'Gora Goda': Man's instinctive and conscious trip

'Gora Goda': Man's instinctive and conscious trip

By Franki Raden

JAKARTA (JP): Korean choreographer-director Kang Manhong
presented his dance-theater Gora Goda at the Ismail Marzuki Arts
Center in Jakarta on Dec. 23 and Dec. 24. Kang, who resided a
long time in New York, created the work in cooperation with
Indonesian dancers, actors and musicians. Although this work was
composed and directed by Kang, it was imbued with local colors,
mainly from Balinese dances.

In his introduction, Kang Manhong wrote that "Gora Goda is
about the awakening of human appetites and the origins of
consciousness. Awakening appetites lead to killing for the first
time and to the emergence of power games and cycles of violence.
Although this process may inspire pessimism, it is also possible
to see it optimistically ..." On this basis, the first half of
Gora Goda comprised scenes which depicted how a group of people
experienced a gradual transformation process from instinctive
beings, full of sexual and violent lust, to rational beings who
were capable of manipulating power while simultaneously
experiencing enlightenment.

In the span of this process, eight actor-dancers of Gora Goda
-- Wijiyono, B.I., Ami, Toni W. Nasution, I Made Mariasa,
Margesti, Restu Imansari and Kang Manhong himself -- presented
forms of movements and expressions with erotic, savage, romantic,
acrobatic, funny and soft impressions with full intensity.

The show started with five actor-dancers spreading on stage in
positions like embryos. On the left side of the stage, someone
was leaning against a banana tree. The stage was decorated with
white cloth hanging down, its bottom portion in the shape of a
kris. Dim light and a relaxed atmosphere marked the beginning of
this very intense scene. This intensity was augmented by a strong
ancient atmosphere when music composed by Tony Prabowo presented
the sounds of metal friction in a high pitch and the plucking of
strings in a low tone, creating a beautiful contrast of
registers. Shortly afterwards, the vocal element surged strongly
in the melodic design of highly expressive dodecaphonic music,
rich in ornamentation and vibrato. At the same time, the five
performers began to move their feet slowly. Two actor-dancers up
front give the impression of a twin embryo. When they stood up,
it became apparent that they were bound by a piece of string
coming from above, like a baby's umbilical cord. This scene
presented a strong, vivid depiction of man's process of birth,
and it was from there that all problems emerged.

The basis for the story of Gora Goda is in fact very general,
even naive. But Kang Manhong had succeeded in making the
successive phases of the story effective and attractive. The
performance of the actor-dancers had contributed substantially to
the work. Apart from their mastery in movement and acting, their
harmony in acting was commendable. The latter was very important,
because the composition of Gora Goda gave the performers a lot of
leeway to improvise, both in movement and in composition.

Another aspect which also supported the work was Tony
Prabowo's music. By the use of percussion instruments, vocal
parts and wind and string instruments, Tony presented music
colors very rich in timbre, with an expressive force that was
capable of supporting mainly the dramatic scenes of Gora Goda.
But his approach in composing the music contained some ambiguity
as well. On one hand, the music seemed to serve as an
illustration. On the other, it seemed to function as a separate
performance. This kind of approach could have been attractive if
the placing of musical elements in Gora Goda was well-done. But
for that, a maximum collaboration between the composer and the
director-choreographer was required to build the structure of
Gora Goda. This did not appear to be the case, so the entire
musical presentation was very fragmented, contrary to the
smoothly flowing scenes created by Kang Manhong. In certain
parts, the music even produced unnecessary effects or was absent
for a long time, detached from the performance as a whole. This
problem may also stem from the form of Gora Goda itself, which
combined the language of dance and that of theater in one
presentation. For that, Kang Manhong and Tony Prabowo might want
to observe how a form like this is made attractive by Indonesian
choreographers-composers like Gusmiati Said, Cilai and Epi
Martison in their works.

This dance-theater form apparently also created special
problems concerning the aspect of lighting, handled by Iskandar
Loedin and Roedjito. In the first half, where Gora Goda was more
oriented toward a theatrical form, the lighting was static. It
consisted only of white colors and did not seem to play a big
role in supporting the intensity of the scenes, handled in a
literal and linear way. In the second half, which was more
oriented toward a dance form, where the spectators' attention was
directed toward the elements of movement and composition, such a
style in static lighting did not present any problems.

Overall, the emphasis of the orientation towards a dance-
theater form distinctly divided into two (separated by the
climatic scene of Margesti's monologue) and also gave the
impression that Gora Goda as a whole had not yet been prepared
thoroughly. This work for Kang Manhong is apparently a process
that needs perfecting, so the theater and dance forms used can be
perceived as merging into one and not as a mere joining of two
forms of expression which are separated from scene to scene. For
this purpose, Manhong may need to stay longer in Indonesia and
exchange experiences with Indonesian choreographers who have
composed a great number of dance-theater forms.