 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
On the Dance of SumatraNew Dances from Aceh, IndonesiaThe people of Aceh, who've named their land the "veranda of Mecca," have reinvented their dance tradition. Reinvention or recreation of a tradition does not always occur in its place of origin, especially when the owners of the tradition are not ready for change. I want to bring your attention to the work of two Aceh migrants in Java (Jakarta and Solo). Creative development and open-mindedness are more nurtured in Java because the people are more receptive to development, and encounters with "the Other" are actively encouraged, especially in the academic context. 1. Huuu...... (1981), a dance by Acehnese dance masters Nurdin Daud and Marzuki Hasan, created for the Festival of Young Choreographers in Jakarta.In Aceh, as in many of Indonesia's Islamic regions, dance is not performed in the mosque or to welcome Allah. It is performed instead as part of rituals and celebrations among the people. Dance is strongly connected with dakwah (Islamic teaching), which is conducted through singing to praise the prophet Mohamed and his deeds. Dakwah involves lengthy periods of continuous prayer, and to make this bearable, local artists combine their recitation with repetitive movements practiced in folk games. Following Islamic ethics and mores, men in Aceh are strictly prohibited from touching women who are not members of their mukhrim (kin) in public. Such conduct is considered improper, even today. In the late 1970s, however, an Aceh migrant living in Jakarta was invited to teach dance in the Jakarta Institute of the Arts, and in his work he audaciously put men and women together on stage. 2. Iradat(2002/2004) by Asnawi AbdullahAsnawi Abdullah was born in Rambong, eastern Aceh, in 1974. He is the son of Syekh La Geunta, an expert in Seudati folkloric dance. Asnawi begin to study dance from his father when he was seven, and as a young man he was already teaching dance in several studios in eastern Aceh. Upon finishing high school in 1997, he migrated to Jakarta to continue his dance studies at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. There, he combined his traditional skills with a more modern and creative approach. When it the time came for him to complete his studies in choreography, he planned to return to Aceh, bringing dancers with him to create a new work. Unfortunately, the political situation in Aceh was unstable and unsafe for such an artistic collaboration. On the advice of his mentor, senior choreographer Sardono W. Kusumo, he instead went to Solo in central Java to work closely with local dancers from the STSI Indonesian College of the Arts, under Sardono's guidance. Iradat, which literally means "the will of God," is a phase of a final work that was performed in Solo in 2002 by dancers of different trainings and cultural backgrounds, including Javanese, Sumatran, and Balinese. I invited Asnawi to rework his dance for the Indonesian Dance Festival (IDF) 2004 in Jakarta. Asnawi writes, "Iradat takes its inspiration from the spiritual pilgrimage to reach the highest peak of religious consciousness blessed by Allah, as practiced by the Sufists in Islamic theology which is creatively interpreted with freedom." In the 2004 performance, the rechoreographed piece was performed by dancers of different cultural backgrounds–Jakartan, East Javanese, West Sumatran, and Batak or North Sumatran–from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. As is happening in many other regions of Indonesia, dance tradition in Aceh is being preserved not by freezing the form but maintaining the essence, which is dakwah (Islamic teaching), and developing the form creatively for a new purpose: theatrical performance. Yet recent catastrophic losses have interrupted this new attitude towards preserving the past. As I write, 97,936 people are reported to have died and 132,172 lost in Aceh. Until late January 2005, relocation barracks had been built to accommodate more than 400,000 homeless Achenese in twenty-four locations all over Aceh; 1,445 were recently buried, most unidentified and buried in groups of four to six and others buried in groups of thirty to fifty. (note 4) In these numbers, there is no way to determine how many dancers and musicians–the artists who can best maintain traditional dance and develop it creatively–were among these remains or the people lost. In Iradat, Asnawi's choreography appears as if he read the will of God and saw the dark cloud that was coming:
And what is beautifully expressed in movement by Asnawi before the tsunami is devotedly summarized in words by the Sufi poet Danarto after the event:
|
||