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!