Carrousel Dance Group -- From Russia with love

Susanna Tjokro, Contributor, Jakarta

Magnificent was the first word that crossed my mind as they performed the carrousel dance. The men made a circle, joined their hands together in the center of the stage, rotated faster and faster. The girls, in smaller circles, also spanned faster and faster, in harmony with the lively Russian music in the background.

Beautiful traditional costumes in bright yellow with splashes of gold, rotating faster than the wind.

If you let your imagination take your mind for a blissful moment, you may see them as a real merry go round -- or a carrousel, which is also the name of that particular dance and the group.

The dazzling make up plus bright smiles enhance the beauty of those Russian girls. The male dancers look attractive in their white costumes enhanced with splashes of gold as well.

"I'm not a professional designer, but I'm interested in designing stuff. So, I designed the costumes based on our traditional costumes that I saw in some books," said Jana Karpovich. No wonder, some of their dresses remind me of traditional Khorovod dancer dolls' costumes.

Carrousel dance was just one of 13 presentations that performed -- non-stop, for almost one hour -- at Pusat Kesenian Wilayah Timur (Puskeswil Timur) in Pondok Kelapa, East Jakarta. The presentation is unique, using rings, pipes, wooden spoons, pails and so on to make the show more attractive.

The group is brought here to cheer up the one-month long JakArt event by the Russian Embassy, Russian Center for Science and Culture and also Gazprom (one of the biggest gas companies in the world).

The Carrousel Dance Group was set up in 1983 and has performed in many countries: Poland (1983), Greece (1992), Turkey (1995), Egypt (1997 and 2000), Japan (1998), Indonesia (Jakarta International Festival 1999) and also Singapore (2001).

It has 21 performers (dancers and singers) consisting of nine males and 12 females (from age 14 to 40 years old). Their splendid performance comes from the work of a famous Russian choreographer Antonina Kaldaeva, 65.

Meanwhile, Elena Grokholskaia is the leader cum producer of their program. "She is a honored woman of culture of Russian Federation," explained Karpovich, one of the dancers, in English.

Carrousel is composed of "GLORIA" dancers, singers (Vera Shalamova and Sergei Tyshenko) and "ILLUSION" circus theater performers.

At The Wood Cutter and Bear act that played by Vitaly Kavetin and Sergei Terentyev, one of them showed off his ability of standing on the rolling objects. Overall, the show is dominated by attractive Russian traditional dances.

The group comes from Orenburg, a town that is situated on the border between Asia and Europe, in the area of southern Ural Mountains, as explained by Grokholskaia. It is a unique place, with distinctive culture that reflected in their dances, and of course, their traditional costumes. They call themselves as Orenburg Cossacks.

Orenburg is also famous for its hand-knitted shawls, which keep the bodies warm during a cold night. The shawl also appeared at the show in the form of a white big shawl, almost as thin as a spider's web that it could be pulled out through a wedding ring easily. The shawl was pulled out of a traditional Russian wooden doll, Matryoshka.

You may see the pretty shawls worn by the girls on stage as well and observe its elegant pattern.

Back to the show, the audiences were thrilled, when Karpovich, as the narrator, spoke Indonesian fluently (a shame the sound system was so bad it was hard sometimes to hear what she was saying). She looked beautiful in various pretty dresses, reading the Indonesian words fluently from a text (those words were actually written in Russian alphabet aka Cyrillic).

Well done, she managed to capture the hearts of the audiences. No wonder, after the show, a group of women wanted to see her again.

Thanks to Adi, one of their two Liaison Officers, Karpovich emerged from the bus to greet them. They hugged and touched her, as if she were a famous celebrity. But she was indeed sort of a celebrity that night. When she asked someone to take a picture of her along with those woman (and their little children), you could see the joy on their faces, including Karpovich's.

Carrousel Dance Group performed in some places such as in the Jakarta City hall, ASEAN secretariat, Puskeswil Timur and Taman Sari Lippo Karawaci, Tangerang.

At the City Hall, they only performed three dances (of approximately 13 numbers in total of their whole show) because they had to share the show with other performers in celebrating the Jakarta's 475th anniversary which fell on June 22.

One draw back though, there are only a very few members of Carrousel who speak English, while most of them don't speak English at all.

After the show, like it or not, you may realize that you have learned a few things about Russian culture, or those of Orenburg in particular.

The dancers love dancing and they did it with passion and love that comes from their hearts. That's what I call as "From Russia with Love". A spellbinding performance.