and shield, as well as other weapons in the stage combat arsenal used to
enact scenes drawn from India’s great epics, the Mahabharataand Ra-
mayana. The early Indian connection between martial and performing arts
is witnessed in the legacy of extant martial and performance genres today
throughout the subcontinent, from Orissa’s now refined dance genre,
Seraikella chhau,which originated in martial exercises before it became a
masked-dance/drama, to the kathakalidance-drama of Kerala, whose en-
tire training, massage system, and stage combat are derived directly from
its martial precursor, kalarippayattu.
In addition to the symbiotic relationship between traditional Asian
martial and performing arts, over the past twenty years contemporary per-
formers both in Asia and the West have begun to make use of martial arts
in training performers and as part of the development of a contemporary
movement vocabulary. Among contemporary Western theater practitioners
and actor trainers, A. C. Scott, Herbert Blau, and Rachel Rosenthal were
some of the pioneers during the 1960s, all making use of taijiquan (tai chi
ch’uan)—Scott in training performers at the Asian/Experimental Theatre
Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Blau and Rosenthal in
training members of their performance ensembles. Following their exam-
ples in using taijiquan, but also making use of the Indian martial art kalar-
ippayattu, as well as yoga, in the 1970s Phillip Zarrilli began to develop a
Performing Arts 421A Cossack soldier performs a dance with knives for Russian General Alexander Komaroff. A group of musicians pro-
vide accompaniment for the dancer, 1885. (Corbis)