Urban sax extravaganza highlights Art Summit opening

Urban sax extravaganza highlights Art Summit opening

By C.G. Asmara

JAKARTA (JP): By 7:45 p.m. last Saturday night a sizable crowd
had formed in front of the planetarium, located at Taman Ismail
Marzuki, Central Jakarta. Their eyes were straining upwards,
hoping to catch a glimpse of two figures clad in gold jumpsuits
walking upright slowly down the globe of the planetarium,
precariously supported by two other similarly dressed daredevils
via a rope attached to their backs.

Suddenly there was the mournful wail of a saxophone and a
spotlight flipped on revealing a saxophonist on top of a
restaurant on the other side of the parking lot. Another
spotlight illuminated a second saxophonist on the observatory
dome and suddenly the planetarium was filled with strange
saxophone "noises" and air horns. A sea of saxophonists, their
faces covered with mesh and wearing metallic costumes with small
colored lights, clear plastic tubing and inflated balloons
fashioned into bizarre shapes, descended the central staircase of
the planetarium. Giving the impression of enormous alien insects,
the musicians then climbed onto two forklifts which carried them
to the Graha Bhakti Budaya theater, where another saxophonist
sounded his instrument from the roof while dancers created
silhouettes in the third floor windows.

So began the outlandish performance of France's Urban Sax,
which marked the grand opening of Art Summit Indonesia 1995, a
20-day festival bringing together top contemporary music and
dance performances from nine countries.

Audience

The performance then continued inside the theater to a packed,
very appreciative audience. With the curtain still drawn, a
number of saxophonist appeared on the balcony, on the stage, and
even suspended by a rope over the audience. A lone figure stood
on the floor in front of the audience making strange semaphore-
like gestures. It soon became apparent he was conductor Gilbert
Artman, who was communicating with the performers aided by a
headset and microphone.

The notes played by the bizarre-looking musicians were more
like sounds which were carefully manipulated by precise breath
control. There were very few melodic phrases. The musicians also
created "blowing" sounds by forcing air through the opposite end
of the saxophone and through the plastic tubing on their
costumes. Other supporting instruments were kettle drums,
xylophones, air horns, a bass guitar, Tibetan gongs and eerie
wordless vocals.

The opening of the curtain for the second piece was nothing
short of spectacular as the stage revealed a mountain of
androgynous insect-like musicians (both on platforms and hung
from above) enveloped in a thick fog. The set was completely
covered in clear plastic, giving the impression that the
performers were sometimes resting on a cloud and sometimes
sinking into a pile of garbage. The special lighting effects
(with instruments brought from France by the group) provided
dramatic splashes of intense sutured color that added to the
architectural environment of the set.

The costumes, which held no particular significance according
to Artman, were chosen for their utilitarian function of
providing sound through the plastic tubes and the balloon-like
resonators. The metallic colored jumpsuits, admittedly too hot
for Jakarta's climate, were chosen because they looked
contemporary, disagreeable (like modern urban life) and were
inexpensive.

The first part of the evening proceeded with a number of
minimalist pieces, all vaguely similar, exploring various sounds
produced by the instruments in various parts of the theater
(because of portability, only the saxophonist moved offstage).
The music was interpreted by two dancers who, rather
unconvincingly, executed unimaginative movements and were
entirely incidental to the performance and at one point were
suspended on either side of the stage. The result was an
exploration of the theater on two levels -- spatially and
acoustically. The "music" which was repetitive and often droning,
was only one element in this exploration that also included the
performers, the set and the lighting.

Urban Sax, which was founded in the 1970s by Artman, has
created site specific performances around the world with the
result that no two venues have the same choreography or music. "I
try to work in as many different architectural spaces as possible
so that the audience becomes central to the sound events,"
explained Artman in an interview with The Jakarta Post. Each
venue provides different architecture and therefore presents its
own seed of possibilities. "Simply put, (an Urban Sax
performance) is the transformation of a space and its
possibilities into a spectacle during a specific time set aside
for the performance."

To Artman, the production of "sound" by his 40-odd (pun
intended) musicians is more important than the creation of music.
His productions are in contrast to "static" music performances
that happen in one spot on a stage in front of an audience. With
sound coming at the audience from all directions, he creates an
"architecture of sound" that causes the spectators to turn their
heads and become aware of the space in which they are in.

The second part of the performance was a surprise for the
audience and fulfilled a lifelong dream of Artman's; he had
always wanted to work with Indonesian music. After a short break
while the audience stayed in their seats, the curtains opened to
reveal the addition of a Javanese gamelan. The Irama Kemala Jati
gamelan, under the direction of Kris Basuki from the Jakarta Art
Institute, played a number of pieces on their own, including
Sekatan, Lancaran Degung, and Langen Branta. They were then
joined by Urban Sax musicians who played an eclectic fusion of
supporting sounds to the gamelan tune Landrang Pangkur as eight
traditional Javanese dancers from the Jakarta Art Institute
performed a piece especially choreographed for the occasion.

According to Kris Basuki, the gamelan group had prepared a
cassette tape with a number of different selections of music to
present to Urban Sax upon its arrival in Jakarta. Artman picked
from these the pieces with which he wanted to work and
incorporated the gamelan group into the performance over a period
of four days. Artman expressed his joy at the opportunity to work
with Irama Kemala Jati because of the subtlety of Javanese
gamelan, although incorporating the two music genres was quite
difficult since they rely on different musical scales.

While the idea to include a gamelan was noble, it was
obviously underdeveloped as the gamelan and the dancers seemed
very out of place and were only marginally integrated into the
performance.

As a visual performance with its plastic and metallic costumes
with little glowing lights and its plastic sets, jazzy dancers
and choreographed "backup" singers, Urban Sax gave the impression
of a campy, gaudy variety show. However, conceptually as an
exploration of the creation of sound architecture, Urban Sax
provided some food for thought as their original use of the
planetarium and different spaces within the Taman Ismail Marzuki
complex as well as the theater gave the spectators a new
awareness (and hopefully a better appreciation) of the space
around them.

Overall, Urban Sax's spectacular choreography, lighting, sets,
costumes and daredevil antics provided a festive opening to Art
Summit Indonesia 1995.

Ghana

Public response to the summit has been unexpectedly
encouraging. One indication was strongly visible during the
presentation by the Ghana Dance Ensemble on Monday. Even a
downpour failed to dim the public's eagerness to see the rare
performance.

After a delay of over an hour, an enthusiastic over-capacity
audience pushed its way into Taman Ismail Marzuki's Teater
Tertutup.

Scheduled for the large-capacity open theater, the venue had
to be changed at the last moment due to unseasonable rain, which
caused the delay as the lighting had to be rehung and
recircuited.

Despite the holdup, a troupe -- the only African
representative at the festival which boasts of 15 performances
from nine countries -- gave an intense rhythmic hour-long
performance, omitting one of their originally scheduled pieces to
make up for lost time. They were so energetic in their dancing
and drumming that at times it was breathtaking and left the
audience exhausted by the end.

The Ghana Dance Ensemble (The National Dance Company) which
was founded in 1962, aims to develop contemporary African dance
theater and to contribute to the preservation, promotion and
presentation of contemporary African dances. Headed by the former
president of the International Association of Black and African
Choreographers, Francis Nii-Yartey, the troupe tours to
international destinations twice yearly on average, although this
year they are attending six international dance festivals.

The performance was as much about music as it was about dance.
The first piece, entitled Nmani, consisted of half a dozen women
in bright costumes playing calabash music in choreographed
unison. The calabash is a large type of gourd that, when dried
and hollowed out, is used for storing and carrying water and
food, as well as a drum. The second piece consisted of a solo
performance on xylophone, where a smiling musician played a
composition that extended beyond the conventional use of the just
the keys, but also included the frame of the xylophone as well as
the mallet handles. Both pieces were performed with a light-
heartedness that was thoroughly contagious.

The bulk of the program was given to a piece entitled Solma
which means "to tell a story". It was based on a dance from
Northern Ghana and was choreographed and directed by Nii-Yartey
in collaboration with French choreographer Jean Francois Duroure.

Solma was a collage of colors, sounds and rhythms. Narrative
in form, it presented the everyday life of contemporary urban
Ghana, beginning in the marketplace and extending across oceans
and social and economic strata. It told the story of both the
oppression and resilience of urban life, replete with gang
members and policemen, traditional storytellers and politicians,
drunkards and lovers, in an imaginative choreography that
combined traditional dance and movements with innovative use of
simple props and gestures to evoke complex images.

According to Nii-Yartey in an interview with the Post, he
works with what he terms "movement specs of contemporary
behavior" meaning that he looks at the everyday gestures of the
Ghanaian people around him as material for his choreography.
According to Nii-Yartey these gestures have become codified and
are easily recognizable to all. He is also inspired by current
events. For example, in Solma he explored the problems of street
children who have become part of Ghanaian urban culture as well
as part of their dance forms.

Creating a contemporary dance theater group in Ghana has not
been easy. Nii-Yartey, who is "tired of seeing African dance gone
in grass skirts and painted faces," feels that the so-called
classics of African dance have become museum pieces and is
frustrated that new dances are rarely choreographed. He comes
from a traditional dance background and in the beginning found it
very difficult to break away. He had to approach the idea of
contemporary works very slowly, so that they would be acceptable
to a society (and to a government that pays his salary) still
firmly rooted in tradition.

The result of Nii-Yartey's efforts was a highly entertaining
and uplifting evening despite the late start and technical
difficulties. (At times the lighting was so dark that the dancers
were not even visible!) Performing with only 14 out of a total of
45 members, one can only imagine how much more spectacular and
impressive it might have been had the entire troupe been present.