Reviewed by:

• Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict: Practicing Bharata Natyam in Colombo, Sri Lanka by Ahalya Satkunaratnam
• Merritt Denman Popp

Ahalya Satkunaratnam’s work Moving Bodies, Navigating Conflict explores the dance form of bharata natyam and its practice during the final years of the Sri Lankan civil war. Satkunaratnam examines the ways in which practitioners of the traditional dance form deployed the form to navigate the complex landscape created by the war. The text explores bharata natyam as a site of political and global conflict, and demonstrates the ways in which dance at this time affected and was affected by the war. Furthermore, the book highlights the lived experiences of dancers as it outlines the ways in which personal encounters with global political problems manifest through performance. Ultimately, in the author’s words, “[b]odies and their experiences are typically left out of discussions of conflict that focus on politics and policy. Both are interconnected here, and this text aims to make transparent the process of producing subjectivity through the acquiring and performing of disciplined movement” (p. 14). Satkunaratnam deftly handles this complex intersection of individual and political bodies and successfully uses bharata natyam to illuminate the ways in which political conflict and performance interact.

Satkunaratnam’s work is an ethnography which, in her own words, explores bharata natyam’s “hint-laced exchanges and nuanced aesthetics that mark a constant awareness of potential violence and everyday war” (p. 14). Her aim is to illustrate the quotidian ways in which the political seeps into the lives of performers and examine the effect that this process has on performance. As Satkunaratnam points out, the scope of her work is not limited to that which is overtly political. Instead, the book is interested in how war shapes even that which is not intentionally political. As Satkunaratnam puts it, “I am invested in reading how politics shapes what is performed and what is received as neutral yet is politically constructed” (p. 9). This is further emphasized by the personal experiences of the author, which are integral to the text.

Satkunaratnam explores the nuanced political landscape of the Sri Lankan civil war through dance as deployed by Sri Lankan women, many of whom the author spoke to or worked with herself. In this way, her project was itself shaped by the war, her topic shifting as the geopolitical landscape around her subject changed during the final tumultuous years of the conflict. Satkunaratnam places bharata natyam in conversation with another Sri Lankan form, the state-sponsored [End Page 232] Kandyan dance, identifying the ways in which each dance form is aligned with nationalistic cultural concepts and utilized for political purposes.

The Sri Lankan civil war was a conflict between a state controlled largely by those in the Sinhala ethnic group and the Tamil revolutionary group. Dance became a site of conflict when the Sinhala state deployed the Kandyan art form as a means of cultural warfare, placing it in opposition to bharata natyam. Satkunaratnam analyzes various performances that she and her subjects witnessed or were part of, giving a close reading of process and performance to examine how Sri Lankan women deployed dance as a means of disrupting these expectations and eliciting inquiry into assumptions about who did and did not “belong” in Sri Lanka.

The book is neatly divided into two sections of two chapters each. The first two chapters explore “the implications of hybridity and dance in the emerging postcolonial nation and the nation at war” (p. 15), while the second two chapters “consider choreographies and the processes of production . . . in Colombo” (p. 15). Satkunaratnam demonstrates how the Sinhala government deployed the terms “Indian,” “Oriental,” and “indigenous” to delineate bharata natyam as an outside dance form. The first section outlines the complex history of bharata natyam as a cultural Tamil practice, acknowledging its relationship to Indian culture, but delineating the ways in which the form is intimately linked to Tamil culture and markers of Sri Lankan national identity. This section demonstrates the ways in which the Sinhala government worked to distance...

审阅者：

• 移动身体，应对冲突：在斯里兰卡科伦坡练习 Bharata Natyam作者：Ahalya Satkunaratnam
• 梅里特·丹曼·波普

Ahalya Satkunaratnam 的作品《移动身体，应对冲突》探讨了bharata natyam的舞蹈形式及其在斯里兰卡内战最后几年的实践。 Satkunaratnam 探讨了传统舞蹈形式的实践者如何运用这种形式来应对战争造成的复杂景观。文本探讨了巴拉塔纳蒂亚姆作为政治和全球冲突场所的情况，并展示了当时的舞蹈如何影响战争以及受到战争的影响。此外，这本书还强调了舞者的生活经历，概述了个人遭遇全球政治问题的方式通过表演表现出来。最终，用作者的话来说，“身体和他们的经历通常被排除在关注政治和政策的冲突讨论之外。两者在这里是相互关联的，本文旨在使通过获得和执行有纪律的运动来产生主观性的过程变得透明”（第14页）。萨特库纳拉特南巧妙地处理了个人与政治机构的复杂交集，并成功地利用巴拉塔·纳蒂亚姆（bharata natyam）来阐明政治冲突与绩效相互作用的方式。

Satkunaratnam 的作品是一部民族志，用她自己的话来说，探索了bharata natyam的“微妙的交流和细致入微的美学，标志着对潜在暴力和日常战争的持续认识”（第 14 页）。她的目的是阐明政治渗透到表演者生活中的日常方式，并研究这一过程对表演的影响。正如 Satkunaratnam 指出的那样，她的工作范围并不局限于公开的政治领域。相反，这本书感兴趣的是战争如何塑造那些非有意政治性的事物。正如 Satkunaratnam 所说，“我致力于研究政治如何塑造所执行的内容，以及如何被视为中立但又是政治建构的内容”（第 9 页）。作者的个人经历进一步强调了这一点，这些经历是文本的组成部分。

萨特库纳拉特南通过斯里兰卡妇女的舞蹈探索了斯里兰卡内战微妙的政治格局，其中许多人与作者交谈或与自己合作。这样，她的项目本身就是由战争塑造的，在冲突的最后动荡岁月里，随着围绕她主题的地缘政治格局的变化，她的主题也发生了变化。 Satkunaratnam 将bharata natyam与斯里兰卡的另一种舞蹈形式（国家资助的[完第 232 页]康提舞蹈）进行了对话，确定了每种舞蹈形式如何与民族主义文化概念保持一致并用于政治目的。

斯里兰卡内战是主要由僧伽罗族控制的国家与泰米尔革命组织之间的冲突。当僧伽罗国将康提艺术形式作为文化战争的手段，将其与巴拉塔·纳蒂亚姆（bharata natyam）对立时，舞蹈就成为了冲突的场所。 Satkunaratnam 分析了她和她的拍摄对象目睹或参与的各种表演，仔细阅读了过程和表演，以研究斯里兰卡女性如何利用舞蹈来破坏这些期望，并引发对谁做了和没有做的假设的调查。属于”斯里兰卡。

这本书整齐地分为两部分，每部分两章。前两章探讨“混合性和舞蹈对新兴后殖民国家和战争国家的影响”（第 15 页），而后两章“考虑编舞和生产过程……”。 。 。在科伦坡”（第 15 页）。 Satkunaratnam 展示了僧伽罗政府如何使用“印度”、“东方”和“本土”等术语来将巴拉塔纳蒂亚姆描述为一种外部舞蹈形式。第一部分概述了bharata natyam作为泰米尔文化习俗的复杂历史，承认其与印度文化的关系，但描述了该形式与泰米尔文化和斯里兰卡民族认同标记密切相关的方式。本节展示了僧伽罗政府如何努力保持距离……