Choreographer Hartati lays life on the table

Yusuf Susilo Hartono, Contributor, Jakarta

After scoring a success with Sayap Yang Patah (the Broken Wing) last year, and having taken part in a visiting art program in New York, young choreographer Hartati is now in the final preparation stage of her latest work.

Scheduled to be staged on Aug. 16 and Aug. 17 at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta (GKJ), the 36-year-old graduate of Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ)'s School of Dancing has titled her new creation Membaca Meja (Reading the Table).

Last Saturday marked the third week of a full month of scheduled rehearsals at Gumarang Sakti dance workshop, a place located inside a bamboo forest in Depok. There, Hartati and her dancers as well as musicians worked hard to polish up the new choreography.

A long table was placed in the middle of the room, surrounded by a number of chairs. The four female dancers -- Devi Susmita, Devi Indri, Grace Susan and Verawaty -- and their two male colleagues -- David Doang and Doni -- were seated around the table facing plates, glasses, cutlery and red-and-white napkins. The music, played by Peter Salayan and Epi Martison, accompanied the dancers in building up their 60 minutes of movement, composition, symbols and significance to express Hartati's ideas.

Hartati, prior to the afternoon rehearsal, dwelled at length on her concept of using a table as a symbol of human life. And as she states in the program event for GKJ, the life of a nation might begin from a table. It is around the table that people start learning values in life -- from ethics, morality, bondage, protection, sensibility, communications, education to domination, democracy, rule and power.

At one table, she says, man exposes his hypocrisy, ignorance, deceit, instability and superficiality, while at another table, man enjoys beauty, honesty, genuineness, courage, delinquency, observance, intelligence and love.

There are even tables that make man no longer know or own himself. Under the name of God's will, a table can seize a woman's body, soul and dreams. For the sake of faith, the future of children are robbed. And then on a later journey in life, man encounters other tables in different positions and labels. One day, eventually, man will create his own table with power as its label.

Seeing the rehearsal or watching her new dance that centers on the table, one might jump to the conclusion that this new dance is similar to the work of German choreographer-dancer Henrietta Horn presented at the third art summit festival last year.

"I didn't see Henrieta Horn's (performance) so I have no idea what her dancework is like," said Hartati.

The 36-year-old woman is adamant that she does not want to follow the work of others -- not even the works of her husband, choreographer Boi G. Sakti, or her late mother-in-law, noted choreographer Gusmiati Suid of the Gumarang Sakti dance company. If she still used dancers and musicians, who had also worked for her husband and mother-in-law in the past, it is only a technical matter.

Hartati is well aware of this fact and therefore strives to be different. To this end, she has even limited the amount of Boi's influence and intervention in this production. She is handling the production on her own, together with Mata Angin Production.

Membaca Meja is Hartati's further contemplation on women, a reflection she has been engaged in since she joined IKJ. This contemplation has continued to grow and develop as she gets older and her concepts have matured.

The development of this reflection is also attributable to her social life in the dancing realm and in the non-dancing area. Aside from being a choreographer, she also dances for noted choreographers like Sardono W. Kusumo, Deddy Luthan, Tom Ibnur, the late Gusmiati Suid and Boi G. Sakti. She last danced in 1997, at the performance of Suap (Bribery) at GKJ's Jakarta International Festival. She married Boi in 1995, became pregnant and gave birth to her first child, Menthari Ashia, now three years old.

In her composition Padusi I (1986), for instance, she translated padusi -- a Minang word meaning a woman -- literally as pretty, refined and gentle, just like the prevailing perception of a woman in the East. Then in Pardusi II (1987), she explored women in the perspective of the Minangkabau tradition as bundo kanduang (natural mother), which no longer stresses gentleness but authority and being right.

When exploring the theme of prostitution in Au (1989), she preceded it with a survey of the red-light district, Kramat Tunggak in North Jakarta. She associated women with the struggle for life and the courage to put everything at stake.

In her work Broken Wing, she contemplated the natural character of a woman, carefully avoiding stereotypes. In Minangkabau, for example, there is an old adage saying that no matter how well educated a woman is, she will finally have to take care of the kitchen at home. So, according to this saying, a good woman is the one who stays at home.

Now, in her latest work Reading the Table, Hartati contemplates upon the position of women, amid the eternal power struggle between men or women. So, let's watch how she reads the table of women.