The Piccy in the newsletter

[Louise Pembroke]

No Andrew there isn't a name for that pose, it's just my own position from my dance. If you ever see the Martha Graham company advertised [they don't come here often and when they do usually at sadlers Wells and tickets are sold very quickly] you must see them. Graham's choreography is grandmother of most contemporary dance. Cunningham is a prodigy of Graham.

[Andrew MacLean]

At University I earned some extra cash "dressing" for Ballet Rambert.

I have only occasionally had an opportunity to see Indian Classical Dance, but did see an Indonesian company from Bandung once. They were part of the Indian diaspora, and Hindus living in a very Indian corner of Indonesia.

I was overwhelmed by the formality and energy of the dance. It was quite different to the European Classical dance, but every bit as graceful. Married to the quarter tone (as opposed to the semi tone standard in European music) the Indian tradition weaves a unique tapestry of sound, spectacle and movement.

Andrew

[Louise Pembroke]

Ah yes if you get the chance to see some Bharatanatyam check it out, it's awesome. Malavika is a goddess

[jayuk]

Louise , that did impress me! lol I wasnt expecting that!

[Louise Pembroke]

Thankyou J!

[Andrew MacLean]

A coule of years ago a Glasgow Theatre Company staged the Mahabharata epic. I had read the The Bhagavad-Gita at University, but this was the first time I had seen the gita in context.

Naturally there was dance as part of this production. Indeed it was integral to the whole epic, but it would be wrong to say that the production was in any but a tangential sense "Indian Dance".

Andrew

[Louise Pembroke]

Yes this would have been dance-drama which is very scaled down dance wise but beautiful none the less. The epic has also been shown in Kathakali dance-drama. Here the company consists purely of men who take the roles of women and they act as women, not men in drag. Their elaborate make-up is a sight to behold and they train their facial muscles for years. There's a wonderful dramatic moment when one character pulls out the intestines of another [strips of padded material & stage blood]. He them smears the blood across his face and looks maniacally around the audience, he's scary!

[Andrew MacLean]

Absolutely!

For my part the most interesting thing about the epic was the way it brought a different light to bear on an ethical dilemma. We are all sometimes paralyzed by the question, "do I act or do I remain passive?"

The traditional european example is the German Theologian Deitrich Boenhoffer. He faced a question when he had an opportunity to be involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Should he break the prohibition on killing, which he held to be an absolute moral imperative.

He knew that if he did not,the consequence may be that hundreds, thousands or even millions would die.

He came to the conclusion that it was wrong to kill, but that it was more wrong to remain passive in the face of evil. His conclusion was that he had to do the less wrong thing and live with the knowledge that he would live under the forgiving grace that he had always proclained.

for Yudishtira as he speaks to Arjuna there is another imperative: that of duty.

The theophany is wonderfully described, and was beautifully handled in the production I saw.

both traditions acknowledge the tension that arises in real ethical questions. Ethics is not about a choice between an obvious good and an obvious evil: there is no ethical dimension to questions as easy as these. Ethics comes into play when we have to choose between a range of options all of which is wrong. That's why these choices are always hard.

In the end bonhoeffer failed. He was hanged at Dachau just as the Americans liberated the camp. As he died he must have heard the American tanks break the camp fence.

Arjuna prevailed, but had to slay his kinsmen to liberate his people.

by the way, and here is where all this becomes relevant to KC, these are precisely the sorts of issue that we deal with when we are making choices about new medical techniques, or animal testing, or the allocation of resources to different parts of the health service.

Andrew

[GarethB]

Bringing this post back on track, thought I should put a proper picture of me on



You can see me at my official web site

http://www.doctorsnuggles.com/

Dr S

[Louise Pembroke]

Love it Gareth!
Too right Andrew, there is sometimes no obvious good/bad option. If I had the chance to kill Hitler would I? probably yes, but the cost would have been life imprisonment or death and that's a tough one to negotiate