Performing arts: Art Summit and beyond

Performing arts: Art Summit and beyond

Edi Sedyawati, Former Director General of Culture, Jakarta

In the year 2001, the most significant event in performing
arts here, at least from its many dimensions, was the Third Art
Summit Indonesia: Performing Arts. This international festival of
contemporary art took place for a whole month, from Aug. 27 to
Sept. 27.

Seventeen selected works in dance, music and theater were
performed for two days each, either at Gedung Kesenian Jakarta or
Graha Bhakti Budaya, Taman Ismail Marzuki. The groups
participating in the festival were from Australia, China, Egypt,
Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands
and the United Kingdom.

In most cases, the general rehearsals were also open to
selected groups, that is, the press and secondary school
students.

A general assessment of the event would lead us to conclude
that interest in contemporary performing arts among the
Indonesian public is still divided. For dance and theater the
interest is great, as demonstrated by the large attendance at
theaters where they were shown. Contemporary music, however,
seems to not be fully appreciated. The problem at hand might be
the segregated worlds of serious music on one side and popular
music on the other.

Popular music is a mighty world in itself, which is greatly
supported by its industry through very aggressive promotion
campaigns and the idolization of "celebrities." It is then a
challenge in itself to square, and to bring into balance, the
musical orientation of the Indonesian population at large.

While enjoying popular music, which is also a platform for
creativity in its own right, people should also be trained to
appreciate explorative contemporary music, as well as forms of
traditional music with their unique established esthetics.
Musicians themselves are expected to do more "bridging" between
the two worlds.

One dance-theater group, Pappa Tarahumara of Japan, also
performed at Indonesian Art High School (STSI) Surakarta, Central
Java, on Aug. 23 through their own arrangement. The STSI
Surakarta and the Goethe Institute had also arranged for Folkwang
Tanztheater of Germany to perform and have workshops in the city
(after its performance here on Sept. 27) but it was canceled due
to the unfavorable political situation after the Sept. 11 attack
on New York and Washington.

As a substitute the German group held a workshop with the
Karmawibhangga group of young choreographers, dancers and
musicians near Jakarta. It is indeed expected that the groups
invited to Art Summit Indonesia should also visit other places
besides Jakarta, to perform and do workshops, with the artistic
community of each place as host.

Out of the 17 performances in the Art Summit there were
achievements worth special recognition. Some of those are in the
area of exploration of the medium, or the instrument; some others
are in what could be called the shaping of new symbols; some can
be categorized as "the flexing of traditions"; while another
aspect that may transect the three above categories is that of
poetry in movement and sound, as well as technical feats.

Strange Fruits of Australia explored the free air as a medium
for movements of the dancers who moved on the tips of four-to-
five-meter-high flexible stilts. Despite the extra physical
control needed and the limited possibility of movement, the
dancers managed to evoke touching feelings with their maneuvers.

Boi G. Sakti with his group used sand, spread over the stage
floor, as a characterizing base for the dancers' movements.
Moreover he used many more ingenuous staging techniques; sand
poured from above so as to form a shield-like image, a row of
small flames in the background and small dry leaves scattering in
the air.

That set supported the unyielding dynamics of his
choreographic composition including the very tiny and delicate,
as well as the very fast and strong movements. All these
elements, integrated with the music composition and costume
design, framed in scenes referring to the toiling of land, are at
the same time a work of symbol formation.

Another work that plays on poetry and symbol formation is the
theater piece Presiden Burung-burung, written and directed by N.
Riantiarno. It has been incorrectly perceived as a political
message. Although the work did allude to some political figures
and incidents in Indonesia, this was used as a mere background
for an interpretation of human entanglements, a philosophical
musing on the essence of power. This work was supported by the
visual design of the grandiose but disjunctive figure of Rahwana.

Another line of symbol making was the work by the
choreographer Henrietta Horn of Germany. It was more of a non-
thematic "figures of expression". Superb precision, surprises in
a sequence of movements, exaggerated movements, as well as the
typical shaking and the use of chairs as the expansion of the
dancing figures, were among the elements that in an integrated
form created symbolic reverberations of human loneliness.

The flexing of traditions can be found among others in the
works of composers A. L. Suwardi of Indonesia and Yuji Takahashi
of Japan, and choreographer Akram Khan of United Kingdom. Among
them Suwardi was the most extreme, since he also constructed new,
unique, musical instruments for his compositions.

His music sounds like traditional music but in reality he uses
newly generated sounds, and is composed in an original way.
Technical feats, both in sound and movement production and
juxtaposition abound in the many works presented during Art
Summit.

Several festivals of the more popular genres especially in
music were also organized, such as the Jak Art and the Percussion
Festival. They were quite successful in drawing audiences.

A special type of performance that has gained more popularity
in 2001 is the humorous version of the Javanese traditional
genres of performances. Television stations appear to compete to
broadcast the best. Both the ketoprak and wayang wong humoristic
versions have dialog in Indonesian with occasional lines in
Javanese subtitled in Indonesian.

Both also have used the same strategy of inviting well known
celebrities among film or TV drama series to take the leading
roles.

Those performances, of different groups, are all well
supported by newly designed costumes. The popularity of those
performances is, however, coming to a halt.

Questions can be raised, as to: first, whether the competition
for more refinement, especially in the quality of the humor
itself, is now needed; second, whether explorations should also
be made to adapt in the same way other forms of traditional
performances, not only those originating from Java; third,
whether a more serious, not the humoristic kind of adaptation
into Indonesian is also needed; and finally, whether full fledged
traditional presentations with Indonesian subtitles are needed.