A misstep in Yulianti's choreography

By Tetet Srie WD

JAKARTA (JP): Yulianti Parani is an artist to be reckoned with and a contemporary choreographer with a love of the past. However, her latest piece staged in Jakarta was seemingly out of step with her ability.

A pioneer in educational dance and occasional author, Yulianti wrote her master's thesis on the historical figure Daeng Parani, the name she subsequently adopted for herself. She participates actively in national and international forums on the performing arts, and her works are frequently the subject of discussion.

The role of this energetic and vivacious woman in educating her students to become choreographers cannot be ignored. She started from ballet, but her love of Indonesia's cultural heritage is evident in the way she has adapted herself to the traditional Betawi and Melayu arts.

After an absence of nearly 10 years, Yulianti Parani appeared at the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center on Nov. 14 and Nov. 15 with Nirkata. Senior dancers from the Jakarta Arts Institute, where Yulianti teaches, participated in the 25-minute piece supported by the music of Otto Sidharta and under the art direction of Soni Soemarsono. Sidharta and Soemarsono graduated from the same institute. The latter was once a disciple of Indonesia's stage expert Raden Roedjito.

Nirkata (Without words) deals with the difficulty of expressing intention through words. It is not choreography burdened by a story, but rather a demonstration of ideas that try to remind us of the necessity to re-position choreography according to the meaning and substance of movement.

Proper control can lead to a special performance if it enjoys the support of contributors and dancers who are capable of predicting or developing the choreographer's ideas. In other words, the success of the choreography is not solely the choreographer's responsibility. There is a demand on the dancers to give an artistic weight to the interpretation.

Soloists

Without real comprehension and with dancers more like puppets without souls, the choreography was unexciting. An arrangement of American and African music, taken from recordings by Mai Nozipo and Terry Riley and played by the formidable Kronos Quartet, became a mere guide for the counting of mechanical and verbal movements. Furthermore, the lights were focused on the dancers and the stage as if to justify the lighting of the performance.

Yulianti, a former official at the National Archives and a former chairwoman of the Jakarta Arts Council, needs to recognize or rethink her ideas and selection of dancers.

With regard to ideas, Nirkata, a piece filled with primary colors that change in function and shading, needs to be performed by skillful dancers who possess sensitivity and vision. Sukarji, Wiwiek Sipala, Henry and Dewi Hafianti, were not appropriate for Nirkata, a work that needs true soloists. Lest it become a tragedy, the piece should be reconstructed before it is staged again.