CENTRAL QUESTION: If we define cities as bodies in space and we as people hold specific emotions and experiences at a time, how do the specific emotions and experiences show up in the spaces we inhabit? 

CONTEXT: The Natyashastra, seminal text of Bharatanataym, an ancient South Asian, Hindu dance form, details eight rasas (emotions) which are used for communicating through gesture, movement, and narrative. 

Rasaboxes is a tool developed by Richard Schechner in the 1980s and 90s for dancers where each rasa is explored within the confines of a square in a grid. Beginning first with words of association and moving through static movements and ultimately to dynamic movements, this exercise was used to understand and strengthen connections between movement and emotion. This tool served as a framework for the design of this experiment, namely in the physical organization of space and also practice of isolating emotions for further analysis. 

EXPERIMENT: Eight performances using Bharatanatyam movements about the eight rasas (loosely described below) onto 3’ x 3’ x 3” blocks of mud to visualize differences of emotions in the “spaces”. 

SO WHAT: Reframing how cities are built by different categories, in this case emotion, can provide a different approach to building our environments. This project approaches this visioning work by studying philosophies and foundational practices of embodied artforms. As a community of immigrants, refugees, and othered people, visioning through play can democratize the process of designing plural, antiracist cities.

Past Showings: 

The project was workshopped Spring 2023 as a part of the aMASSit choreography cohort sponsored by Monkeyhouse and the Dance Complex in Boston. As a part of the fellowship, the piece was pitched to an audience to describe needs to continue the project and fundraise. See this link to video performance and read about the pitch proposal material here.

Six of the eight rasa performances were completed in an exhibition at the Godine Family Gallery, a student-run  experimental gallery at MassArt College of Art and Design, on view from April 15, 2024 to April 20, 2024. This project was supported by the Studio of Interrelated Media Student Council and private donations collected through the aMASSit choreography pitch session.