Art Summit Indonesia sees a wide variety of explorations
By C.G. Asmara
JAKARTA (JP): The second half of Art Summit Indonesia: International Festival on Contemporary Music and Dance has seen a wide variety of explorations into the meaning of contemporary performance. Two main currents have emerged over the course of the festival: those choreographers and composers who draw inspiration from their own traditional cultures and the traditional cultures of others to create new works, and those who focus on the exploration of new and unique movements, sounds and compositions.
Two dance groups strongly rooted in traditional cultures were presented by Sardono W. Kusumo (Sept. 29 and 30) and Bagong Kussudiardja (Oct. 10 and 11), both from Indonesia. These two choreographers, who were classically trained in Javanese dance and are well known in the Indonesian dance world, have produced numerous new works that draw from the many cultures throughout Indonesia. However, their most recent performances refer to the traditional dance genres of their native Java. Although they were both inspired by Javanese traditions, their individual choreographic styles and interpretations produced different results.
Sardono's Opera Diponegoro, follows the inner journey and outer struggles of Prince Diponegoro who led the popular resistance to Dutch colonialism during what has become known as the Diponegoro War from 1825 to 1830. Epic in scope, Sardono's piece attempts to assimilate a number of historical accounts of the events including various versions of the Diponegoro Chronicles, daily records, painting iconography and arrest reports with a narrative dance choreography that also includes sections of spoken dialogue such as a comic scene about villagers protesting land disputes.
Like the traditional Javanese performances of wayang wong and kethoprak, which serve as inspiration, Sardono's production of Opera Diponegoro straddles the border between dance and theater.
However, unlike the traditional genres, Opera Diponegoro is not a comfortable blend. Vacillating between the two performance genres, the production lacks an overall conviction that allows the audience to relax and be swept along by the images on stage. This lack of conviction is apparent not only in the structure of the performance, but also in the dancers' movements as well as in the roles Sardono plays in the performance. His three roles as himself as choreographer, as the painter Raden Saleh and as a narrator of the events are not clearly defined and leaves one baffled as to exactly when he is playing which role and what point of view he is trying to get across.
Perhaps the power and the beauty of the opening scene, where a full-stage reproduction of Raden Saleh's painting Penangkapan Diponegoro (Diponegoro's Arrest) by M. Effendi (Studio 41) slowly becomes transparent to reveal several dancers depicting a scene of colonialism's brutalities, sets a standard too strong for the rest of the performance. The grandeur and sheer number of the figures as well as the larger-than-life emotions depicted in the painting are almost impossible to compete with during the ensuing two hours of the performance. That is not to say that there aren't sections of arresting and innovative choreography in Opera Diponegoro, like a lone figure being whipped by colonial tormentors into a convulsive fury; four figures draped in white costumes (by Indonesian clothing designer Biyan) who begin the ecstatic swirl of Sufi dancers while hitting large drums placed on the floor with their long scarves; or scenes of war with the dancers carrying long thin flexible poles that whirl overhead.
But the performance on Sept. 29 in Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki, was an uneven juxtaposition of unconnected scenes of which some appeared more developed than others partly due to the dancers general lack of stage presence and apparent lack of confidence in their technical abilities that may have been solved by a longer rehearsal period and a clearer overall concept.
By contrast, the first piece of Bagong's program at Gedung Kesenian was simple, almost sparse in comparison and clearly demonstrated the technical mastery of his dancers over the choreography.
Entitled Semar, the piece is an abstract rendering of the multifaceted personality of Semar, the beloved wayang character who is at once both a servant and a god. Based on the symbolic classical Javanese dance Bedhoyo, that is performed by nine female dancers, Bagong's free interpretation features four male and five female dancers dressed in white and accompanied by a gamelan featuring various themes and compositions associated with Semar.
While much of the interpretation of Semar's character is lost on a non-Javanese speaking audience that can't understand the accompanying text, it is apparent that the simple, clear and often beautifully symmetrical movements of the dancers correspond to the sung poetry.
His second piece, Lelakon, is even more freely based on traditional Javanese dance, yet still strongly rooted in it and other traditional forms from other parts of Indonesia. As a reflection of the process of life, Lelakon features a loosely narrative composition that depicts scenes of conflict and love, desire and competition, power and powerlessness. Colorful, energetic, at times overly exuberant, this piece is in sharp contrast to the first. As with Semar, Bagong's choreography in Lelakon works best when it is meticulously detailed and synchronized as are the codified movements of classical Javanese dance such as an erotic scene of four women who, with flowing arms and graceful hands, arch forward and backwards on the floor accompanied by a tapestry of voices reciting Javanese tembang (poetry) rather than the chaotic running on and offstage that also makes up sections of the composition.
This past week has also brought two highly acclaimed choreographers: Kazuo Ohno who, at 89 years of age, is the oldest and perhaps best known dancer of the Japanese dance form butoh; and Richard Alston, who heads the Richard Alston Dance Company that was formed in 1994 in England. Unlike their Indonesian colleagues, these two choreographers did not draw from any kind of traditional performance in their work, although one could argue that they are both strongly influenced by ballet which, normally called classical, could be considered a western traditional dance genre.
On October 7 and 8 at Gedung Kesenian, Kazuo Ohno, performing with his son Yoshito Ohno, presented a 70-minute program entitled Water Lilies. It first premiered in 1987 at the World Theater Festival in Stuttgart. Although based on Nymphea, Monet's impressionist depiction of water lilies painted when he was elderly and had failing eyesight, Ohno has not explicitly used Monet's images in his dance composition. Rather, as he explains, "With Monet's help, I will find what lies at the locus of earth and cosmos; the water lilies."
Broken down into seven sections (A Woman Floating in Halley's Comet; Is this Flower a Baby, a Youth, or an Old Man; The Bridge of Heaven; A Crash of Thunder; Unfinished Thoughts; Pollen of Life; and Morning Feeling) both father and son dance a kind of haunting, grotesque ballet. Wearing the typical white face associated with butoh, the Japanese contemporary dance created in the late 1950's by Tatsumi Hijikata with whom Ohno began working in 1956, the duo appears dressed as both men and women in graying and decomposing costumes from a bygone era. At times it was hard to tell if Kazuo Ohno, with his large white hands and impossibly long fingers, was purposely acting old and gnarled as if in an advanced state of decay, or whether his venerable age was truly catching up with him.
Unlike his acclaimed 1993 New York performance of Ka Cho Fu Getsu (Flowers-Birds-Wind-Moon), this Jakarta performance of Water Lilies had none of its lyricism and almost childlike lightheartedness nor any of its energy. It had none of the sculptural qualities or even disturbing nature of the Festival's other butoh group, Sankai Juku. Rather, Water Lilies seemed to totter along with no apparent direction. This vagueness was not helped by the fact that there were no program booklets handed out (a rare happening for an event cosponsored by the usually information-rich Japan Foundation) and that the official Festival program booklet listed the wrong piece. It was a disappointment for those looking forward to seeing such a great master of butoh.
However, there is nothing vague about the powerful gestures of the Richard Alston Dance Company, who performed on Oct. 7 and 8 at Taman Ismail Marzuki. Technically superb, this group expertly performed three pieces including Richard Alston's landmark work, Rainbow Bandits.
While the company's exuberant body extensions and lifts were beautifully executed and made good choreographic use of the available space, this piece, which was originally performed in 1977, seemed dated and out of place in a festival of contemporary music and dance where most other groups have performed pieces that were choreographed much more recently.The final piece of the evening, Sometimes I Wonder (Stardust) variations on a classic song, which was especially created for their Southeast Asian tour this October, is a jazzy interpretation of one of the most popular American songs of the 20th century.
At times using motives and choreography reminiscent of Broadway musicals, this piece represents very little change stylistically from Alston's work 18 years ago. However, certain dancers are allowed to come forward with their own personal style of movement, a marked difference from the lack of individuality that the dancers possess in the other two pieces included in the program.
The four choreographers from Indonesia, Japan and England, each representing their own styles, strengths and weaknesses, have made important contributions to the rich tapestry of contemporary dance that has made up Art Summit Indonesia 1995.