Evocative body

The term evocative body refers to a concept of the body introducing, defining and explaining the ‘evocative’ nature of the body in performance. It is a condition of the body capable of evoking emotions, imagination and imageries in and between bodies. It is purely a performative organization of the body, in a performance, oriented towards poetic reasons. It is magical and trance-formational. The paper will address some of the key issues in the conceptualization of the body in recent theories of performance relocating the ‘evocative’ nature of the performer’s body within the wider debates of technique as knowledge. Socially and culturally, techniques become the knowledge of the body. Techniques are restored in the body and transmitted physically and orally to other bodies. The learning and sharing of these techniques form the basis of social codes of practice purely based on practical reasons. Drawing on two examples of practice such as Mudra (hand gestures) and Tattu-Marma, a relatively unknown martial art form of Kerala, the paper will ask the key question as what make the organization of the body in a performance different from the social organization of the body, and where do we draw the line between the ‘social’ and ‘performative’ in terms of the use of techniques