A few thoughts on ASL signing, theatre, dance-- and Dacher Keltner on Awe

Film... like dance, allows the telling of a story from many angles as it moves... We felt this watching Peter Cook's signing... every muscle in his face accentuated emotion (indeed, as emotions are wired in humans this way and can connect us to feelings of awe-- see  Dacher Keltner's book  “The Thrilling New Science of Awe”To me, what [this science] says is, this capacity for wonder and beauty and sympathy and kindness … is in our genes. It’s in our neurophysiology — very robustly so."- Dacher Keltner

Thanks to Judith, you may enjoy "Discovering Devi" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUpxj7CyxEM and Judith's notes:

Looked up Rukmini Vijayakumar on YT and she has many many dances which are stupendous but the one I had in mind is called Discovering Devi—and that is when she transforms from worshipper decking the goddess image with jewels and garlands to incarnate all aspects of Devi—THE Goddess in all her forms.  (you can hear one of the singers mention “Lakshmi,” patroness of wealth and family at one point)—but also the dancing battle between the goddess as Parvati, and her consort Shiva Nataraja, deity of meditation, dance and also death.  You also see the baleful side of Parvati or Durga as Kali, goddess of death and the burning ground.  When the face distorts and she thrusts out her tongue you can see she IS Kali, just as the Voudon devotee can become, in trance, the loa of Maitresse Erzulie…and in this dance she wears the simple draped sari with almost no jewelry that she prefers, although in the much shorter Kali Kautvam dance she is wearing a more “modern conventional” outfit with the draped skirt between pajama, although with much less bling than most.  And in the short Kali Kautvam you can REALLY see the marvelous formal technique and her amazing jump, which is not much used in Bharata Natya.  Kali Kautvam is a dance of a devotee, and does invoke the goddess in the same way.

 

She had brought up the “new name”—Balasaraswati was the last in a five or six generation heritage of court musicians and dancers in South India, a part of the subcontinent with a long heritage of matriarchal transmission.  (just google the name:  Here's one sample: https://www.alastairmacaulay.com/all-essays/610t467xvhj6bfbkwig5off6p07dvg

Also Carmen de Lavallade reciting—one is under a TED talk.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpZhkNG1POU

We brought up mimes... like Marcel Marceau

Bernard Bragg (mime) wrote this poem:

The Sign Language as I Know it” 

Give me back my language the way I signed it when I was young.

 Give me back my language the way it used to be– before linguists “discovered” it and conferred a new name on it. 

Give me back my language the way I learned from my deaf parents, from their deaf friends, from my teachers, both deaf and hearing. 

Give me back my language the way I remember how the deaf storytellers role-modeled it to me.

 Give me back my language without any of those rules, restrictions, impositions, or fixed boundaries that the linguists established for it.

 Give me back my language that has a great potential for change and growth. 

Give me back my language which is very much part of who I am. – Bernard Bragg

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/obituaries/bernard-bragg-dead.html