1994 dance festival brings innovation

By Franki Raden

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Dance Festival l994 has succeeded in presenting outstanding and innovative developments in the contemporary dance world.

The five-day festival, Oct. 20 to Oct. 24, at the Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Center, was labeled by local and foreign critics as the most prestigious dance forum held in Indonesia this year.

Interesting and important progressive works were expressed by three noted choreographers, namely famous Indonesian artist Sardono W. Kusumo and two highly-acclaimed American dancers and choreographers, Mollisa Fenley and Polly Motley.

Mollisa Fenley displayed her impressive and progressive routines Inner Enchantment and Threshold on the second day of the festival.

Threshold, performed by Mollisa herself, establishes her extraordinary talent, both as a dancer and choreographer. What makes the dance more exciting is the music accompanying Mollisa in her routine.

The music, by renowned Japanese composer Somei Satoh, for piano, violin and percussion, creates the dramatic and contemplative setting which enables the dancer to give her dynamic and imaginative performance.

Her second routine, Inner Enchantment, reflects a post- modernism idea. In contrast to Threshold, with roots in American modern dance traditions, Inner Enchantment offers a new, aesthetic approach to dance.

This routine demonstrates an interesting aspect in dance: entertainment. Wearing a pop-style costume, Mollisa performs light, cheerful movements inspired by Asian traditional dances.

The routine is enriched with a mixture of pop and traditional music, composed by post-modern musicians Philip Glass and Lou Harrison.

It is interesting to note the use of Javanese gamelan music, Klenengan, in Lou Harrison's music for Enchantment. It is a creative and entertaining piece of work.

Through Enchantment Mollisa successfully interprets her message: pop artwork is not the same as low-quality routines. Mollisa reminds us the most important elements in creating art is how the work is being interpreted and how it entertains the audience.

In Inner Enchantment we see how serious Mollisa is in seeking an original language in movement, a process other modern artists also go through.

Mollisa's third work, Bridge of Dreams, performed on the third night of the festival, also reveals a new concept. She adapts music by Laurie Anderson, an American composer whose works contain many post-modernism ideas.

In the same vein as Mollisa, Polly Motley offers an attractive idea. Motley's piece, titled Rivers and Mountain without End, features movement in progression; a mixture of design and movement in dance. For Motley the stage is not merely a place to dance, not just functional space but space with its own autonomic, dynamic elements.

Like Motley, Mollisa uses visual elements, placing drums on the floor and hanging chicken cages from the stage ceiling, together with interesting lighting. She weaves in movements without the dancer dancing; instead they walk to certain positions on the stage.

Viewers who enjoy conventional works may be disappointed with Motley's piece: a new concept offered by a post-modernist.

Dancer Sardono W. Kusumo offers new ideas from Indonesia. Through his Detik Detik Tempo, he gives a dimension never raised in Indonesian dance -- political. As the title suggests, the piece is inspired by the government ban of the Tempo magazine and the Detik tabloid.

In the four-act work (like Simfoni, banned recently), Sardono plays more the part of an Editor (another banned magazine) for collaborative ideas which come out during the presentation.

Free of conventional limits, Sardono is able to bring out politically related ideas, particularly in the second act.

Dancers come on stage reading newspapers, and following Sardono's instructions, make them into dishes and eat noodles from them. This part invokes a repulsive image of authoritarian rule.

Conceptually, the most interesting part of Detik Detik Tempo is the third act, when a dancer weaves threads, crisscrossing a large area of the stage. This weaving becomes an appealing background for the movement and voice, composed by Otto Sidharta with his computer.

From an aesthetic view, the entertainment part of the dance is when Sardono invites a guest choreographer from the United States, Yin Mei Crutchell, to perform Tai Chi movements on stage. Regretfully Sardono's movements could not match the beauty of Yin Mei's, and an attractive duet did not happen.

As an intellectual artist, Sardono's work of protest would have been stronger if performed outside the Indonesian Dance Festival '94, particularly as it was very long, four-and-a-half hours, and staged at the unusual hours of midnight to 4:30 a.m.

It is also interesting to note that Sardono did not give the same introduction for his political dance to the non-Indonesian speaking audience.

The introduction in English said the Balinese concept of full moon mysticism was the basis for the dance -- not a protest of the bans on the publications, as explained in the Indonesian introduction.

As a result, his protest was half-hearted.

The writer is a music composer and a musicologist.