Sardono cherishes his good luck

Sardono cherishes his good luck

====================
Tantri Yuliandini
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
---------------------

Some say success is made out of 90 percent hard work and 10
percent talent, but famed Indonesian dancer and choreographer
Sardono Waluyo Kusumo say luck has plenty to do with his
success.

"To tell you the truth I was very lucky. There were probably a
lot of other people better than me, I was just lucky," the 57-
year-old said in an interview recently.

Sardono, or Mas Don as he is affectionately known, said he was
lucky to have the patronage of former Jakarta governor Ali
Sadikin who helped him become what he is today -- one of
Indonesia's most renowned and respected dancers.

"Ali Sadikin could respond to (the artists') needs. Today's
artists aren't so lucky (to have such patronage)," he said.

One of the former governor's most valuable contributions to
the Jakarta art scene, according to Mas Don, was the
establishment of Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) arts center in Cikini
Raya, Central Jakarta and the Jakarta Board of Arts (Dewan
Kesenian Jakarta) in 1968.

"For myself, if it wasn't for Taman Ismail Marzuki I wouldn't
be able to dedicate fully (to my work). It was because that every
time I create something there was an audience and feedback,
whether insulting or praising. They are what motivated me (to
create)," he recalled.

Mas Don remembered when TIM was the center of arts and culture
in Indonesia, "whatever (art development) happened in the
regions, they all made their way to TIM. Choreographers from
Bali, Surakarta in Central Java, Bandung, Makassar, Irian
(Papua), all came, performed and we all shared (our knowledge).
We examined each other's works and we interacted".

Art is about being in the middle of society, he said, how an
artist could express his work in the middle of society. Being in
touch with society was the way for arts to thrive without losing
touch with its surroundings, he added. On the other hand, society
would not be able realize the importance of arts in their lives
when opportunities for performances and art discussions are
limited.

"This need other people who aren't artists. It needs
producers, critics and the media. I see there are a lot of
artists around but they don't interact with society because there
are no venues to do it. There are no public spaces for society to
meet the artists' work," Mas Don said.

"I survived because I expanded my work beyond Indonesia and I
already have a long track record. Before that, I was fortunate, I
worked at TIM, I was given the facility," he said, explaining
that it was only because of his experiences at TIM that he was
"strong" enough to take on the international community.

Born in Surakarta, Central Java, on March 6, 1945, Mas Don was
introduced into the world of Javanese dance at the age of 11 by
his Pencak Silat (traditional martial arts) teacher R. Ng.
Kridosoekatgo - a Silat expert who was in service at the
Surakarta palace at the time.

"In his opinion dance is a higher form of Silat. If you learn
Silat, you will be able to paralyze the attack of an enemy. With
dance, you can paralyze your aggressive intentions before the
attack has chanced to appear," he said in an article published
over the Internet titled Hanuman, Tarzan, Pithecanthropus Erectus
(2001).

Mas Don's early dance teachers included R.Ng. Atmokesowo who
taught him the ropes and the refined dance styles of the
classical Javanese dances, and R.Ng. Wignyo Hambekso who taught
him to be free with his movements and expressions.

His golden days as a classical Javanese dancer came in the
1960s with roles such as Rama, Hanuman, and Rahwana in the
Ramayana epic performed with Sendratari Ramayana Prambanan, then
appointed to perform with the government troupe to the New York
World Fair in 1964.

Explorations beyond the world of the classical Javanese dance
resulted from his interaction with international dancers at the
World Fair, like the Jean Erdman Theater of Dance in New York,
which in his own words, Mas Don made some "strange experiments".

But these did not go unnoticed. In 1968 he became the youngest
member of the newly established Jakarta Board of Arts.

"The Jakarta Board of Arts was amazing at the time. They saw
my work in Surakarta and wrote a letter asking me to become one
of its board of directors. They gave me a Jakarta ID card and
told me to move to Jakarta and I was only 23 years old, can you
imagine," Mas Don said.

His innovation included the Samgita Pancasona (1969-1970),
which the late scholar Umar Kayam called the "Indonesian
contemporary dance", but received heavy criticism from the
traditional Javanese public in Surakarta. Indeed, Mas Don does
not see the dance as a static art too ingrained in its own
tradition to expand, but as a writhing, wriggling, dynamic
animal, based on tradition but continually renewing itself and
exploring ways for invigoration. For this view, Mas Don was to
meet a lot of criticism and complaints from traditionalists.

His breaking down walls of tradition did not stop with
Javanese dances, in Teges Kanginan village in Bali, too, he gave
new life to the kecak dance of Walter Spies, rooted from the
traditional sanghyang trance dance of Bali.

"Sardono's kecak was more dynamic, energetic, involving a lot
more movements and sounds that the old kecak, which was performed
sitting down," I Ketut Rina, Mas Don's pupil and successor of his
Cak Tarian Rina, said in an earlier interview.

Mas Don's exploration of traditional dances further took him
to Papua with the Asmat tribe of the marshes and the highland
Dani tribe, and to the hinterland of Kalimantan to the Dayak
people of Modang and Kenyah.

"My work is to search into the future through the past to
recover the essential link between man and nature. I dance the
man who has lost his cultural roots, or from whom they have been
torn, wandering in our contemporary forests," he once said after
receiving the Prince Claus Awards from Den Haag-based independent
foundation The Prince Claus Fund in 1997. The award, which he
received together with art critic and curator Jim Supangkat, made
him "guardian" and "interpreter" of Indonesian arts in foreign
countries.

His work included the environment-themed 1979 Meta Ekologi
(Meta-Ecology), the 1983 Hutan Plastik (Plastic Forest), 1987
Hutan yang Merintih (Groaning Forest), and the critically
acclaimed Mahabhuta (1988).

The 1993 Passage through the Gong was well received at
Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in New York, and
in October 1994 at the Indonesian Dance Festival Mas Don
performed Detik-Detik, Tempo, from midnight until dawn, to
protest the disbandment of medias Detik, Tempo, and Editor.

"That was the last time I felt TIM functioned as it should.
The last time I felt there was an interaction between society and
the artist, in this case me, and the infrastructure exists (to
support that interaction)," Mas Don said.

If his work found more venue abroad than in Indonesia - his
work Soloensis was performed in Hamburg, Germany and Seoul,
Korea, as well as Jakarta in 1997, and at the Rio Earth Summit in
1999, and Nobody's Body at the opening of the Esplanade in
Singapore last year and in Jakarta last month -- it was more
because of a lack of performing venues here than by choice.

"(The existing venues) aren't enough. There's too little money
and not enough space. When TIM's theaters existed there was a
place for small productions, big productions and medium
productions. Look at it now, the theaters has been torn down,"
Mas Don said.

Without proper support and enough freedom, "I can only take
pity on our artists", he said, "it's bad he has to think about
what to eat for his next meal as well as find time to practice
and create".