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.