Look what I found in my GMail this morning!
The Dance of the Kama Sutra
Get this sensual dance fitness video two months before it’s available anywhere else. [Borders]
I hate wincing before I’ve had my morning kappi. When I went to get my normal small-drip-with-egregious-space-for-cream, I sighed and said, “make it a large”. I need all the energy I can get to deal with potential exotification.
Here’s what I discovered about the sensual fitness video which will be released on July 31:
Follow-up to the fun, top-selling Bollywood Dance Workout; Offers a unique workout with sacred sensual moves for your body and soul
Acacia announces the July 31, 2007 DVD release of Dance of the Kama Sutra with Hemalayaa, offering an exciting new program using meditation and playful movements from Indian dance to help women cultivate their sensuality.
The Kama Sutra, an ancient Indian text, promotes the cultivation of sensuality as a sacred duty. The need to cultivate and reconnect with our sensual selves—the goddess at the core of every woman—remains as strong as ever, but the din and rush of modern life make the opportunities all too rare. Through playful movements and heart-centered meditation, yogini and Indian Dance expert Hemalayaa takes you on a journey of discovery. Find the freedom and fullness of expression that come from embracing yourself and your body, just as you are. Join Hemalayaa, creator of The Bollywood Dance Workout, in a dance of love and laughter that instills confidence, joy, and poise. Gesture by gesture, swish by swish, we remember that we are—and have always been—divine dancers. [link]
Swish by swish, even!
The “ick” was at a roiling boil within and I cynically wondered who was behind this project…and yes, it’s true, I did not think it was someone brown. Just who was Hemalayaa?
Hemalayaa teaches yoga and Indian dance in Los Angeles and offers frequent workshops and retreats around the world. The daughter of Indian parents, Hema’s yoga training began at home at an early age, and she went on to study yoga, philosophy, and meditation as well as asana. Hema’s in-depth study and practice of classical Indian dance informs how she teaches yoga. A life devoted to yoga and dance animates Hemalayaa’s playful spirit. Many of her retreats and workshops culminate in a night of dance. Hema loves turning her students on to the vibrant styles of Indian dance, from the classical to the latest moves from Bollywood, bhangra, and Indian MTV. [link]
Oh, snap. She is desi. And I’m uber-fond of people named Hema, too. I felt vaguely ashamed, because I was aware of how I had immediately cut her a bit of slack which I clearly wouldn’t have extended to someone unbrown. I am teh suck. The flawed, biased suck. At least I know it, right?
What now? My exoti-dar was still going off, though it had been significantly muted. Should I be happy that homeslice was doing her thang? Or was it okay to cringe, at the title and over the audience this was intended for, if the demographic I was imagining was accurate? What’s your take?
Available at Lingam ‘n Things.
Oh come on. What’s she trying to do, come up with a multimedia entry for the term “ho-rientalism”?
This reminds me of the part in Sex and the City when Miranda takes the girls for the Goddess Workout, complete with scarves and hip swaying. It’s all-purpose exoticism.
Is it rated, er, PG?
–Follow-up to the fun, top-selling Bollywood Dance Workout; Offers a unique workout with sacred sensual moves for your body and soul–
“sacred sensual moves” as opposed to profane sensual moves?
Honestly, I don’t find anything objectional about this. Check out this snippet from the description:
I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. It sounds incredibly exhilarating and freeing for women who are normally closed off when it comes to expressions of their sexuality. There is nothing to be ashamed about.
And the Kama Sutra is about sex…and yes, Hemalayaa is capitalizing on it, but I’m glad it’s faitful to the original intent of what the KS is about.
A friend of mine (an Indian as it were) takes pole dancing classes, and while I admittedly initially raised my eyebrows at her admission, my view softened once she told me how empowered it’s made her feel. The class is all females and she feels so much more comfortable in her skin after taking the classes for a year(the rock hard abs she’s developed is a plus!).
While you probably won’t catch me in a pole dancing class in this lifetime, I could be persuaded to do this Kama Sutra-inspired video.
In the privacy of my home of course. 😉
the problem isnt the empowerment. its the exotification bit. its like selling sexy visions of the orient to white people. they buy cause ur brown, and must be spiritual, exotic, etc…
What if you combine the old with the new?
Gesture by gesture, swish by swish, smack by smack. Learn to push your buttons. Empowerment will require 2 AA batteries though.
I was distressed by the dangling modifier. The sentence does not have a logical subject–training (noun) is modified by daughter (the entire phrase is an appositive). Training does not equal daughter, though they are in apposition.
Only in your post, Anna, would I make such an observation! I’m surprised I beat you to it!
No surprise here. I think we all know people of desi origin in the arts who in high school would run across a busy highway rather than interact with other desis. Then they try out Hollywood or more avant garde venues and find that the only bankable asset they have is their Indianess. One of the reasons why I refuse to buy tickets to “South Asian” film festivals or read ABCD lit…don’t want to encourage the exoticizing, treacherous bastards.
But then again, and I know we have been warned from making such remarks, I look at her and cant get very angry.
i have to say. she has really a really flat stomach. if doing that work out gets me that flat a stomach, i might be in…
Looks like your typical hodge-podge of familiar Indian terms to lure the largest possible clientele, something for everyybody, be it Kama Sutra, Yoga, Classical Indian dance, Bollywood moves — which are all very different. Is ‘Dance of the Kama Sutra’ even gramatically correct? Its all about fusion practice these days.
I just want to clarify that I am not the Hema of the post above, although I reserve judgment on whether I’m a Kama Sutra expert.
louiecypher – i think that’s a bit unfair – you assume that all ABDs are equal in their knowledge, exposure, and approach to desi culture. stereotype much?
if she’s been learning yoga from such a young age, she cannot just be a flash in the pan. a while ago, i came across one of her yoga tapes, which, from its description, seemed more authentic/less westernised than others. although, i cannot say the same for her ‘top-selling Bollywood Dance Workout.’ also, what’s with all the sacred, sensual, swishing – too much alliteration of the exotification! i guess even the more authentic practitioners can fall prey to the commercial aspects of the industry…
darling, that’s not for you to judge.
I really, really, really need to go to the next SM meetup. back to rahuls question from a few posts ago, “are we having sex with each other?”
“are we having sex with each other?”
Just cocktails. At least I think that’s what the kids are calling it these days.
I think ak and others said it – exotification out the wazoo, and I’m sick of seeing sacred twenty times around each utterance of the word kamasutra. And as far as I know the KS does not have any sacred sensual dance moves & sh*t!
She’s basically marketing it in a package that sells in the USA. Her stuff may be independently good (or not).
But the nauseating exotification bothers me.
they should superimpose this with news headlines of couples getting screamed at by right wing coo-coos in india for holding hands and kissing in public parks on valintines day…sacred sensual indeed…
do you guys think that the avg american is more likely to think of conservatism or the kama sutra when they think of india?
OTOH, if I had something potentially money-making that I could sell with the afore-abhorred exotification, I’d do it absolutely. This culture refuses to grow up vis-a-vis the east, so I say they deserve to be parted with their money with this technique.
Thanks, for the clarification, hema. I would also like to state for the record that I am not this Rahul. Although I reserve judgment on my square cut.
Also, let me be the first to say it. You women have it too easy, you just need to swish and sway your way to sensual success. If I did the same thing, you’d just call me Richard Simmons.
richard simmons wasnt exactly a failure…work it rahul, WORK IT!!!!
Ok, PindaUS (sorry Kush :-), you be Richard Simmons then!
Did you hear about the latest brouhaha by the koo-koos over the jimmy hat with the vibrating base? Indian Supreme Court will now have to apply its expertise to the taxonomical classification: sex toy (banned) or prophylactic(OK) The thought of some octagenarian in a white powdered wig mulling this over makes me laugh and laugh (and laugh some more)
oy, homegirl is doing a great thang, convincing women to swish and swoosh and become divine sensual playful thangs. Somebody forward this to Nussbaum — she’d be glad to know we’re finally down with our sensuous playful traditions after all those suppresin repressin conquerors.
I think what made me snicker was the line about the divine dancers we have always been. I think the underlying conversation about what does it mean for an ABD to exoticize/pimp/appropriate stereotypes is interesting. It might be that the video is totally whatevs; I haven’t seen it, so I reserve judgment. Oh life, so complicated.
Also, is her name “Himalaya” but written more phonetically?
Should we include airforce base heri pheri? I feel like we should be very open to all orientations in our group orgy. 🙂
Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
It’s the marketing language that’s sickening/pandering. It’s clearly not meant for the desi peeps but for the average, enlightenment-seeker-hippy-like-patchouli-smeared-dream-journal-writing-unshaven-crunchy-hottie-that-you’d-still-like-to-bed type of woman.
There’s an average woman of that type? Also, you omitted birkenstock-wearing-burningman-celebrating.
Be careful to distinguish airforce base from aircraft carrier though. You need both.
The word empowered gets thrown around a lot in yuppified exotic dance circuit. Teaching people to get it on is noble enough pursuit, but how is playing pretend-stripper empowering? An old school feminist friend was working on promotional materials for one such class. She was so annoyed by the e word, that she finally walked out of the job. I don’t have a strong reaction to it. It seems like a clumsy attempt at respectability. What do you wise people think?
Shodan, figure it out for yourself.
do you guys think that the avg american is more likely to think of conservatism or the kama sutra when they think of india
The music is Carnatic during the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut and I think the vocals were in Tamil. The prelude to the orgy has such strong catholic overtones that an opera would have been perfect. The Indian connection is jarring since there is none in the rest of the movie.
Well, I guess Kubrick falls in the KS camp.
has anyone here actually been to (or heard of) an 0rgy full of tamilians?
Amaun, Was’nt the voice over in Sanskrit and not Tamil ? BTW, I did not like/ get Eyes wide shut at all .Am I the only one?
the only value i saw in that flick was that it is a p0rno with A list celebs.
BTW, I did not like/ get Eyes wide shut at all .Am I the only one?
You’re not alone. It’s probably some really complicated Scientology thing that only Xenu can really explain anyway.
nope. just p0rn…
It was in Sanskrit – I believe it was the Gayatri Mantra.
I thought the first hour of EWS was fantastic, but the rest of it was mediocre (I think most people disliked the movie, period). What I think Kubrick excels at is exposing the hypocrisies underlying polite society. He did it in Clockwork Orange, and he did the same in EWS (both in the party scene and the bedroom scene). And he beautifully illuminates the inconsistencies in war in Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket. And while Lolita the movie was nowhere close to Nabokov’s wonderful book, I can’t imagine any other director doing even a halfway decent job at it. As for The Shining, it’s the one horror movie that’s genuinely scared me.
Now, he’s done a fair number of adaptations, so maybe you can argue that’s really the greatness of the source material he’s working with, but there are enough movies (Lord of the Flies, Bonfire of the Vanities etc.) to demonstrate that this need not be the case at all.
I don’t know. The swish by swish pelvic exercise video is not new nor is it Desi. OTOH, in a society where yab-yum can mean this and this and this, this marketing ploy is only running with the crowd…
This Hemalayaa chick has awesome torso.
ek, do, teen,char
If this yogashoga doesn’t work out she can always go to bollywood.Good luck Hemalayaa. Buy some amrutanjan next time you are in indian store. Inda madiri bend yellam pannina amrutanjanam thadavikanamnu perayavanga sollirukka.
char.
maybe i should go to yoga classes. d*mn…
Rahul at #38:
What bothered me about Eyes Wide Shut was that it didn’t seem very Kubrickian to me…certainly not in the league of A Clockwork Orange or Dr. Strangelove. And I think the film was hurt by the casting, honestly.
has anyone here actually been to (or heard of) an 0rgy full of tamilians?
cough kinda… and I’m white.
Teaching people to get it on is noble enough pursuit, but how is playing pretend-stripper empowering?
Have you read the book Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy? She does a great feminist exploration (and by “exploration,” I mean “ripping to shreds”) of the idea that the porn/stripper aesthetic is somehow “empowering” or anti-sexist. She doesn’t deal so much with the aspect of exoticization that’s at play here, though.
But then, almost all marketing of anything Indian (or even just smacking of Indian-ness) is pretty much exoticized here in the US… There have been a few instances that seem like legitimate attempts to bring aspects/representations of Indian culture to American/Western (Bend It Like Beckham?) but it’s always problematic. How do you navigate the line between cultural exchange and exoticism/cultural imperialism?
info please…this ive gotta hear.
42 And I think the film was hurt by the casting – cruise & kidman ruined EWS-kubrick
nalla sapaadu. pretty cool name for a blog…
cough kinda… and I’m white. info please…this ive gotta hear.
Ah, but I’ve already said too much! (grin)
awww….ur no fun…
Are jaadagams exchanged? When is the bajji-kaapi ingestion protocol initiated?
WTF does yoga have to do with Kama Sutra?!!
Besides that, doesn’t “Hemalayaa” sound like a made up name?