'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.