Call for friends of the arts made within oil society

Call for friends of the arts made within oil society

By Julianti Parani

JAKARTA (JP): Art lovers of the performing arts society know
well the high quality of Retno Maruti and her Padnecwara Dance
group performances. They first appeared in the 1970s at the Taman
Ismail Marzuki, Jakarta Arts Center. And now in this time of
crises where every image of life looks gray and gloomy for the
arts, some enlightenment happened all of a sudden when the oil
society met with Retno Maruti, dancer and choreographer
specialized in the classical Javanese dance, at an executive club
named Bimasena.

This club of the Mines and Energy society situated at The
Dharmawangsa, Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta has survived the first year
of its existence amidst the multiple crises -- economic,
political, financial, cultural, security that hit Indonesian
life. Bimasena, for the first time proudly presented on Sept. 9,
a cultural evening of Retno Maruti 's Padnecwara. The Sekar
Pembayun's Langendriyan (song and dance) performance of Retno
Maruti's exquisite choreography has added to the cultural
ambience for this club. One should still remember that Maruti's
Sekar Pembayun had its premiere at the TIM Jakarta Arts Center,
20 years ago.

Among the artistic society, Maruti, a lecturer of the Jakarta
Institute of the Arts, is a teacher in need and a friend indeed
in preserving traditional Javanese values in the dramatic change
of contemporary Jakarta arts development for many decades
already. The recent occasion conducted by the Bimasena society
which promises to be active in promoting Indonesian culture in
addition to its close involvement with mining and energy sectors,
is to bring about friendship among the members and friendship to
Indonesian artists. A golden opportunity has opened to the
Padwecwara and other similar qualified performing arts groups to
broaden its friendship circle through this important sector.

On Aug. 18, Bimasena had the Independence Day concert as a
"Tribute to a Nation" featuring the Twilite Orchestra conducted
by Addhie MS, presenting a selection of national and
international patriotic music.

The Bimasena, a meeting place for business and social
interaction with its super star facilities, is an executive club
offering information services, a library, multimedia facilities
in the mines and energy industry, dining and entertainment,
health and beauty treatment, and indoor and outdoor recreation
facilities.

It is managed by Rosewood Hotels and Resorts of America and
aims to be the center of the Indonesian and Asia Pacific
communities in this fields, which would certainly elevate the
Indonesian arts and artists to be better appreciated through this
circle.

An executive club similar to the old "Petroleum Club" of the
1970s has come out of the present Indonesian crisis as one club
making an effort to build a better venue on the eve of the next
millennium.

For the arts people of Jakarta, one might remember that a
society of friends of the arts has never really been successful
in supporting the arts. A long time ago in its early years, TIM
had a Lingkaran Seni (Arts Circle). There was also a Kine Club of
the Jakarta Arts Council which had similar ideals to those of
friends of the arts. If not searching for art funding, it was
providing funding through buying a certain amount of tickets as a
means of support. Many efforts have been initiated to establish
this kind of society for promoting the arts. But alas, it did not
bring about a long-term result.

Then, foundations were established providing an
institutionalized structure for the arts, which were expected to
give better results. There exists at present another society
called the Society of the Performing Arts (Masyarakat Seni
Pertunjukan Indonesia), which derived from the former Society of
Musicology, and is by nature a professional organization in
arranging meetings, seminars, festivals in Jakarta and all over
Indonesia, such as Flores, Kalimantan, and recently in Bali. It
did a great job in sharing knowledge between practitioners and
researchers.

However, gathering art lovers for fund raising to support the
arts, happens to be a hard job especially when the economic
crisis has not yet given us a brighter view. Those activities are
just repeating what the government sector did in the past, but is
hampered at present due to the crisis.

Retno Maruti and her Padnecwara group has performed many dance
dramas in the classical Langendriyan way, like Damarwulan (1976),
Abimanyu Gugur (1976), Roro Mendut (1977), Savitri (1977), Sekar
Pembayun (1979), Ciptoning (1983), and Dewabrata (1997). Sekar
Pembayun's background story is considered legend by the early
Mataram kingdom, which tells the story of its first ruler,
Senopati, whose daughter Sekar Pembayun disguised as a dancer
lured his enemy Ki Ageng Mangir to become her husband. In
persuading him to pay homage to her father, she put him in a
position to be killed by her own father. It was a popular story
derived from the Babad Galuh Mataram and the Serat Andupara,
which was played at traditional theatrical performances such as
ketoprak.

This Sekar Pembayun by Retno Maruti at the Bimasena was an
excellent performance, of which the art lovers have seen so many
times. But the performance has given another perspective to
promoting and most probably in marketing the performing arts of
Indonesia to a different section of society.

Art lovers were invited on that evening to become "friends of
Padnecwara." Former minister of mines and energy and former
secretary general of OPEC, Prof.Dr.Subroto, chairman of a society
of "arts lovers" and "arts lovers to be", in his opening speech
of that cultural evening, quoted a wise man saying that "religion
makes life tranquil, science makes life easy and art makes life
beautiful."

This is not an appeal to discredit the already existing
societies and foundations of the arts, that somehow has kept the
arts alive through difficult times. But one should consider new
alternatives to open new ways to continue nurturing artistic
achievements that have been made by our own artists. It is a
moral responsibility to keep what we have achieved in the arts as
a balance to fill up the gap in what we have lost in the crisis
that our nation has been facing. Therefore it is now high time to
establish the existence of Friends of the Arts and to invite art
lovers to get together, not only for the Padnecwara, but also for
other qualified Indonesian performing arts in rebuilding a better
structure for the arts in the coming millennium.

The writer is a researcher and consultant of the performing
arts.