With the assistance of my instructor at ACCAD, Vitalya Berezin-Blackburn, I map the spatial trajectory of Odissi movement using multiple colors associated with the different parts of the body. I use blue for tracing the movement of the head and the hips. I use green for the right wrist and the right ankle and green for the left wrist and the left ankle. A 2D viewing of the picture from the front has the appearance of a giant banyan tree having a dense concentration of roots and branches while standing tall with a firm stem. The 2D view shows how the body is always held upright and the footwork and the hand gestures are the most frequently deployed. The winding nature of the trails of the wrists correspond to the curvilinear spatial trajectories by the gestural movements. Unlike the hands, the feet make sharper angles although with a high concentration. The close proximity of the trails to the floor show that the feet rarely leave the ground except for one or two instances. There is a clear sense of juxtaposition in the initial glance at the picture with angular marks by the feet and the winding traces of the hands. The head and the hip always align with each other as evidenced by the blue markings laying parallel at the head and the hip levels. We see only one green line emerging from the ground to the knee level showing clearly the one legged balance in one particular instance. Overall the movement looks pretty symmetrical despite the individual movements do not necessarily have right and left repetitions. It is this symmetry in Odissi that I want to offset in the collaboration outcome, a yearning that the Mahari has expressed in my practice and continues to express in my work with motion capture technology. My Odissi body fails to do it despite consciously deploying a denser variants of her S-curves and her fish-walk.
The hip and the head stay parallel to one another throughout the duration of the piece although they have slight quirks that are particular to them differentiating the direction and orientation. The violet trails function as a horizontal plane containing the the gestural and postural complexity of the hand spirals and the spinal undulations respectively. Although the hip and the head runs parallel, a closer look show that the exact movements differ. Rather the head lags the hip by milliseconds. Also, the head has slightly more movement than the hips as its arc has greater degrees of undulating waves unlike that of the hips. The movement analysis is telling in this case since the moves kind of show the upright nature of the body and also the slight offsets that subtly alter the apparent uprightness.
The hand movements garner the most attention with their curvy trajectories. The ribbons appear the most beautiful in this situation as each hand is never symmetrical but yet present such similar patterns due to their similar curvy movements. The density of the colors directly suggest the increased frequency of the hand motions. The winding and spiral curves drive home the fact about the centrality of the curvilinear trajectory of the Odissi body that has a strong central core with serpentine peripheral edges.
The mapping suggests a high density of the footwork. It is quite clear that the green and the red combine in unpredictable ways. The movement is asymmetrical, which is depicted in the trailing ribbons. The ankles remain mostly closer to the ground except certain exceptions when we see the right foot raised to the knee level and the curling of the green shows the spin on the standing left foot. Even with this tiny excerpt, one notices the tremendous variation of the footworks, stomps, spins, jumps, brushes, grazes, and hits. The closer the feet to the ground, the higher is the density of movement. This 3D rendition of my moving Odissi body speaks shouts the unpleasant truth of my Odissi body despite its attempts to recreate the Mahari. As a failed economist, I believe I also fail in dance and technology for my inability to bring her back in my body. I turn to Conroy to hope for that. Maybe his touch on my abstract data find accents that might accentuate the S-curve. With my limited knowledge and time, I cannot possibly work longer hours on the screen in order to let the Mahari speak. Instead I toss and turn in my studio rolling over my body, bring my head to the floor, accentuate the S-curve of my spine, push my hips back and swing them from side to side, and move full-bodied. I hope to remove the traces of Odissi from my body to let the Mahari breath a sigh of relief.