German dance group closes Art Summit festival

By C.G. Asmara

JAKARTA (JP): The curtain closed on the ambitious and well- attended Art Summit Indonesia l995 on Oct. 11 and Oct. 12 with performances of the dance Highland, choreographed by Joachim Schlomer and performed by the Deutsches National Theater's Weimar Tanztheater.

After 15 performances by contemporary dance and music groups from nine countries, this German dance group provided a notable close to the prestigious 20-day festival. It was an outstanding performance that, along with its musical score or "soundscape", offered, not only an unique interpretation of life in the Scottish Highlands, but also an exploration of gesture and characterization.

Highland is Schlomer's newest work. It premiered on Sept. 10, l995, in Weimar. Aged 35, Schlomer assumed the leadership of the Deutsches National Theater in Weimar during the l994/1995 season. Between 1988 and 1991 he was a dancer with Mark Morris at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels. In l990, he formed his first group, the Companie Josch, touring throughout Europe. In l993, he attracted the attention of the legendary Mikail Baryshnikow, who commissioned two works by Schlomer for his White Oak Dance Theater.

With the sound of crashing stones, the house lights were dimmed in the Graha Bhakti Budaya auditorium of the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center in Central Jakarta. Fluorescent light was then brought up on stage, revealing an elegant woman in a black dress. A puff of smoke from stage left gave the impression of dust from falling stones, only to be transformed into car exhaust fumes as the sound of traffic blared from the large bank of speakers on either side of the stage.

Slowly the woman began to walk up and down stage, following a line of fallen leaves that divided the stage in two. The focus was drawn to her feet, as she walked with a gray brick-like stone under each foot. Holding on to each brick was a man in a suit, crouching behind her.

Throughout the 75-minute performance of Highland, the 15 dancers created a landscape of characters and situations that contrasted everyday urban life with pastoral dreams of peace and unity with nature.

Relying on detailed explorations of the body to express character, each dancer concentrated on a specific part of his or her body -- most often legs and feet -- which resulted in a way of walking and moving unique to each dancer. As a result, the choreography was at times highly subtle, almost repetitive; such as when a couple, with their backs to the audience, wriggled their toes along the floor, or when a female dancer, whose feet appeared swollen, shuffled across the stage.

Yet these explorations worked and, along with varied costumes and props, such as flowers and a red plastic raincoat that became a matador's cape, gave the dancers and the audience the time to imagine the histories, hopes, dreams and disappointments of this odd group of characters, thrown together in Schlomer's imaginary highland life.

Originally wishing to choreograph a work about the history of a Scottish Highlands, Schlomer, along with stage and costume designer Frank Leimbach, traveled to the region early in l995 to conduct research. After making a number of recordings of contemporary and traditional of the region, they realized that they were much more fascinated by the Scottish people of today.

Upon their return to Germany, they scrapped their original idea and, instead, focused on their impressions of contemporary Scottish Highlanders, as well as people of other highland areas, such as those in South America, and the link between humanity and nature.

The final set was drastically reduced from the original design, which featured an abstract glen, leaving only a backdrop of clouds and a scattering of dried leaves. The piece therefore relied heavily on the dancers, the lighting, and the music to create certain atmospheres and locations.

The accompanying musical score, entitled Highland or The Reverberation of the Stones, by Michael von Hinzensterna and Hans Tutschku, is a "soundscape" (sound-landscape) of traffic, a train station, bagpipes, military percussion, carnival music from South America, courtly baroque music, folk songs and fully-composed passages. Also using archetypal sounds, such as fire and water, the highly-original score brought together these disparate noises into a tapestry tightly interwoven with the images on stage.

As the piece drew to a close, the dancers moved with increasing intensity, a burning energy, accompanied by the sound of fire. In the final moments, the dancers fell to the floor, lay motionless, and then, slowly, each raised a single flower into the air. As with many of the dance performances seen during Art Summit Indonesia l995, Schlomer ends his piece on a hopeful note: Even though there is death and a feeling of hopelessness in the world, there is also rebirth.

Hopefully, this optimism, shown by artists from around the world, has boosted the determination of Indonesian choreographers and composers to persevere in their creative investigations of the world of contemporary performance -- despite the many obstacles -- in the name of artistic pursuit.