Asia-Europe choreography discussed in 'Mis/Understanding'

Helly Minarti, Contributor, Berlin

What would happen if a bunch of young choreographers from various countries in Asia and Europe gathered for a week, conducting workshops and presenting their work, as well as having the chance to talk over meals?

A winter week wrapped up the Eurasia: Second Asia-Europe Dance Forum, an event organized by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) and its partner for this year, Hebbel am Ufer, a respected theater in Berlin.

Intriguingly titled Mis/Understanding, the forum provided a more intimate environment than the formal performance-orientated setups commonly found at dance festivals, or dance conferences that run on a tight schedule of presentations, workshops and performances.

Acknowledging not only the diversity of the participants' origins but also the complex context in which "contemporary dance" operates, this one-week forum proved to be a challenging platform, with cultural and technical differences addressed.

Built around workshops, three days were set aside in the forum for the performance of participants' works.

Seventeen choreographers -- some from as far away as Sweden and China -- spent most of each day for a week instructing workshops.

The forum was carefully curated by Bettina Masuch, the dance curator of Hebbel am Ufer, who framed it by offering a so-termed `dance lexicon' (an "A to Z" of words related to dance), on which the participants could base their workshop themes.

Etty Kajol, 28, from Indonesia, for example, took two words from the offered lexicon -- "roots" and "tradition" -- as her main theme.

She was interested in introducing the cultural context of her two choreographed works -- the solo very much influenced by a church ritual in Flores, and the ensemble by the tribal hunting tradition.

She tried to fuse the modern/contemporary dance techniques she was taught at the Jakarta Arts Institute with some codified movements taken from the Flores dance.

"If Etty only sent me this documentation without explaining its background, I'd not think of her work as 'contemporary'," commented Bettina Masuch. For other participants -- particularly those who are aware that Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation -- the religious content that drove the piece was a surprise.

At the end of her workshop, Etty shared a few dance steps from her place of origin, Flores, which mimicked horses galloping.

Other participants picked words from the lexicon, and packaged them in an eclectic way -- from predictable to playful.

Eva Meyer-Keller from Germany chose "food" as her word, inviting the participants to her cool apartment in Berlin, and asked them to bake German Christmas cookies.

"I'm now interested in functionality -- how people do the things they are asked to do, as related to a previous arts project of mine in the Netherlands."

She admitted that at this stage, she was not really attracted to the idea of "beautiful dance", or choreography as it is commonly viewed.

Meyer-Keller's acclaimed Death is Certain, for instance, shows various ways of "killing" a cherry (the fruit) in a childlike way, but, by the end, the work seems to arrive at the uneasy realization that the act is "murder" and represents the atrocities in the world.

"I was told by a festival organizer that it's not a dance performance. But is it my problem if I accepted the invitation from the festival to perform? They invited me, and I wanted to perform," she said with a shrug.

Chinese Yunna Long took a yoga class that borrowed from her training as a former principal dancer of Guangdong Modern Dance Company. Some European participants, however, seemed irritated by her focus on ballet movements.

The round table discussion the next morning -- an impromptu debriefing -- offered more insight as to why ballet should feel like a form of liberation for a Chinese dancer, but bore the Europeans.

"But the funny thing is, we all know it as a sort of common language. Everybody here can do it well," said a participant.

Susanne Berggren from Sweden proposed that the discussion progress to genre and style, rather than reexamining the notion of Asian contemporary dance versus European contemporary dance.

"To me, contemporary dance is a critical practice," she said, suggesting that "geographical" boundaries should not be an issue.

Misunderstandings were indeed aplenty during the week. But, as the end approached, both sides -- Asia and Europe -- were, at the very least, better informed.

The Third Asia-Europe Dance Forum will be held in Tokyo next year -- this time ASEF will be partnering with the Goethe- Institut.

Check out www.asef.org in the future for more info.