Old dancers never fade away

Old dancers never fade away

By Mariam K. Sutalaksana

JAKARTA (JP): Dancers who have survived for more than 20 years
in Indonesia and are dedicated in their field to produce the best
of works deserve an individual commentary.

The performances held at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta on Sept. 26
and Sept. 27 at the "Old Dancers Never Fade Away" event were
substantial in their theme. The maturity of the so-called "old
performers" was a quality that many young dancers, with a few
exceptions, seemed to lack.

For older audiences and performers it was a walk down memory
lane, reminiscent of the choreography of the late Hoeriah Adam,
and gave them the feeling of how it was to perform again.

In the Tari Payung (Umbrella Dance), Sri Respatini
Kususmastuti, pairing up with Deddy Luthan, claimed she had not
performed for 20 years and felt nervous even after the show. Yet,
that dance, though lacking the punch and precision of younger
dancers, was pleasant to watch.

For the younger generation, the two-night series of
performances was a modern history lesson in dance and
choreography, to let them know the who's who in the Indonesian
dance scene since the 1960s.

The dancers highlighted in the event were those who came
together during the 1960s and 1970s in their intercultural
workshops to preserve and create the Indonesian dance.

The first night of performances featured a more traditional
approach with Kardjono's Javanese style, I Wayan Diya's Balinese
influence, and the late Hoeriah Adam's West Sumatran heritage.

The following night, Farida Oetoyo danced in one and
choreographed two works titled Prologue and Perjalanan 20 Detik,
while Yulianti Parani showed off her Nirkata and Sardono
presented his social awareness work Soloensis.

The first night started with a flight to Bali in I Wayan
Diya's Rejang Pakenak.

It is a welcoming dance usually performed in an opening
ceremony at Hindu temples in Bali, to provide a pleasant
atmosphere for the gods.

That night, it was to welcome the guests, the memory of the
dances and the dancers of the recent past.

The distinct vibrant music of Bali caught the interest of the
audience in the beginning as well as in the end when I Wayan Diya
performed in his choreography Ginal Ginul.

Spirits

This ingenious choreography was essentially a solo with two
groups of musicians standing and walking around the main dancer.

It was a dialogue of two spirits on their way down from heaven
to earth before they entered two bodies which would eventually
become husband and wife.

The dancer's back was dressed in a traditional male Balinese
character costume with a red mask while the other side was
covered with female attire and white female mask.

The mastery of Diya in Balinese movement and technique was
indisputable. Other works shown included those by the late
Hoeriah Adam.

The more popular works were Tari Piring, Tari Payung and Tari
Barabah.

The colorful kalempong music accompanied the dances on stage.
These dances were performed by older dancers, some with graying
hair who knew Adam in person.

They danced with character and with a visible remnant of
quality. This could have only made the audience wonder how they
would have danced in their heyday.

The works by Adam were a predecessor to the many works by
younger choreographers from West Sumatra.

Many of the dances are considered classic and with some
modifications are still performed today.

Jumping from Sumatra to Sulawesi, the audience witnessed a
rearrangement of a traditional dance called Pakarena. In this
dance where poise and character were important, Farida Oetoyo,
Yulianti Parani, Wiwiek Sipala and Edi Sedyawati, the director
general of culture at the Ministry of Education and Culture,
successfully embodied the spiritual content of the dance.

They walked gently on stage together carrying a long scarf on
their shoulders. The serenity of the movement followed in their
smooth contemplation of motion.

Even as their scarf fell to the ground, their meditation was
unaffected and a figure wearing black picked it up and placed it
back to where it belonged.

In a slight contrast to Pakarena, S. Kardjono's Bronto Asmoro,
a rearrangement of Central Javanese dance about a king in love,
was a more energetic number.

Transition

The second night was a transition from the more romantic past
to the more serious present, with the issues in the first night
being idyllic.

The audience was invited to move into the present time
starting with Yulianti Parani's Nirkata.

The dance was a new and vibrant choreography that incorporated
her past creations. It used colorful fabric as props. To the
music by Kronos, the dancers walked joyfully around the stage,
playing with the fabric.

They carried bright orange, green, red and pink fabric and
used it to make different play things. Hopping, jumping and
running around to the beat, Negaka Jauhari used her bright pink
fabric as a sarong.

At one corner three dancers pulled on a piece of fabric while
at another corner a couple deliberately moved together shoulder
to shoulder. It was about togetherness and in remembrance of
Parani's creation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Afterward, in Prologue by Oetoyo, drama grew as a spotlight
shone on a dark figure on the right stage. With her hands
stretched toward the heavens, her legs split in front of her on
the floor and her torso pulled back, she looked up.

In this short composition to the music of Wong Aksan, Oetoyo
and Henry Jones's collaboration whetted the appetite of the
audience to what was to come.

Though quite brief, one could see the maturing of Jones in the
modern piece with his new hairstyle complementing the lines of
his movement.

Last year, he played Captain Hook in Peter Pan. This duet was
a lovely show of modern technique.

In Perjalanan 20 detik (The 20-second journey), a spark of
energy was laid out in a duet to Terem Quartet's euphony. The
duet was performed by Jonita Sjah (Niniek) and Chendra Effendy,
former students of the Sumber Cipta ballet led by Oetoyo.

What came after Oetoyo's pieces was a long one-and-a-half hour
piece by Sardono.

It probably should not have been merely considered a dance,
but rather a multimedia social awareness campaign.

Sardono entered the stage casually with his loose, white
trousers, long-sleeved shirt and his long hair.

He came in talking about how nice it was to be a dancer in
Indonesia, because even before the performance the organizer had
provided refreshments.

Fire

He went on to give political comments on social issues in
Indonesia until he took out a letter he received from a friend in
Sumatra in 1983.

The letter described the pain and suffering of his friend
during a forest fire that year where animals had nowhere to go
but to join people who eventually ate them out of starvation.

He appealed to the audience to imagine how it was this year
where 20 million lives were affected. Only after his speech did
his dance begin.

On the backdrop of the stage were two large screens that
played a series of speeches from the United Nations on the
subject of poverty and suffering.

On the sides of the stage, six TV screens played clips of a
documentary on the Dani tribe from Irian Jaya and a prerecorded
performance by Sardono in a paddy field.

The audience was kept waiting a long time before Sardono
finally entered again to touch the pile of earth placed on center
stage.

He gave another speech on Soloensis and his heritage and told
a story of man's relationship with the earth.

To the beat from the documentary of the Dani tribe, his
dancers, wearing costumes from what a primitive culture might
have been like, moved toward the pile of earth.

Some repeated the same movement over and over worshiping the
earth.

Then two women moved in an elegant Javanese classical movement
to seed and plant the land.

It was almost like a mambo of movement which moved the dry
earth on stage to the audience.

The air in the theater was filled with flying dirt. People
were coughing, sneezing and in the middle some even walked out of
the theater.

The speeches were repeated, the dancers still worshiped the
land.

The plants disappeared. The primitive men jumped on the earth,
creating a larger cloud of dust on stage. The speech still played
on until, in the end with Mother Theresa speaking, the recording
stopped.

The room went silent. The dancers moved back on stage. They
bent down to the earth to pick up the dirt and slowly poured it
back onto the pile of dust. A light applause filled the theater.
The woman figure stayed on top of the dry brown mound of dust.

If Sardono's attempt was to bring the audience closer to the
suffering of the forest fire victims, he had succeeded.

That night what the audience felt was just a glimpse of what
it might be like to suffer from the smoke of the forest fires.
For those who did not want to suffer from coughing that night
just left. But what about those who can not leave?

The old dancers of Indonesia will not fade away. Their
pioneering spirits are what brought Indonesian dance to what it
is now. If not for their physical prowess on stage, they will
live on in their creativity, ideas and their contribution to
society.