Old dancers never fade away<\/p>\n
By Mariam K. Sutalaksana<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Dancers who have survived for more than 20 years
\nin Indonesia and are dedicated in their field to produce the best
\nof works deserve an individual commentary.<\/p>\n
The performances held at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta on Sept. 26
\nand Sept. 27 at the "Old Dancers Never Fade Away" event were
\nsubstantial in their theme. The maturity of the so-called "old
\nperformers" was a quality that many young dancers, with a few
\nexceptions, seemed to lack.<\/p>\n
For older audiences and performers it was a walk down memory
\nlane, reminiscent of the choreography of the late Hoeriah Adam,
\nand gave them the feeling of how it was to perform again.<\/p>\n
In the Tari Payung (Umbrella Dance), Sri Respatini
\nKususmastuti, pairing up with Deddy Luthan, claimed she had not
\nperformed for 20 years and felt nervous even after the show. Yet,
\nthat dance, though lacking the punch and precision of younger
\ndancers, was pleasant to watch.<\/p>\n
For the younger generation, the two-night series of
\nperformances was a modern history lesson in dance and
\nchoreography, to let them know the who's who in the Indonesian
\ndance scene since the 1960s.<\/p>\n
The dancers highlighted in the event were those who came
\ntogether during the 1960s and 1970s in their intercultural
\nworkshops to preserve and create the Indonesian dance.<\/p>\n
The first night of performances featured a more traditional
\napproach with Kardjono's Javanese style, I Wayan Diya's Balinese
\ninfluence, and the late Hoeriah Adam's West Sumatran heritage.<\/p>\n
The following night, Farida Oetoyo danced in one and
\nchoreographed two works titled Prologue and Perjalanan 20 Detik,
\nwhile Yulianti Parani showed off her Nirkata and Sardono
\npresented his social awareness work Soloensis.<\/p>\n
The first night started with a flight to Bali in I Wayan
\nDiya's Rejang Pakenak.<\/p>\n
It is a welcoming dance usually performed in an opening
\nceremony at Hindu temples in Bali, to provide a pleasant
\natmosphere for the gods.<\/p>\n
That night, it was to welcome the guests, the memory of the
\ndances and the dancers of the recent past.<\/p>\n
The distinct vibrant music of Bali caught the interest of the
\naudience in the beginning as well as in the end when I Wayan Diya
\nperformed in his choreography Ginal Ginul.<\/p>\n
Spirits<\/p>\n
This ingenious choreography was essentially a solo with two
\ngroups of musicians standing and walking around the main dancer.<\/p>\n
It was a dialogue of two spirits on their way down from heaven
\nto earth before they entered two bodies which would eventually
\nbecome husband and wife.<\/p>\n
The dancer's back was dressed in a traditional male Balinese
\ncharacter costume with a red mask while the other side was
\ncovered with female attire and white female mask.<\/p>\n
The mastery of Diya in Balinese movement and technique was
\nindisputable. Other works shown included those by the late
\nHoeriah Adam.<\/p>\n
The more popular works were Tari Piring, Tari Payung and Tari
\nBarabah.<\/p>\n
The colorful kalempong music accompanied the dances on stage.
\nThese dances were performed by older dancers, some with graying
\nhair who knew Adam in person.<\/p>\n
They danced with character and with a visible remnant of
\nquality. This could have only made the audience wonder how they
\nwould have danced in their heyday.<\/p>\n
The works by Adam were a predecessor to the many works by
\nyounger choreographers from West Sumatra.<\/p>\n
Many of the dances are considered classic and with some
\nmodifications are still performed today.<\/p>\n
Jumping from Sumatra to Sulawesi, the audience witnessed a
\nrearrangement of a traditional dance called Pakarena. In this
\ndance where poise and character were important, Farida Oetoyo,
\nYulianti Parani, Wiwiek Sipala and Edi Sedyawati, the director
\ngeneral of culture at the Ministry of Education and Culture,
\nsuccessfully embodied the spiritual content of the dance.<\/p>\n
They walked gently on stage together carrying a long scarf on
\ntheir shoulders. The serenity of the movement followed in their
\nsmooth contemplation of motion.<\/p>\n
Even as their scarf fell to the ground, their meditation was
\nunaffected and a figure wearing black picked it up and placed it
\nback to where it belonged.<\/p>\n
In a slight contrast to Pakarena, S. Kardjono's Bronto Asmoro,
\na rearrangement of Central Javanese dance about a king in love,
\nwas a more energetic number.<\/p>\n
Transition<\/p>\n
The second night was a transition from the more romantic past
\nto the more serious present, with the issues in the first night
\nbeing idyllic.<\/p>\n
The audience was invited to move into the present time
\nstarting with Yulianti Parani's Nirkata.<\/p>\n
The dance was a new and vibrant choreography that incorporated
\nher past creations. It used colorful fabric as props. To the
\nmusic by Kronos, the dancers walked joyfully around the stage,
\nplaying with the fabric.<\/p>\n
They carried bright orange, green, red and pink fabric and
\nused it to make different play things. Hopping, jumping and
\nrunning around to the beat, Negaka Jauhari used her bright pink
\nfabric as a sarong.<\/p>\n
At one corner three dancers pulled on a piece of fabric while
\nat another corner a couple deliberately moved together shoulder
\nto shoulder. It was about togetherness and in remembrance of
\nParani's creation in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n
Afterward, in Prologue by Oetoyo, drama grew as a spotlight
\nshone on a dark figure on the right stage. With her hands
\nstretched toward the heavens, her legs split in front of her on
\nthe floor and her torso pulled back, she looked up.<\/p>\n
In this short composition to the music of Wong Aksan, Oetoyo
\nand Henry Jones's collaboration whetted the appetite of the
\naudience to what was to come.<\/p>\n
Though quite brief, one could see the maturing of Jones in the
\nmodern piece with his new hairstyle complementing the lines of
\nhis movement.<\/p>\n
Last year, he played Captain Hook in Peter Pan. This duet was
\na lovely show of modern technique.<\/p>\n
In Perjalanan 20 detik (The 20-second journey), a spark of
\nenergy was laid out in a duet to Terem Quartet's euphony. The
\nduet was performed by Jonita Sjah (Niniek) and Chendra Effendy,
\nformer students of the Sumber Cipta ballet led by Oetoyo.<\/p>\n
What came after Oetoyo's pieces was a long one-and-a-half hour
\npiece by Sardono.<\/p>\n
It probably should not have been merely considered a dance,
\nbut rather a multimedia social awareness campaign.<\/p>\n
Sardono entered the stage casually with his loose, white
\ntrousers, long-sleeved shirt and his long hair.<\/p>\n
He came in talking about how nice it was to be a dancer in
\nIndonesia, because even before the performance the organizer had
\nprovided refreshments.<\/p>\n
Fire<\/p>\n
He went on to give political comments on social issues in
\nIndonesia until he took out a letter he received from a friend in
\nSumatra in 1983.<\/p>\n
The letter described the pain and suffering of his friend
\nduring a forest fire that year where animals had nowhere to go
\nbut to join people who eventually ate them out of starvation.<\/p>\n
He appealed to the audience to imagine how it was this year
\nwhere 20 million lives were affected. Only after his speech did
\nhis dance begin.<\/p>\n
On the backdrop of the stage were two large screens that
\nplayed a series of speeches from the United Nations on the
\nsubject of poverty and suffering.<\/p>\n
On the sides of the stage, six TV screens played clips of a
\ndocumentary on the Dani tribe from Irian Jaya and a prerecorded
\nperformance by Sardono in a paddy field.<\/p>\n
The audience was kept waiting a long time before Sardono
\nfinally entered again to touch the pile of earth placed on center
\nstage.<\/p>\n
He gave another speech on Soloensis and his heritage and told
\na story of man's relationship with the earth.<\/p>\n
To the beat from the documentary of the Dani tribe, his
\ndancers, wearing costumes from what a primitive culture might
\nhave been like, moved toward the pile of earth.<\/p>\n
Some repeated the same movement over and over worshiping the
\nearth.<\/p>\n
Then two women moved in an elegant Javanese classical movement
\nto seed and plant the land.<\/p>\n
It was almost like a mambo of movement which moved the dry
\nearth on stage to the audience.<\/p>\n
The air in the theater was filled with flying dirt. People
\nwere coughing, sneezing and in the middle some even walked out of
\nthe theater.<\/p>\n
The speeches were repeated, the dancers still worshiped the
\nland.<\/p>\n
The plants disappeared. The primitive men jumped on the earth,
\ncreating a larger cloud of dust on stage. The speech still played
\non until, in the end with Mother Theresa speaking, the recording
\nstopped.<\/p>\n
The room went silent. The dancers moved back on stage. They
\nbent down to the earth to pick up the dirt and slowly poured it
\nback onto the pile of dust. A light applause filled the theater.
\nThe woman figure stayed on top of the dry brown mound of dust.<\/p>\n
If Sardono's attempt was to bring the audience closer to the
\nsuffering of the forest fire victims, he had succeeded.<\/p>\n
That night what the audience felt was just a glimpse of what
\nit might be like to suffer from the smoke of the forest fires.
\nFor those who did not want to suffer from coughing that night
\njust left. But what about those who can not leave?<\/p>\n
The old dancers of Indonesia will not fade away. Their
\npioneering spirits are what brought Indonesian dance to what it
\nis now. If not for their physical prowess on stage, they will
\nlive on in their creativity, ideas and their contribution to
\nsociety.<\/p>",
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