Danzare l'assenza. Pratiche coreutiche e lotta politica dei Tamil di Sri' Lanka

Every year since 1989, LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) supporters have commemorated the dead Tigers, called Maaveerar (“Great Heroes” in Tamil), in public ceremonies held all over the world. Maaveerar Naal is celebrated on November 27th, officially recognized as the day on which the first Tiger died. In Sri Lanka, before the defeat of 2009, the ceremonies used to take place in the Tigers’ cemeteries, known as Tuillum Illam (lit. “Sleeping houses”). People would bring flowers, incense, camphor and candles to the Tuillum Illam and would cry out in pain around the tombs and cenotaphs. In Diaspora countries, the settings for the celebrations, until the recent military defeat but also in the past year, have been public places such as theatres, sports centres, schools and public halls. Dance performances, particularly of bharata natyam, a South Indian style, have an essential role in these celebrations, which also feature political speeches, songs, poems and videos with images of crying women on Maaveerar graves. The aim of my disssertation is to analyse why dance, instead of another form of expression, has been chosen by Tamil migrants to commemorate their dead fighters. On the basis of my own ethnographic researches, carried out in Italy from 2000 to the present time, I will emphasize the importance given by Tamils to dance as a means of transmission of Tamil “heritage” and I will discuss the strategies that enabled the adaptation of a choreographic repertoire, sprung from an ancient religious matrix, to contemporary life and to its complex transformations. Besides I will examine how the Maaveerar Naal ceremonies organised among the Diaspora have been affected by the defeat of the Tigers in May 2009. In particular I will focus on the strategies elaborated by LTTE supporters to cope with the numerous absences that the military rout involved.