Art Summit Indonesia's final week enjoys huge crowds

By Stevie Emilia and Yudha Kartohadiprodjo

JAKARTA (JP): The show must go on. That must be one of the philosophies behind the success of the second Indonesian art summit, which faced the risk of small audience turnouts due to the economic crisis.

Edi Sedyawati, director general of culture at the Ministry of Education and Culture, said that preparation for the event had started long before the economic disaster hit the country.

"If we canceled this event, Indonesia's name would be at risk in the international art community," she said a few days before the festival opened.

The first summit was held in 1995 and the government plans to hold successive ones every three years.

This year's art summit opened on Sept. 19, despite protests from some art students.

Fifteen groups from eight countries -- Indonesia, the United States, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Finland and Japan -- have taken part in the month-long festival.

The summit has lured large crowds of art lovers, with half of its performances filling more than 80 percent of the seats at the audience halls. In fact, tickets for the plays Perjuangan Suku Naga (The Struggle of the Dragon Tribe) by W.S. Rendra and Ngeh (Understand) by Putu Wijaya and dance performances by Bremer Tanztheater from Germany and Diez Diez Danza from Spain sold out a few days before their curtain calls.

The fourth week of the festival has seen the performances of Putu, Diez Diez Danza and Japanese percussionist group Spiral Arms. Finish composer Kaija Saariaho and her group will close the summit with concerts on Sunday and Monday.

While watching Putu Wijaya's play, one may wonder whether it was Putu's name or Teater Mandiri's performance that drew packed houses on both nights.

Inviting the audience "not to enjoy the plot, acting and technological glamor, but to embark on lumps of energy, from which their spiritual sensations will emerge", the theater group presented a 70-minute abstract depiction of the May riots.

The result brought out mixed reactions from the theatergoers.

"Ngeh was an extraordinary demonstration of the lengths to which writers will go to avoid writing, dramatizing or fictionalizing issues that a polite and censor-minded Indonesian society might not want to be reminded of," said John McGlynn of the Lontar foundation.

He congratulated Putu for successfully staging the sane person's vision of a world gone terribly wrong.

Yet Putu's success in the use of the white screen and shadow in his past performances seems to have created a distinction that he might find hard to get rid of.

"The last 15 minutes of Ngeh seems to be inconsistent with the previous parts of the play. Putu failed to eliminate the use of verbal language as a medium of expression," said poet Sitok Srengenge, referring to the play's anticlimactic ending.

Claiming to have followed Putu's work since 1991, Sitok praised Putu's use of screen and shadow as a medium.

"Putu maximized his exploration of this medium in Ngeh. The play also optimized the actors' body language and use of props," he said.

But it was not only Putu who enjoyed the spotlight last week.

Spain's Diez Diez Danza also captivated viewers and critics alike at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta, not with Flamenco dances as expected by some, but with their dynamic modern style influenced by classic and contemporary choreography.

Prominent dance critic Sal Murgiyanto praised the troupe for their use of emotion in their movements.

"Each dancer exhibited their own personality throughout the dances. Moreover, the troupe has developed a distinctive dance technique," Sal said.

The troupe's endurance amazed Farida Oetojo, a choreographer who is now the chairwoman of Gedung Kesenian Jakarta.

"I was once a ballerina and know how hard and demanding the movements in these dances are. Yet the dancers' relaxed composure made the movement seem really easy," said Farida, who favored the graceful movements in the first dance, O Beijo, out of three presented.

Another performance no less interesting was brought to the stage by Spiral Arms, a unique Japanese percussion group led by Toshiyuki Tsuchitori. It brought together musicians of various genres as far apart as hard rock, ethnic Korean and Japanese and Indian music in Ikai: Another World.

Featuring the ancient Japanese drum, Kuretzumi, which was used to accompany the mask dance Gigaku, the group was accompanied by Indonesian musicians from the Surakarta-based Indonesian School of Art.