The Ethnographic Value of Digitizing Lomax’s Collection

Is performance that which disappears, or that which persists, transmitted through a non – archival system of transfer that I came to call the repertoire?
Diana Taylor

Alan Lomax, back in early 1960s, developed an archival system for what Diana Taylor defines as repertoire. According to Taylor, dance, movement and performance in general transmit knowledge that can’t be recognized in archived texts and documents. Lomax tried to fill this gap by collecting more than 3000 dance films from all over the world. He tried to capture and preserve the disappearing ephemeral (εφήμερο = something that lasts for only a day) in order to build a Global Jukebox so that musical, dance and speech styles of whole cultures or regions of the world would be called up by the user.
Ethnography (the practice and discipline of writing – γραφή about a group of people = έθνος) studies everyday life as lived “here and now” by a group of people. Although the video recordings that are part of the Choreometrics collection can no longer reproduce the fleeting aspect of the once performed dance, they can be a complementary research tool for the anthropologist who wants to revisit the field and understand in real time the social and cultural interactions he is interested in. Fieldwork needs to be continuously open and flexible but it also requires a lot of pre – research. If Lomax’s collection would be digitized, anthropologists will have direct access to a massive movement archive that in many cases reveals more about their field of research than a written text or document. Therefore researchers will understand better what is being reenacted now by knowing more about what was performed once.

Beyond the value of the content of the collection in terms of future ethnographies, the process itself of digitization of Lomax’s archive raises challenging methodological questions. First of all, it brings to the surface any potential connections between qualitative and quantitative research. The qualities of human movement can be systematically observed and analyzed quantitatively through movement analysis. If Lomax’s videos are digitized, these quantitative coordinates will make the qualitative content indexable and searchable. As a result, ethnographers could make clear connections between the movement that has been recorded and the movement that is observed and documented in real time.

Secondly, the digitization of Lomax’s archive reveals how video recordings as a methodological tool can be valuable when applied to the actual fieldwork. Although some might argue that the content of those videos is gone and therefore it no longer matters, it bridges the past with the present in ways that are widening the field of observation instead of narrowing it down to merely what is happening now.

The more than 3000 films collected by Lomax contain movement vocabulary that may no longer exist. Beyond the fact that if this content is not preserved it will be lost, the collection and its digitization itself reflects how classic anthropological ethnography can morph into an integrated form of study that does not choose to leave technology and multimedia untapped. It is a bet that ethnographers should be willing to take.

Kandyan dance: Journey through Ideas!

Kandyan-dance-Sri-LankaCultural practices are evolving through time and space shaped by different ideas of the people. Kandyan dance is one of several great examples that we can use to understand the evolution of ideas in Sinhala society in Sri Lanka and also in the Diaspora. Dance movements, costume, music instruments, and music rhythms of Kandyan dance of the Sinhala people in Sri Lanka have been shaped by many cultural contacts. Vedda culture (an indigenous group of people in Sri Lanka), South Indian culture, colonialism, globalism are among those factors that shaped Kandyan dance.
To understand the journey that a culture goes through to different ideas, we need materials from a wide range of history. However, finding and accessing audio visual materials that belong to different periods is very difficult. I was thrilled to notice that Alan Lomax had collected videos of Kandyan dance of Sri Lanka. Kandyan dance video is only one among hundreds of the dance traditions recorded as videos in Lomax’s collection.

The Brain and The Body

Recently in the neuroscience community there has been a lot of talk about Mirror Neurons. These neurons fire when you watch a performance and again when you perform the same movements. Scientists speculate that mirror neurons help us understand another person’s intention, empathize with them, and help us learn by imitation. If you have ever watched a dancer, and could feel what the dancer was feeling, that’s Mirror Neurons in action. Mirror Neurons give us the ability to watch a performance and understand the mental state of the dancers, what the dancer may be feeling, and make us better at performing those steps.

As you watch a few published Choreometrics videos and experience the vast culture in these eclectic performances, you become one step closer to understanding the culture and you grow a connection with the dancers. Many Choreometric performances are raw footage of people being themselves and expressing themselves through movement. Imagine watching a performance of a 16 year old girl in the 1960’s from an isolated village in Mauritius, and being able to get a glimpse of her struggles and her celebrations- that is what your brain is capable of. The reason everyone needs to see Choreometric videos in today’s emergent globalization, is not only to preserve the history and the culture, but also to facilitate communication. We need to be able to understand each other’s background and development, and what better way to do that than, to allow our brains to decode these performances in order to understand the intention behind the dance.

 

Summer progress at the Library of Congress

This summer I am continuing to work on the “Re-imaging and re-imagining Choreometrics” project by preparing some more materials for future grant applications so that we can start developing some of the ideas we have for the future of Choreometrics. We hope to secure funding to start digitizing a large portion of Lomax’s dance film clips, and we are working with Anna Lomax Wood and others at the Association for Cultural Equity to prioritize the collections that we want to digitize first. We also have other project ideas in the pipeline that will make use of these digital clips through analytical methods from various fields and collaboration by experts in those fields.

I have also been meeting with Todd Harvey and Lotus Norton-Wisla at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Lotus is doing a summer internship at the AFC on a fellowship from the Dance Heritage Coalition. She is an archivist and is spending time this summer going through the Choreometrics database to collate data and determine the quality of the films in storage. With input from Anna Lomax Wood and others, Lotus has identified a few of the collections in the Choreometrics collection as priorities for digitization: the Cord library, the presentation films, the Master Library, and the T-series. Todd and Lotus are also running a conservation report on the film reels so that we can determine the urgency of digitizing these clips.

Finally, we are thinking ahead to the Alan Lomax Centennial in January 2015. We will be helping to plan events to mark this celebration, including fundraisers that will benefit all projects related to the preservation and further development of Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics and Choreometrics collections, among others.

We are moving forward on these various threads and will report on our progress as the summer continues!

Interview with Anna Lomax Wood

When I think of Anna Lomax Wood, one word comes to my mind: empathy. Anna does not settle for her own comfort zone but chooses to view the world through the gaze of others. That’s what makes her a wonderful anthropologist, a successful director of ACE and a great successor to her father’s unique work. I could not feel anything less than grateful, since our interview with her reminded me why I became an anthropologist myself.

We were at the same space (at ACE, at Hunter College, in New York City) where Alan put both his visions and his recordings in order; we could see pictures of his fieldwork on the walls, listen to songs of his folkloric research, read some of his ethnography, and access parts of his archive.

When we entered the room where the interview was going to take place I saw Murdock’s Outline of World Cultures on a shelf. I smiled and Anna looked at me and said “Today’s anthropology is much too introverted. Ethnographers barely travel anymore”. And she is right: in a world where arts and humanities are underfunded, ethnography shifts its focus to everyday life, but ethnographers can barely travel to see the embodiment of everyday life.

I know that Alan’s methodology and work have been criticized a lot. “Alan aspired to capture authenticity in anthropological film making. Yes, there was a methodological complexity but how else could you do it?” Anna asked me. “I do not understand why people feel annoyed instead of finding ways to keep what really works and get rid of what doesn’t”. At that point, I felt that those words are words that motivate the researcher to understand what theory and methodology bring to the field. Instead of immediately rejecting an approach because it appears flawed, perhaps we should investigate what does work and discuss what does not. Her openness is what I believe is Anna’s most precious gift.

Archived but Inaccessible

On February 7, 2014, our team went to the Library of Congress and met with Todd Harvey, the curator of the Alan Lomax Collection and Betsy Peterson, the Director of the American Folklife Center. Following are some reflections on the trip and the collection:

Each visit to the Library of Congress never fails to engulf me in a sense of adventure and excitement, however last Friday I had a different feeling. Walking down past the “stacks”, down several floors, into a narrow hallway I saw a treasure. I saw years worth of research and knowledge locked in a room – waiting for time to erode our culture away. At first, i was fascinated at how detailed Alan Lomax was in collecting and analyzing performances from around the world. Then sadness took over me, as I realized it was all locked away in a corner of a library. From the movie “Rhythms of Earth”, a piece of Alan Lomax’s work, I remember many performances, each very distinct from another. Each movement telling a story in itself. And these shelves were filled with these stories I had never before heard or seen.

In the storage unit dedicated to Alan Lomax, I saw clips from every corner of the world, from Russia, to Greece, to India. So much of our past, and it was in danger because the quality of these films are degrading with each passing moment. Why is one of our greatest archives of movement this state? The next performance version of the famous “Mona Lisa” is hidden away from everyone! At that moment, all i wanted to do was to watch every second of it, hoping to save a little piece of it in my memory. But that’s not enough. I know that if I don’t act now, I will be the culprit of smothering one of our greatest knowledge about our history, culture, and body. These films need to be shown to the world. ~ Sargoon Nepaul

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Karen Bradley, Emma Sessions, Drew Barker, Sargoon Nepal and I were interviewing Mr. Todd Harvey, the curator of Alan Lomax Collection. “The great thing about Lomax was that he found his way into the arts when academia strived for grand unifying theories of everything”. Coming from an anthropological, movement and performance studies background I think that the least we could do is take Alan Lomax’s idea and move it forward in ways that we could not even yet imagine.

When Mr. Harvey took us down to the basement, I found a very well categorized and organized world that includes more than 2000 films and more than 3 huge corridors of textual ethnography; materials that need to be re visited, re lived and re embodied. Even beyond ethnography’s false dichotomies that distance the “database” from its cultural soul, one thought keeps coming back “This archive should be out there”.

Lomax documented movement and movement is meaning. Therefore, Re – Imaging and Re – Imagining Choreometrics is a call for a collective of e – motions through crowd sourcing. After all, to paraphrase Foucault, movement does not move, people do. ~ Christina Banalopoulou

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I moved to Bethesda, MD about 4 years ago, and after my very first trip into the city, the Library of Congress was by far my favorite building. From the incredible architecture and the beautiful artwork, to knowing that housed under the brilliant marble floors is some of the most amazing collections of literature, music and film, I was in constant amazement. I had the privilege of meeting with Todd Harvey, the curator of the Lomax collection, and began to realize the true breadth of this collection and how truly important this project is. As we wound through the hallways and bookshelves, rode the elevator, crouched under the corridor, and arrived at the door to the collection, I was filled with awe. I couldn’t believe that I was walking underneath the building that I had walked through so many times. When we reached the door to the Lomax collection I still couldn’t believe it. We were there, looking at the reels of film, boxes of notes and shelves of books that were all integral to creating his Choreometrics project. This whole experience made me exponentially more excited about this grant and the work we are doing and acutely aware of its importance. I am so grateful to be a part of this amazing project, and I am so excited to see where it will go. ~Emma Sessions

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Dr. Todd Harvey calmly and seriously opened several sample archival boxes upon a large table. As the curator of the Alan Lomax Collection, he possessed a quiet solemnity while introducing us to papers of great cultural ambition. These items, certainly at least the Choreometrics boxes, had never been looked into by any visitor during their ten-year stay at the Library. As Dr. Harvey revealed fact after fact of archival wonder, I had to often control my jaw from dropping and my eyes from widening. The potential of bringing the Choreometrics project up out the Library’s basement almost boggles the mind. I was immediately struck by some of the photos Dr. Harvey showed us of Lomax editing some of the short films he produced. If we can share not only images of Lomax’s process but also a vision of the potential for re-imagining the project, it should not be too difficult for people to see the cultural value.
Lomax’s “southern journey” exploring blues music has a sexy aura which many people recognize. How can we make the Lomax Choreometrics collection attractive? Just as we will be focusing on the past, present, and future of the project, we should also consider those who may have a beginning, intermediate, and advanced knowledge of dance. If we can engage the curiosity of all three levels of knowledge, then I believe we will garner the largest amount of interest. Juxtaposition with famous dances of today may be another effective tactic.

After speaking with Dr. Betsy Peterson, we should think about how we can frame a progressive orphan policy in order to more readily ensure publication of certain film clips. This will require lots of hours of research it seems, but perhaps a policy that sets limits could free up some copyright issues within a shorter period of time. Also, because of the Lomax centennial arriving next year, we should also include a banner or box about that on our website. Framing the future of this valuable project should enable support of this project. ~Drew Barker

The Beginning: Our “Re-Imaging and Re-Imagining Choreometrics” Goals

We believe that in the future, information will be constructed and shared. Information/data will not be territorial, but will be inclusive of origination and history. As researchers, scholars and everyday people encounter information, they will be affected and will contribute to the accumulation of analysis and understanding.

The “Re-Imaging and Re-Imagining Choreometrics” project is in line with the above ethos, in that it purports to develop an entryway into a collection that is currently inaccessible and yet is vitally important to intra- and inter-cultural understanding; one that scholars and cultural workers and artists can both contribute to and utilize.