About The Author
Alessandra Iyer obtained her PhD in Art and Archaeology from the School of Orien-tal and African Studies, University of Lon-don, in 1990, with a thesis on the dance iconography of ancient Indonesia. She has contributed papers and articles to a number of journals and to MacMillan's Dictionary of Art. Trained in a number of dance forms, she has an approach to dance research that is both theoretical and practical
About The Book
Prambanan: Sculpture and Dance in Ancient Java is a study of the dance reliefs of the ninth century AD temple of Siwa at the Prambanan complex in central Java. Previous attempts at identification of these ancient reliefs were hampered by inadequate movement analysis of the dance portrayed but in this book, for the first time, a complete identification is presented, through a re-interpretation of the archaeological data. Using both movement analysis and comparison with an authoritative reconstruction model, the author rigorously examines each of the 62 reliefs and identifies them as representations of the karana (dance movement units) of the Sanskrit text from India on dance and drama, the Natyaśāstra. These reliefs almost certainly depict lord Śiwa. They point to the presence throughout Asia of the karana dance tradition wherever Śaivism flourished and as they predate any equivalent series found in India, they suggest that the idea of karana sculptural series originated outside India and only subsequently reached the subcontinent. The text is complemented by photographs and line drawings.
Introduction
Dance research has established itself as a serious academic pursuit only in the past two decades. During this time its growth has been consider-able. Dance research deals with a composite and heterogeneous area of knowledge, subdivided into many special fields; dance is often an applied research area of some other discipline-anthropology, sociology, history, theology, psychology, education, music and archaeology. In the past few years numerous works have been written on dance in its various manifestations, with different approaches and perspectives. Such writings can be broadly divided into two groups: those adopting an anthropological approach and those adopting a historical one, although one does not necessarily exclude the other. A dance anthropologist focuses on living dance traditions, trying to understand the societies that generated them through analysing their movement systems-here 'dance' is taken, broadly, to mean dance thea-tre, ritual dance and other performing activities which include some kind of dancing. A dance historian studies the evolution and development of a particular form or forms and may thus focus on older or even obsolete practices. A historical approach emphasises the process of change, trans-formation and synthesis of a dance form, pointing to an interrelationship with more general issues relating to social and cultural change. However, these are only broad generalisations. Even when the focus is principally on dance as dance and on move-ment structure, the underlying assumption is that dance as a human activity is culturally bound and relates to other aspects of the culture of which it is the product (Royce 1980:110). This is evident as soon as attention is turned to non-Western dance forms, when it becomes imme-diately apparent that a meaningful study of dance cannot be carried out in isolation from its context (Adshead and Layson 1983:4). The main fact is that dance research is by its very nature interdisciplinary and some-times disciplines or sub-disciplines may be reformulated in the course of research. Dance iconography is one of such developments and some people may be somewhat unclear about its nature and concerns. Iconography is usually thought to be about the representational content, that is, stories or myths, in relation to images. Dance iconography, however, refers specifi-cally to the description or analysis of dance images. This may or may not involve narratives but it certainly refers to a description of dance themes and conventions as seen in dance images. It is in this sense that one talks of an "iconography of dance" or, more precisely, a "dance iconography" Seebass (1991:33) gives us a balanced definition when he tells us that dance iconography is a cross between the study of dance and art history, being both "research in the pictorial documentation of dance. study of the vision of the artist (in the literal and metaphorical sense)".2 I would be inclined to take the term pictorial in the sense of visual in order [and the to include sculpture. This brings us closer to the subject matter of this book where dance iconography is coterminous with dance sculpture. Reliance on iconographic representation of dance as historical docu-mentation of dance forms has prompted questions on how accurate static visual representations can be in recording dance movements and also how these movements can be authentically re-created from a practical point of view (Brakel 1993). Clearly dance iconography may not help specifically in reconstructing choreographic pieces in vogue in the past (Fermor 1987:19; Seebass 1991:37). But it cannot be dismissed as unreli-able in relation to the movement techniques portrayed. It is likely that these would have a basis in forms known to the artists and craftsmen through living performance practices. If the iconographic evidence is further corroborated by other sources, such as manuals, literary works and so on, then one cannot dismiss the possibility that such dance images do reflect what was dance practice. The question of reliability becomes then a methodological issue: the degree of accuracy in 'reading' the dance image and reconstructing the movement will depend entirely on the approach.
Vedas (1216)
Upanishads (507)
Puranas (633)
Ramayana (758)
Mahabharata (372)
Dharmasastras (167)
Goddess (517)
Bhakti (251)
Saints (1551)
Gods (1310)
Shiva (391)
Journal (181)
Fiction (62)
Vedanta (382)
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