`Abimanyu Dies in Action' to play first at festival
JAKARTA (JP): The dance company of Theodora Retno Maruti was awarded the honor of opening the Indonesian Dance Festival on Thursday at the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center in Central Jakarta.
Hundreds of art critics, celebrities and dance enthusiasts applauded Theodora, the choreographer and also one of the dancers, following the performance of Abimanyu Gugur (Abimanyu Dies in Action), a classical Javanese dance performed in Mangkunegaran style.
Mangkunegara is the name of an ancient powerful Javanese kingdom based in Surakarta, Central Java.
"I 'm very optimistic about the future and survival of this classical dance," Theodora told The Jakarta Post in the dressing room.
Sal Murgiyanto, one of the festival organizers, said eight Indonesian choreographers along with six international dance companies from the United States, Japan and Malaysia, are taking part in the festival.
The eight are Theodora (Jakarta), Sardono W. Kusumo (Surakarta), Gusmiati Suid (Jakarta), S. Parmadi (Surakarta), I Ketut Rina (Denpasar, Bali), Ery Mefri (Padang, West Sumatra), Sukarji Sriman (Jakarta) and Dewi Hafiyanti (Jakarta).
Molissa Fenley, Polly Motley and Yin Mei Critchell from the United States, Aida Z. Reda and Suhaimi Magi from Malaysia as well as Tomoe Shizune from Japan are the foreign participants.
Abimanyu Gugur is a part of the classical Indian Mahabharata epic which recites political struggles, love affairs and enormous battles pitting the five Pandawa brothers against the one hundred Kurawa brothers. Abimanyu's father is Arjuna, one of the Pandawa brothers.
Ruri Nostalgia, the daughter of Theodora, who played the role of Abimanyu, led one of Pandawa battalions in one of the bloodiest battles of the Bharatayudha war.
Pandawa won the war but lost the battle. Abimanyu, however, died in action with one thousand arrows lodged in his body.
Goenawan Mohammad, the chief-editor of the banned TEMPO magazine, said at the theater that Theodora had successfully expressed the tragic death of Abimanyu to tell the audience about the saga's dark side: the Pandawa brothers defeated the Kurawas but lost all of their sons.
Festival
Three other choreographers, Yin Mei, I Ketut Rina and Dewi Hafiyanti, also performed their works on the opening day of the four-day festival.
Clad in red long dress, Yin Mei, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen, performed in Birds in Warped Time. She danced, jumped and pranced to express the struggle of a bird trying to escape from being trapped in a beam of light and succeeding in the end.
A teacher of ballet, traditional Chinese dance, Tai Chi, modern composition and techniques for improvisation and relaxation at Queens College in New York, Yin Mei displayed impressive and lively techniques of dancing that won tremendous applause from the audience.
Dewi Hafianti presented Malayok or Tari Piring ( Plate Dance), a Minangkabau (West Sumatra)-based folk dance, in which nine performers danced while carrying plates holding lighted candles in their hands.
Toeti Heraty, the rector of the Jakarta Institute for the Arts, said that the annual festival will play a significant role in the development of dance education in Indonesia.
Sardono W. Kusumo, a prominent Indonesian choreographer, is scheduled to perform his six-hour Detik ... detik ... Tempo work today from midnight till dawn. The dance is named after the recently banned DeTIK and TEMPO weekly magazines.(09)