Sardono cherishes his good fortune<\/p>\n
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
Some say success is 90 percent hard work and 10 percent talent,
\nbut famed Indonesian dancer and choreographer Sardono Waluyo
\nKusumo says luck also has plenty to do with his success.<\/p>\n
\"To tell you the truth, I was very lucky. There were probably
\na lot of other people better than me, I was just lucky,\" the 57-
\nyear-old said in an interview recently.<\/p>\n
Sardono, or Mas Don as he is affectionately known, said he was
\nlucky to have the patronage of former Jakarta governor Ali
\nSadikin, who helped him become what he is today -- one of
\nIndonesia's most renowned and respected dancers.<\/p>\n
\"Ali Sadikin could respond to (the artists') needs. Today's
\nartists aren't so lucky (to have such patronage),\" he said.<\/p>\n
One of the former governor's most valuable contributions to
\nthe Jakarta art scene, according to Mas Don, was the
\nestablishment of the Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) arts center in
\nCikini Raya, Central Jakarta, and the Jakarta Board of Arts
\n(Dewan Kesenian Jakarta) in 1968.<\/p>\n
\"For myself, if it wasn't for Taman Ismail Marzuki I wouldn't
\nhave been able to dedicate myself fully (to my work). It was
\nbecause of this that every time I created something there was an
\naudience and feedback, whether insulting or praising. That is
\nwhat motivated me (to create),\" he recalled.<\/p>\n
Mas Don remembered when TIM was the center of arts and culture
\nin Indonesia. \"Whatever (art developments) were happening in the
\nregions, they all made their way to TIM. Choreographers from
\nBali, Surakarta in Central Java, Bandung, Makassar, Irian
\n(Papua), all came, performed and we all shared (our knowledge).
\nWe examined each other's works and we interacted.\"<\/p>\n
Art is about being in the middle of society, he said, how an
\nartist can express his work in the middle of society. Being in
\ntouch with society is the way for art to thrive without losing
\ntouch with its surroundings. On the other hand, people would not
\nrealize the importance of art in their lives if opportunities for
\nperformances and art discussions were limited.<\/p>\n
\"This requires other people who aren't artists. It requires
\nproducers, critics and the media. I see there are a lot of
\nartists around but they don't interact with society because there
\nare no venues to do so. There are no public spaces for society to
\nmeet the artists' work,\" Mas Don said.<\/p>\n
\"I survived because I expanded my work beyond Indonesia and I
\nalready have a long track record. Before that, I was fortunate, I
\nworked at TIM, I was given the facility,\" he said, explaining
\nthat it was only because of his experiences at TIM that he was
\n\"strong\" enough to take on the international community.<\/p>\n
Born in Surakarta, Central Java, on March 6, 1945, Mas Don was
\nintroduced into the world of Javanese dance at the age of 11 by
\nhis pencak silat (traditional martial arts) teacher, R. Ng.
\nKridosoekatgo -- a pencak silat expert who was in the service of
\nthe Surakarta palace at the time.<\/p>\n
\"In his opinion dance was a higher form of silat. If you
\nlearned silat, you would be able to paralyze the attack of an
\nenemy. With dance, you could paralyze your aggressive intentions
\nbefore the attack had chanced to appear,\" he said in an article
\npublished on the Internet titled Hanuman, Tarzan, Pithecanthropus
\nErectus (2001).<\/p>\n
Mas Don's early dance teachers included R. Ng. Atmokesowo, who
\ntaught him the ropes and the refined dance styles of the
\nclassical Javanese dances, and R. Ng. Wignyo Hambekso who taught
\nhim to be free with his movements and expressions.<\/p>\n
His golden days as a classical Javanese dancer came in the
\n1960s with roles such as Rama, Hanuman and Rahwana in the
\nRamayana epic performed with Sendratari Ramayana Prambanan. He
\nthen went on to perform with the government troupe at the New
\nYork World Fair in 1964.<\/p>\n
Explorations beyond the world of classical Javanese dance
\nresulted from his interaction with international dancers at the
\nWorld Fair, like the Jean Erdman Theater of Dance in New York,
\nwhich in his own words did some \"strange experiments\".<\/p>\n
In 1968, he became the youngest member of the newly
\nestablished Jakarta Board of Arts.<\/p>\n
\"The Jakarta Board of Arts was amazing at the time. They saw
\nmy work in Surakarta and wrote a letter asking me to become one
\nof its board of directors. They gave me a Jakarta ID card and
\ntold me to move to Jakarta and I was only 23 years old, can you
\nimagine,\" Mas Don said.<\/p>\n
His work included the Samgita Pancasona (1969-1970), which the
\nlate scholar Umar Kayam called the \"Indonesian contemporary
\ndance\", but which received heavy criticism from the more
\ntraditional minded in Surakarta.<\/p>\n
Indeed, Mas Don does not see dance as a static art too
\ningrained in its own traditions to expand, but as a writhing,
\nwriggling, dynamic animal, based on tradition but continually
\nrenewing itself and exploring ways for invigoration. For this
\nview, Mas Don was to meet a lot of criticism and complaints from
\ntraditionalists.<\/p>\n
His breaking down walls of tradition did not stop with
\nJavanese dances, in Teges Kanginan village in Bali, too, he gave
\nnew life to the kecak dance of Walter Spies, rooted in the
\ntraditional sanghyang trance dance of Bali.<\/p>\n
\"Sardono's kecak was more dynamic, energetic, involving a lot
\nmore movements and sounds than the old kecak, which was performed
\nsitting down,\" I Ketut Rina, Mas Don's pupil and successor of his
\nCak Tarian Rina, once said.<\/p>\n
Mas Don's exploration of traditional dances also took him to
\nPapua with the Asmat tribe of the marshes and the highland Dani
\ntribe, and to the hinterlands of Kalimantan to the Dayak people
\nof Modang and Kenyah.<\/p>\n
\"My work is to search into the future through the past to
\nrecover the essential link between man and nature. I dance the
\nman who has lost his cultural roots, or from whom they have been
\ntorn, wandering in our contemporary forests,\" he said in 1997
\nafter receiving a Prince Claus Award. The award, which he
\nreceived together with art critic and curator Jim Supangkat, made
\nhim \"guardian\" and \"interpreter\" of Indonesian arts in foreign
\ncountries.<\/p>\n
His works include 1979's environmental-themed Meta Ekologi
\n(Meta-Ecology), 1983's Hutan Plastik (Plastic Forest), 1987's
\nHutan yang Merintih (Groaning Forest) and the critically
\nacclaimed Mahabhuta (1988).<\/p>\n
The 1993 work Passage Through the Gong was well received at
\nthe Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in New York,
\nand in October 1994 at the Indonesian Dance Festival Mas Don
\nperformed Detik-Detik, Tempo, from midnight until dawn, to
\nprotest the closure of the magazines Detik, Tempo and Editor.<\/p>\n
\"That was the last time I felt TIM functioned as it should.
\nThe last time I felt there was an interaction between society and
\nthe artist, in this case me, and that the infrastructure existed
\n(to support that interaction),\" Mas Don said.<\/p>\n
If his work found has been produced abroad more often than at
\nhome -- his work Soloensis was performed in Hamburg, Germany, and
\nSeoul, South Korea, as well as in Jakarta in 1997, and at the Rio
\nEarth Summit in 1999, and Nobody's Body at the opening of the
\nEsplanade in Singapore last year and in Jakarta last month -- it
\nwas more because of a lack of venues here than by choice.<\/p>\n
\"(The existing venues) aren't enough. There's too little money
\nand not enough space. When TIM's theaters existed there was a
\nplace for small productions, big productions and medium
\nproductions. Look at it now, the theaters have been torn down,\"
\nMas Don said.<\/p>\n
\"I can only take pity on our artists\", he said. \"It's bad they
\nhas to think about what to eat for their next meal as well as
\nfind time to practice and create.\"<\/p>",
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