Paula Lin­do

Mem­bers of the arts and let­ters com­mu­ni­ty re­flect on the Min­shall-de­signed 2016 Car­ni­val king The Dy­ing Swan: Ras Ni­jin­sky in drag as Pavlo­va.

"T&T mas has played The Glo­ry that was Greece, Im­pe­r­i­al Rome, Africa, New Guinea, Chi­na: the For­bid­den City and gone in­to realms of fan­ta­sy. There are no bound­aries to the realms of the imag­i­na­tion."

Vet­er­an mas de­sign­er Pe­ter Min­shall had those words for those who ques­tioned the rel­e­vance of his 2016 Car­ni­val king, The Dy­ing Swan: Ras Ni­jin­sky in Drag as Pavlo­va. The piece, per­formed by vet­er­an moko jumbie stilt-walk­er Jha-Whan Thomas and ac­com­pa­nied by pan play­er Fay­ola Grander­son, placed third in the King of Car­ni­val fi­nals on Tues­day.

Min­shall said, "In my lit­tle in­ven­tive Tri­ni mind years ago I thought, 'Well, clas­si­cal Africa could mix and mar­ry with clas­si­cal Eu­rope, so you could put bal­let shoes on a moko jumbie and he'd lit­er­al­ly be danc­ing on his toes."

He said there's a spe­cial cre­ativ­i­ty and mag­ic in T&T that "gives us the in­cred­i­ble abil­i­ty to blend as­pects of dif­fer­ent cul­tures in­to a ta­pes­try of ex­tra­or­di­nary orig­i­nal­i­ty and beau­ty and make it ours."

The Dy­ing Swan is the name of a short work orig­i­nal­ly chore­o­graphed by Mikhail Fokine in 1905 to Camille Saint-Sa�ns's 1886 com­po­si­tion Le Cygne (The Swan), as a spe­cial piece for leg­endary Russ­ian bal­le­ri­na An­na Pavlo­va. Vaslav Ni­jin­sky was one of the world's great­est male bal­let dancers and they both danced for the Bal­lets Russ­es, the most in­flu­en­tial bal­let com­pa­ny of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Austin Fi­do, who was a pro­duc­er of the cos­tume, said the choice of the piece was ap­pro­pri­ate for Min­shall be­cause "it was made for a bal­le­ri­na crit­ics said couldn't dance en pointe prop­er­ly and pro­duced by a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er crit­ics said didn't favour that style of danc­ing, and it proved their crit­ics wrong.

"The (Dy­ing Swan mas) is very specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to show­case that as­pect of a bal­le­ri­na's skill, and the tiny steps fur­ther chal­lenge the ex­pec­ta­tions of what moko jumbies can do."

Min­shall said peo­ple would see dif­fer­ent things in the mas­quer­ade. "I have pro­duced a mas, a work of art that com­bines dance, move­ment and hu­man ap­par­el. What you wear is the work of art, the verb is 'to play the mas.' When the mas is played, it sub­tly com­mu­ni­cates all sorts of things and brings to peo­ple a light that il­lu­mi­nates their own ex­pe­ri­ences of life."

The main au­di­ence re­sponse to the per­for­mance was one of won­der. Writer and ed­i­tor Judy Ray­mond, who has in­ter­viewed and writ­ten about Min­shall many times, said, "No one else un­der­stands now how to com­bine the char­ac­ters and ba­sic me­chan­i­cal prin­ci­ples of the mas in­to a new work of art that says some­thing about the world, es­pe­cial­ly our cor­ner of it. Stand­ing on the shoul­ders of mas gi­ants, he draws on tra­di­tions from all over the world and us­es old el­e­ments to cre­ate a new com­bi­na­tion which seems fa­mil­iar and yet fresh at the same time."

Writer and ed­i­tor Nicholas Laugh­lin said 30 years from now peo­ple will still be talk­ing about the piece. "No oth­er mas on the Kings and Queens stage got such a pro­longed re­sponse from the stands. I think peo­ple re­act­ed to the el­e­gant but de­cep­tive sim­plic­i­ty of the per­for­mance and the cos­tume, the min­i­mal­ist sil­hou­ette, the eye-re­fresh­ing white palette, the gor­geous elon­ga­tion of the mas­quer­ad­er's legs and the del­i­ca­cy of his steps."

While laud­ing Min­shall's cre­ation, cul­tur­al stud­ies re­searcher Rho­da Bharath said the re­ac­tion to it was trou­bling.

"In 2016, that a moko jumbie dressed as a bal­le­ri­na still shocks the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the mas­quer­ade view­ing pub­lic shows how far we have drift­ed away from the cen­tre. The mas­quer­ade shook peo­ple up be­cause of how much Min­shall ad­hered to the ba­sics of mas and mas­quer­ade."

She said Min­shall un­der­stands mas is a per­for­mance and a rit­u­al tied to the cul­tur­al­ly res­o­nant space of T&T, not just "run­ning across the stage in a cos­tume be­ing dragged on three wheels. He shows why we rev­er­ence him and con­sid­er him a bit of a ge­nius, be­cause he pulled things that were ob­vi­ous­ly in front of us to­geth­er in a way that took many peo­ple's breath away."

Min­shall com­mend­ed pan play­er Fay­ola Grander­son, say­ing her live per­for­mance helped to ce­ment the mas. "Just the sound of our steel; it re­al­ly is a mar­riage, that's who we are. We can take In­dia, sew it in­to the seams of Africa, em­broi­der it with Eu­rope and come up with some­thing no­body else could do, a moko jumbie danc­ing en pointe on stage!"

Min­shall said Thomas' per­for­mance was bril­liant and waved aside any con­tro­ver­sy about a male per­former por­tray­ing a fe­male bal­le­ri­na. "Men have been play­ing the parts of women for cen­turies in all cul­tures. When you look at Jha-whan's per­for­mance, you don't think male, fe­male, you think the Dy­ing Swan."

Oth­ers had a dif­fer­ent take on the is­sue.

Thomas said he thought peo­ple "would have been more tak­en aback by a king in fe­male gar­ments, but the moko jumbie do­ing bal­let, a clas­si­cal bal­let piece be­ing done in the height of Car­ni­val, that's the mind-blow­ing fac­tor that took them away from the ques­tion of whether it's an­drog­y­nous or not." He said he had no prob­lem with plac­ing third, as he thought the judges didn't re­al­ly know how to deal with the pre­sen­ta­tion.

Ray­mond said, "A man in a dress, danc­ing a tra­di­tion­al woman's part, it overt­ly rais­es the is­sue of gen­der, in terms of more than on­ly male or fe­male, in a way this so­ci­ety is on­ly now be­gin­ning to deal with. While 'drag'/ cross-dress­ing in Car­ni­val goes back cen­turies, we're not meant to be de­ceived in­to think­ing the char­ac­ter is be­ing danced by a woman. Hence 'Ras Ni­jin­sky', the choice of a mus­cu­lar, stocky mas­quer­ad­er and the less than per­fect­ly grace­ful 'fem­i­nine' move­ment.

"Those choic­es are per­haps es­pe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant now in an age of hy­per­sex­u­alised pret­ty mas, when women es­pe­cial­ly, and men, have to have per­fect bod­ies. This is a par­o­dy of a bal­le­ri­na, just as the 'fem­i­nine' mas women are ex­pect­ed to play par­o­dies re­al women. But this is not just par­o­dy ei­ther. It moves us. It's not 'jokey'; it's art."

Laugh­lin had sim­i­lar thoughts. "There's a touch of self-par­o­dy in a burly fel­la in drag por­tray­ing this med­i­ta­tion on mor­tal­i­ty. But a drag king, as a cap­i­tal-K King, hasn't been done be­fore and this mas has a stark rel­e­vance at a mo­ment when gen­der, sex­u­al iden­ti­ty and ex­pres­sion are be­ing vig­or­ous­ly de­bat­ed and con­test­ed in our pub­lic sphere."

Com­ment­ing on the com­pe­ti­tion, Bharath asked, "Why is our mas still so sta­t­ic and for­mu­la­ic, so un­re­lent­ing­ly mun­dane and rep­e­ti­tious? I think it's be­cause peo­ple are putting out a cos­tume sole­ly to win a prize and not be­cause they've been in­spired or be­cause they're hon­ing their craft or tech­nique and it's un­for­tu­nate." She said the mod­el of State fund­ing for cre­ative events needs to be au­dit­ed and re­vamped, be­fore things grind to a halt.

Laugh­lin said those who are so sup­port­ive of Min­shall's mas should go out and sup­port oth­ers that are do­ing sim­i­lar work, in­clud­ing younger mas peo­ple.He said those who think the Dy­ing Swan rep­re­sents some­thing lost from con­tem­po­rary mas should re­alise we chose to lose it.

"My chal­lenge to every­one who feels elat­ed or re­lieved by Min­shall's re­turn to the stage is to seek out, talk about, tan­gi­bly sup­port the kinds of mas you want to see more of, maybe even make or play it your­self. What's stop­ping you?"

In­no­va­tion?

As many have point­ed out, this is not the first big mas on stilts; on­ly last year the band of moko jumbies Touch D Sky won the Queen of Car­ni­val ti­tle with Stephanie Kan­hai por­tray­ing Sweet Wa­ters of Africa. Jha-Whan Thomas has played king on stilts be­fore, too: in 2006 he was Fan­cy Sailor King in Bri­an Mac Far­lane's 2006 band Threads of Joy, and won King of Car­ni­val as Pan­dem­ic Rage in Mac Far­lane's 2008 band Earth: Cries of De­spair, Wings of Hope.

Nor is it Min­shall's first for­ay in­to in­ter­fer­ing with the bound­aries be­tween male and fe­male in mas. Pat Ganese wrote in Caribbean Beat in 1992 about Min­shall's in­di­vid­ual Madame Hi­roshi­ma from the 1985 band The Gold­en Cal­abash, de­scrib­ing the mas as "a volup­tuous, de­mon­ic, male-as-fe­male crea­ture with a mush­room cloud over her skull/head."

In the tra­di­tion­al Trinidad Car­ni­val, sev­er­al char­ac­ters cross the same bound­ary, in­clud­ing the male pis-en-lit, a man in a blood­stained night­gown with a cham­ber pot in his hand; and the dame Lor­raine, a male mas­quer­ad­er in a dress with heavy padding made to rep­re­sent a co­quette with gross­ly ex­ag­ger­at­ed bust and bot­tom.

Nicholas Laugh­lin said, on this year's Min­shall mas, "Some­one asked me whether all the fuss is just be­cause 'it's Min­shall.' And of course the an­swer is part­ly and not sur­pris­ing­ly yes: he's a ma­jor artist, has ac­quired an en­gaged au­di­ence over the course of his ca­reer, and even a mi­nor work by Min­shall is go­ing to com­mand–the aptest word–our at­ten­tion." (LAA)