Abstract

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Affair: Eros and Ethnicity in Geoffrey Holder’s Dougla

– Kaneesha Parsard

Geoffrey Holder’s ballet Dougla, first staged in 1956, appears to depict a marriage between dance, costume, and lovers of far-flung origins—its title drawn from the Trinidadian term for people of mixed African and Indian ancestry. While critics have privileged hybridity and creolization to interpret the ballet as such a marriage, this essay revisits Dougla to characterize it instead as affair. As the ballet inhabits the legacies of slavery and Indian indenture in the Caribbean, it is at the same time out of joint with history. Dougla troubles notions of origin and source with influence from Champa Devi, a “self-taught” Indian Trinidadian dancer, and the casting of African American dancer Melva Murray-White as the Indian bride in the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s performance. Its form emphasizes rhythmic thrusts, a dissonant flute line, and teasing looks, reanimating the gaze as a medium for fantasy. These compositional choices find resonance in the ballet’s paratext, which pointedly describes a “tangle” rather than union between Indian and African. With no clear lines of descent, and promiscuous, shifting clusters of performers, the ethnic essentialisms and politesse of “Indian bride” and “African groom” fall away. As affair, queer and at times profane, Dougla offers a messier imaginary of New World encounters.