Dance a downer at 2004 summit

Dance a downer at 2004 summit

Helly Minarti, Contributor, Jakarta

The curtain finally fell as the last show of Russian blackSKYwhite Theater wrapped up on Sunday the fourth Arts Summit, a month-long, triennial arts festival that has been organized here since 1995.

Fifteen arts groups from 10 countries performed. In addition there was a group exhibition of visual arts -- the newly introduced element of the festival -- and a two-day seminar.

Seven dance companies presented a range of dance concerts, carefully selected by the board of directors, whose members are prominent arts figures, led by Dr Edi Sedyawati, once a dancer and still a dance expert.

Once generally grand and focused -- with only a little off- target work -- audiences to this year's dance program witnessed a sharp decline in the quality of the performances.

Two commissioned choreographed pieces from home, works by Elly Lutan and Hartati, both dealing with women's issues, should have had been able to showcase the new wave of a few excellent female choreographers in Indonesia.

But Lutan's Cut Nyak, Perempuan Itu Ada (Cut Nyak, The Woman Exists), was literally shocking. Although she enriched herself by learning myriad styles of traditional dance in Indonesia, her previous choreography clearly hinted at a work in progress, drawing more from her Javanese classical dance vocabulary and artistic sensibility.

In Cut Nyak, not only did she take unfamiliar subject matter -- Acehnese woman-fighter-legend -- in contrast to her own upbringing, she took it to extreme kitsch by putting various traditions on stage (East Javanese music/singsong, an amalgam of Sumatran dances, improvised humming by Trie Utami, a pop/jazz singer).

As if that were not enough, there was an outrageously inappropriate guest performance of Slamet Gundono -- otherwise a quite expressive performer. She mixed them, gado-gado-like, simply neglecting the stylization necessary for interjecting other people's cultures into her new creation.

Hartati, probably the most promising choreographer of her generation, faces an "existential" problem -- juggling the roles of being a woman, wife, mother and aspiring artist -- the recurrent subject matter in her recent work.

With a Minang upbringing, the only matrilineal ethnic group in Indonesia, Hartati is also a wife and a daughter-in-law to two prominent contemporary choreographers.

Trained intensively in the Gumarang Sakti technique, which draws its movement from Gusmiati Suid's exploration of her Minang tradition and various silek (martial arts), Hartati showed much choreographical talent in her first work, Suap (Feed), a social commentary, in 1997.

But it took her five years -- plus marriage to well-known choreographer Boi G. Sakti, eldest son of Gusmiati Suid, who also performed in the third summit in 2001, and a daughter -- before she did her second, Sayap-Sayap Patah (Broken Wings), in 2001, a remarkable evening-length piece, a fresh interpretation to Suid's dance vocabulary.

Her Ritus Diri: Ode Untuk Kaum Perempuan (Self Rites: An Ode for Women) in this summit still centered on the domestic theme, but the looming problems during the production finally prevented her from exploring the dances, not to mention the limited ability of her dancers.

Albeit among the best, they lacked exploration and displayed indications of stagnant regeneration, indicating a critical problem faced by the Indonesian contemporary dance in general.

From abroad, British Robert Hylton of Urban Classicism might have been an interesting venture, but the hip hop-contemporary synthesis is not the most cutting edge of the new dance generation from the Continent.

France's Compagnie Magali & Didier Mulleras, with its dance- multimedia synthesis was a clean, nice monotony, but surely the French avant garde has more to offer?

Two respites, but not sufficient to save the downside, for this year were definitely Finland's Tommi Kitti and Co and Japan's Kim Itoh & The Glorious Future.

The refined technique of Tom Kitti is redolent of a faraway Scandinavian dance area. Kim Itoh represents the new generation of post-Butoh Japan, an update in the line of Sankai Juku's genealogy. His daring double bill closed the summit dance programme.

With an absence of sponsorship this time, the Arts Summit IV seemed to be particularly poorly promoted, which greatly reduced audiences; even cheap and -- occasionally -- free tickets failed to fill empty seats.

Good programming certainly needs long-term planning. A big budget is needed for inviting large, world-class dance companies, which the partners -- foreign embassies and cultural centers are expected to provide.

This also calls for early booking, on average more than two years in advance. Thus, an understanding of how they work is crucial, because it varies.

The directors' original request list, including the likes of British Siobhan Davies and German Pina Bausch -- big names in European contemporary dance -- can only materialize if proper lobbying is done well in advance.

Apart from this, the existing infrastructure needs to be addressed. "Forget to invite Pina Bausch if our stage technology is still 20 years behind," quipped a senior stage manager.

Let's hope Arts Summit V will make up for this year's dance program!