A female singer from Maize Mirchi, the University of Michigan’s only South Asian a capella group, dominated the stage as she filled Hill Auditorium with a reverberating rendition of the American National Anthem followed by the Indian National Anthem. Her voice and those of her fellow a capella members were not alone, as the audience cheered, shouted, and applauded. Maize Mirchi is only one of ten groups that will be performing tonight for the 30th Indian American Student Association’s (IASA) cultural dance show, Silesha: The Power of Duality.
Duality is such an important concepts in a world that many people understand through binary definition. How do you understand light without knowing dark as well? How can you feel happy if you’ve never felt sad? These binaries, despite being opposites, rely upon each other in order to form each other as well as our understanding of how they operate as part of a greater, overarching whole. As an English Major, I know all about how important binaries are to Structuralism as a literary criticism (I’ve written more than enough essays to know how to scatter in fun, GSI-winning terms like “juxtaposition,” “dyad,” and “dichotomy”). I was excited to see how IASA would utilize dance as a way of embodying the concepts: “dark and light, good and evil, masculinity and femininity, Indian and American,” that embody just about everything!
The nine different dance performances were all inspired by different types of dance throughout India, so while there was some overlap between performances (such as intense, epilepsy-unfriendly, strobe light effects), they each had an individual flavor and style. Starting off the show was the Theme dance “Silesha”, choreographed by Ashwaty Chennat, Prashnath Kumar, and Katie Nucci. Through a mash-up of Indian and Western music, they danced in a combination of the two dance cultures in order to represent the Indian-American identity shared by so many of IASA’s members and performers. When it came to Western style music, however, the Badtameez group, an all-men’s fusion style, was especially memorable with a legion of fedora-wearing, bow tie-sporting dancers who launched into action with Justin Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie”.
As with many styles of Indian dance, the role of men and women came into play throughout several of the performances. Men’s dance moves were generally the more aggressive, though there were moments when dominance was given explicitly to the women. In one performance, a short skit was performed when the men got down on one knee to offer their partner a rose, before being slapped and falling to the ground. This humorous approach was contrasted by a scene when a woman was lifted up in a fireman’s carry and taken kicking and punching offstage. By far, the most explosive example of this particular duality was when the male dancers formed into two groups and charged at each other, brandishing either quarter staffs or swords. The female dancers came and interposed themselves between the male dancers on each side just in time, but the flow between the two groups and the force of the recombination was spectacular to watch.
Another duality that was exciting to watch was that between light and dark, as mentioned before with headache-inducing strobe lights. Other times when the lights would go dark, dancers would be holding flashing led’s of different colors, the Bhangra group holding them in their mouths for their finale and the Gypsy group wearing special led tipped gloves that actually inspired the image that they were using magic!
Still, perhaps the greatest duality of the night was not one that occurred onstage, but with the stage. That is to say, the duality that exists between audience and performers, because without each other, the show wouldn’t exist. I hesitate to say observers and participants for two reasons: one, a cool idea in the realm of quantum physics (of which I know nothing of and understand even less; see again: English major) by which particles are thought to be changed just by being seen, and two, more importantly, that the crowd at the show was going absolutely, wonderfully berserk. Every time in between the performances, the people in the general admission balconies would break out into chants and cheers for the group that was going to be on next, or call out specifically to people that they knew. The energy in the room was practically tangible, and it was on both sides of the stage that the electricity in the air was being felt and produced.
It was not just one factor or one set of binaries that defined this show, instead it was a combination of all of them, coming together in order to generate something that transcended the concept of duality in order to create a whole that was both fun and fantastic. While I could go on and write a thesis on the reductive nature of Structuralism, instead I’ll content myself to say it’s only fair to tell you that I’ve always been more of a Deconstructionist anyways.
