School Years and Early Career

Traditional Minangkabau "dance" can be grouped into three categories, determined by where it is practiced. First, martial arts-derived dances that emerge from the sasaran; second, dances that contain dakwah (Islamic teachings) practiced in the surau and mesjid (village prayer-house); third, Melayu dances practiced mostly by girls in public schools as part of their curricular or extracurricular activities. The first two movement forms are mostly practiced in inland Minangkabau darek (villages) while the last is practiced in larger coastal cities.

At the age of nine, Gusmiati moved with her family to Padangpanjang, a neighboring city known as the center of culture of inland West Sumatra. It was in Padangpanjang as a young schoolgirl that Gusmiati began to study Melayu dances under the guidance of Sofyan Naan, a local master. To her surprise studying Melayu dance outraged her uncle Sampono Alam. What she didn't understand was that in the 1950s some Muslims in Minangkabau still believed that by studying and performing dance–showing the beauty of bodily movement in public–women put themselves into a morally unstable position. These Muslims believed that dance made women more likely to behave sinfully. After several sometimes angry warnings, Sampono Alam chased his niece with a sword, and Gusmiati had to run as fast as she could to save her life. Only with great patience, and after gradual, repeated, and long explanations, was Gusmiati able to persuade her uncle that dancing would never damage her reputation as a Muslim woman. This was an honest promise, a vow that Gusmiati fulfilled up to the end of her life.

Upon entering junior high school, Gusmiati had become not only a good dancer but also an astute observer of traditional performing arts. Every year in Padangpanjang there was a nighttime fair in which various traditional Minangkabauan performing arts were performed, such as pencak-silat, randai (a kind of dance drama), or the rabab (a two-stringed Minang cello or, more generally, any musical instrument accompanying traditional Minang song). Gusmiati never missed these performances.

In 1957, after completing junior high, Gusmiati continued her studies at the SPG Vocational High School for Teachers. It was during this time that Gusmiati met Ms. Huriah Adam (1936-71), the pioneering dancer who would became her teacher and inspire her life. She was the daughter of Syekh Adam Balai-Balai, a respected, forward-thinking Islamic leader in Padangpanjang who established the Madrasah Irsyadin Nas (MIN), his own Western-oriented public school for local young women.

At MIN, Syekh Adam trained his students to become good Islamic women and taught them about Western performing arts. (Adam's sons also learned to play various Western musical instruments.) His daughter, the young Huriah Adam, not only learned to play the violin well but also attained skill in the techniques of Western painting. More importantly, she was an excellent dancer and a creative dance teacher who was also a practicing musician (a violinist) and a visual artist. Huriah performed various Melayu dances as well as traditional martial arts-based dances, such as the Sewah, Sijundai, Alang Bentan, Adau-adau, Padang, Piriang, Sibadindin, and the Galombang, that she learned from local village masters. Most important of all, Huriah created new work based on traditional martial-arts movements she learned from local village masters. (note 5) In emulation of her colleague, perhaps, Gusmiati throughout her life immersed herself in bringing together dance and martial arts to create new and meaningful work.

Upon completing her course of study at SPG in Padangpanjang in 1960, Gusmiati enrolled at FKIP Teacher's College in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province. She was majoring in Indonesian, yet in her spare time conducted intensive surveys of various traditional Minangkabau dances in the villages. After graduating in 1964, Gusmiati followed her parents to the city of Payakumbuh (also in West Sumatra) and taught at a junior high school there. Later, she founded her first amateur dance group for students, for which she choreographed short entertaining dances inspired by nature and the activities in her surroundings. These are, among others, Tari Payung (Umbrella Dance), Kasawah (Work at Rice Fields), Layang-layang (Kites), Panen (Harvest), and Cewang di Langik (Clouds in the Sky).

In 1967, Gusmiati moved back to Batusangkar to teach at another junior high school, and continued to choreograph short dances. From 1972 to 1975, she studied at ASKI, the Indonesian (State) College of Traditional Performing Arts in Padangpanjang. After finishing her study, she served as a part-time dance teacher for a few years. Meanwhile, she also taught dance at a high school in Batusangkar and at a private dance studio in Padang, which in 1977 became the Indo Jati dance group. In that year Gusmiati choreographed Rantak (the title denotes a heavy or energetic step and also alludes to a larger social meaning: a strong will or intention that must be realized), a work that marked a significant development in her dance career. (note 6) As a member of the adjudicator board of the National Folk Dance Festival in Jakarta, I saw Rantak in 1978, when it was performed at the Festival. The following year I invited Gusmiati to participate in the Young Choreographers Festival II/1979, organized by the Jakarta Arts Council in Jakarta, for which she choreographed Puti Galang Banyak (literally, "the lady who wears many bracelets," alluding to a traditional Minang fable of a wealthy but arrogant and wicked woman). From 1979-81 she served as a dance instructor at the Jakarta-based Bunda Foundation dance group headed by Mrs. Nelly Adam Malik, wife of Adam Malik, the Vice President of Indonesia (1978-83), a native Minang who came to political prominence during Suharto's early years. In 1982, however, Gusmiati decided to return to Batusangkar, where she established the Gumarang Sakti dance company.

Gusmiati Suid, her company, and the arts of West Sumatra leaped into my mind in 1983, when I was invited to participate in an international dance and theater festival in Calcutta, India, organized by Padatik, a cultural organization in Calcutta that actively organizes traditional Indian dance and theatre training, and directed by Syahmanand Jalan. (As part of his plan to organize another international festival in dance, theater, and martial arts, Syahmanand had asked me to suggest artists to represent Indonesia in the event.) Back in Jakarta, I discussed this idea with Gusmiati Suid who was very enthusiastic and suggested ways to realize the dream of performing at this festival. I solicited advice from Leon Agusta, an outstanding writer of Minangkabau origin who at that time was a member of the Jakarta Arts Council, who offered me names of other contacts in theater, martial arts, and funding. Leon then contacted Chairul Harun, a well-known Minangkabau writer who had a good relationship with the West Sumatranese governor, and Bagindo Fahmi in Padang, West Sumatra, a local intellectual respected by traditional and modern performing artists in West Sumatra. Before leaving for New York to continue my own study in the performing arts, I managed to pass along the significant contact information to Syahmanand Jalan in Calcutta, as well as give him some advice as to how to proceed. Meanwhile, the Jakarta Institute of the Arts invited Gusmiati to be a guest dance instructor for the school year 1984-85.

Indeed, since her participation in the Young Choreographers Festival II/1979, Gusmiati had been busy, dividing her creative life between Batusangkar and Jakarta. She enjoyed the artistic life of a metropolis that was open to new creative work. Her work was staged in respected artistic venues and heatedly debated among artists and critics, an atmosphere she could hardly find in Batusangkar or even Padang, West Sumatra. She was introduced to a world in which a dance was considered to be a work of art, not just entertainment or promotion. She felt that her position as a civil servant in Batusangkar limited her creative freedom, so in 1985 she resigned her position as a junior high school teacher to dedicate her life to dance in Jakarta (and beyond).

Suwita Yanti and Yessy Apriati, Gusmiati's two daughters, had always danced with their mother's dance group. By contrast, Yandi Yasin, her only son (who later called himself Boi G. Sakti), hardly paid attention to his mother's dancing. Yet upon finishing high school in 1986, he surprised his mother by enrolling as a dance student at the Jakarta Institute of the Arts. The whole Gusmiati family thus migrated to Jakarta. Azwar Anas, the governor of West Sumatra, urged Gusmiati Suid to reconsider her choice. But for Gusmiati, the decision was final. "I need a better atmosphere for my creative growth and dance professionalism. I need friends who are critical and can feed my ambition to be a serious artist. Staying in West Sumatra means that I would only choreograph and perform for official celebrations and parties to welcome and entertain state guests. Only Jakarta can give me all that I need."