Dance Like a Man

8220;No!8221; splutters the dance lecturer at Hyderabad U. 8220;Bhama isn8217;t for sissies. She8217;s a strong, beautiful character and sometimes I think a man understands her better.8221; And just how might he manage that? Kalakrishna grins. 8220;You have to go deep into a woman8217;s psyche, find out what she does and more importantly, why, in any situation. To tell you the truth, there was a dramatic improvement in my depiction of Bhama after I got married. My wife explained a lot to me, she still critiques my abhinaya expression and, after each rehearsal, when the musicians have gone home, she gets into the details.8221;

How come a mere male thinks he can portray this hot babe better than a woman, when women are naturally better at being women? 8220;Just think of Ardhanarishwar! It8217;s a great holistic concept that celebrates the fact that there8217;s a bit of woman in each man and a bit of man in each woman,8221; says senior dance critic Shanta Serbjeet Singh, who8217;s Chairman of the Asia Pacific Performing Arts Network APPAN that recently held a seminar on cross-gender art traditions. 8220;Homo and bi-sexuality are as old as the hills,8221; shrugs Danny Yung, supercool Hong Kong theatre maven, director of the cutting-edge troupe Zuni Icosahedron. 8220;Why should it startle anybody, given those extremes, that down the middle, a hetero man or woman can play the Other in performance, yet stay straight? Asia8217;s been doing it forever.8221;

8220;True!8221; twinkles Lee Ching-Ni, perky 24-year-old male impersonator with the Beijing Opera, Taipei. Lee was okay doing girl stuff but her tomboy streak led her to the vigorous dances at opera school. 8220;It8217;s not our decision to play male roles,8221; she says. 8220;Our teachers watch us and decide. And then we8217;re trained within an inch of our lives to take on the characters. It8217;s pure dramatic technique! I can get out of my costume and go right back to being a girl, except that my movements stay free and open.8221;

Lin Shean-Yuan, 31, slaps her coyly. He8217;s a female impersonator who8217;s also department head of Taiwanese Opera. Slim and graceful without being effete, Yuan8217;s wicked humour makes him attractive to everybody. 8220;My teachers thought I had this really cute face8221;, he says demurely. 8220;But it8217;s not a big internal state of mind like Kalakrishna says. For us it8217;s pure movement. We have a role to do, we learn to do it well. That means attention to detail. But it doesn8217;t mean I8217;m a girl. I8217;m a female impersonator, which means I8217;m a man playing a woman. And I do traditional opera roles, which means we Chinese have been gender-benders for centuries8221;. 8220;Sexuality is really one8217;s private business8221;, drawls Didik Nini Thowok, the Indonesian female impersonator. Didik is a big star. Not just the highest paid but the most-awarded choreographer-dancer-teacher-mime-

comedian-singer with a neat party turn singing Kuch kuch hota hai. A traditional performer who freely modernises his dance with contemporary themes and movements, Didik runs a dance school in Djakarta called Natya Lakshita and has choreographed about 30 major productions. Amongst the big stuff he8217;s won in Asia-Pacific is the Governor of Yogyakarta8217;s Kala Award. As you read this, Didik8217;s headed for Seattle to dance at Washington University, after touring London, Paris, Cairo, Rome and Cologne last month on a Japan Foundation tour of The Female Impersonator in Asian Theatre. Didik8217;s exquisite dances are flagrantly 8216;queenie8217; but so dignified and beautiful that he8217;s got a major hetero following in south-east Asia. Meanwhile, 8220;Our macho Indian society makes it hard for men dancers. And for a man to dress up as woman is still socially difficult,8221; rues Singh. 8220;But now we8217;ve seen other Asians at it, perhaps we8217;ll loosen up, too.8221;