| Summary: | International audience The Bharata-nāṭyam artist Vidhya Subramanian composed this play which celebrate the goddess Durgā. How does the staging of its extraordinary radiation problematize the representations of genders? What central questions does it suggest? Just as many of Bharata-nāṭyam’s contemporary plays question and renew the gendered codes of their art, Jai Durge seeks to move the public through the power of a feminine figure put to the front stage. In the epic prologue, the actress-dancer plays alternately two roles : the demon Mahiṣāsura and Durgā, which he considers as a mere dust. This duo, from the start, becomes a duel. The rhythmic and scenic analysis will shed light on the stakes of a fight in which the martial qualities of the female figure shine. The second part sings the praise of the goddess in Sanskrit. Large, dark, mysterious, graceful and terrible, she is represented by the gestural metaphors of the forest, clouds and the universe through lines inscribed in a circle. Like a yantra, geometric image used as a support for meditation, the goddess appears as an obvious metonymy of creation. The last part celebrates her as a universal mother, surpassing the uniqueness of form. The goddess finds herself at the centre of the musical cycles and visual circles drawn by the actress-dancer’s moving body. Like the circle of fire surrounding the divinity, the motif of the circle reveals through the prism of an intersectional reading of the stage the incessant evolution of ideas and images partially frozen in colonial and patriarcals constraints. L’artiste de Bharata-nāṭyam (théâtre-dansé du Sud de l’Inde) Vidhya Subramanian a composé la pièce Jai Durge en l’honneur de la déesse Durgā. Comment la mise en scène de son extraordinaire rayonnement problématise-t-elle les représentations des genres? De même que de nombreuses pièces de Bharata-nāṭyam contemporain interrogent et renouvellent les codes genrés de leur art, Jai Durge cherche à toucher le public par la puissance d’une figure féminine remise ...
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