to continue our collective work despite the geographical dispersions is marked by a desire to connect and a simultaneous commitment to sustain a coalition that is nurtured by our differences:
The Post Natyam Collective members continued their artistic connection despite the distance. Why? Because the politico-artistic values that we hold dear are marginal to mainstream dance cultures in our home communities. Contemporary South Asian choreographers in Germany and the US are rare—and those whose work engages politically with postcolonial, queer, and feminist-of-color theory are even rarer. Moreover, we are committed to collaboration, embracing the collective as an organizational structure over the “standard” model of a dance company with a single artistic director. Collaborating allows us to connect while honoring our differing politico-aesthetic approaches. We have resisted developing a signature fusion vocabulary to brand our work, instead finding multiple ways to engage with our individual perspectives, the diversity of the movement traditions that we practice, and our migrations to varied performance contexts and geographical locations. (Cynthia Ling Lee in Chatterjee and Lee 2012b: n.p.) (*7)
Sandra Chatterjee ( 2015): Rethinking Collective Artistic Production. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 06 , https://www.p-art-icipate.net/rethinking-collective-artistic-production/