Open AccessImprovising Freedom in Prison
Author(s) -
Nayanee Basu
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
critical studies in improvisation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1712-0624
DOI - 10.21083/csieci.v8i2.2143
Subject(s) - improvisation , realm , dance , prison , sociology , ethnography , bengal , subject (documents) , criminology , aesthetics , gender studies , law , political science , history , visual arts , art , anthropology , archaeology , bay , library science , computer science
Basu, as ethnographer, details the experiences of two individuals, Alokananda Roy, established classical dancer and Mr B.D. Sharma, appointed Additional Director General of Correctional Services, West Bengal Police in 2005. Basu’s fieldwork (which begins in 2008) describes and analyses their introduction of dance into the male and female prison communities of West Bengal. Small workshops importantly become major public performances of Tagorean dance dramas played to large and influential public audiences. Improvisation in this project works at a number of levels. The subject and content of the dance dramas, while built around classical themes of good and evil, the rule bound v unpredictability, lend themselves to formal artistic improvisatory interpretations. These are not just performed, but lived in the experiences of prisoners and guards as well as through civic processes as these slowly bend in response to the new energy. The effort gradually provokes change, seen simultaneously in the attitudes and practices of the prisoners towards greater levels of interest, self reliance, respect, and self organisation, as well as in the policy and rules of penal organisation in the region of West Bengal. Artistic improvisation opens up doubt in this case study in the social realm, challenging the instituted physical and emotional separation between prisoners and non-prisoners in quite practical, judged ways that do not dissolve but alter the system.