Total Masala Slammer/Heartbreak no. 5, conceived and directed by Belgian director Michel Laub and visual artist Marina Abramovic, has been described as a European American Indian multimedia theater project combining dance, theater, video projection, art installation, and music. Laub and Abramovic draw on vastly mixed references to deal with themes of race and multiculturalism. A recurrent theme is women and their abuse in different cultural perspectives. Laub and Abramovic are fascinated by two extremes of Indian culture: on the one side the purity of classical Indian dance and art, kathak; on the other, the triviality of soap operas and kitschy TV serials produced by Bollywood (Archa Theatre 2001). Laub's theater is said to play with the conventions of theatrical representation, constantly bringing the rehearsal process onto the stage. Less interested in trained actors than in forceful personalities, Laub looks for a fusion of the autobiographical details of his performers with fictional situations. So, what happens when Michel Laub, a postmodernist with a tendency to parody order, system, and signification, collaborates with Kumudini Lakhia, a traditional reformist for whom art is about poetry, wonder, simplicity, and dignity?

In Total Masala Slammer, unrequited love is “performed” in different performance traditions of kathak and bharatanatyam, Bollywood soap opera, and German theater. Actors, sometimes wearing period costumes, read out excerpts from a book with exaggerated melodrama or affected irreverence. Audition videos are screened, and there is much dancing—contemporary dance, cabaret, kathak, and bharatanatyam. It has a deliberately fragmented piece-by-piece approach with actors seated on stage, taking turns to perform their acts.

This short talk, written over a decade ago, was originally presented at Seema Haria's arangetram in Cleveland, Ohio on July 31, 1993. At that performative event, Seema's dancing was showcased for an audience of over 200 friends and family. Although over the years I have lost contact with Seema, I have continued to be involved with different aspects of Classical Indian Dance, both in the United States and abroad. I have also taught dance (including Contact Improvisation) in India, and I find myself engaging with the concept of rasa that I present here in various aspects of my life.

The exchange of ideas across cultures is a strange and wondrous phenomenon. Real concerns about cultural appropriation and the unequal access to the power of representation mean that we must learn to tread carefully across regional and ethnic differences. Yet at the beginning of the twenty-first century I am more convinced than ever that these exchanges, when consciously initiated, can be extraordinarily fruitful. There is something compelling for me about Classical Indian Dance, and as I engage with various forms and their histories, I am inspired to share in the dancing—intellectually, physically, and spiritually. Please join me.