Magic, metaphysics, and methods

On a gloomy dark stage, Yerma sits on the floor mourning her fate as onlookers move, stare, and gossip. In Gabriel Federico Garcia Lorca’s brutal drama, the pressure of social judgment on a childless marriage leads Yerma to commit an awful act. On the cover of this issue is the British Bangladeshi dancer and choreographer, Amina Khayyam, who in 2014 transposed this nineteenthcentury story set in patriarchal Spain to the inner city of contemporary Britain, with an innovative adaptation of north Indian neoclassical dance, Kathak. In the process, the Amina KhayyamDanceCompanymadeGarcia Lorca’s rural narrative relevant to many women in marginalized communities in urban settings today. On her style of rendition, Khayyam reflects on how dancing is “always intrinsically to tell a story” where Kathak literally means “the person who tells a story.” The use of a white mask helps in lifting the visual performance away from the superficiality of the look of the dancer to the bare force of the story in motion. Khayyam explains: “I use Abhinaya—the gestural facial expressions—as the central movement within it, but I subvert it by negating it—so thatmy Yermawears a face of death—there is no prettiness, no jewels, no shine.” Abhinaya draws inspiration from both Asian and European traditions, as is also apparent in another work, Stage of Blood, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, inwhichKhayyamperformedwith LokendraArambam, a theater director fromManipur in India. Staged on