1994 dance festival brings innovation

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.