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BAHASA KOREOGRAFI
(PRACTICE OF) SILAT DUDUK:
INVESTIGATING MALAY(NESS)
by Helly Minarti
Amin nudged Hasyimah, who co-founded P7:1SMA together with
Norhaizad and joined our discussions intermittently, to unravel her
own trajectory of learning in Malay dance - from two different
teachers of two different styles, up to her creating Nak Dara, which
triggered a heated discussion among the Malay dance teachers in
Singapore. For me, the way Hasyimah narrated this, which was
dense with self-reflection, was not only illustrative but also
discursive. Her narrative reflects a wider discussion on what it means
to be a young Malay in Singapore. In her case, how to negotiate a
position when one becomes the projection or reflection of the
teachers' hopes, and how when these two - one’s aspiration and her
teachers’ - do not meet.
https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202 Balinese dances.
For Mohd Fauzi bin Aminudin, Malay dance is only one of several dance forms that
he had to learn at ASWARA, the only conservatory-modeled higher education
programme for dance in Malaysia. As part of an inclusive (or all-encompassing)
curriculum, Fauzi had to delve into the different forms - Malay dance, Indian (mainly
bharatanatyam), Chinese, and other techniques that are rooted in Asian traditions
(the identification of Indian and Chinese dance forms indeed carries its own
problematics, although there is no room to discuss these further in our residency).
Such a nationalistic project in the academic realm would sound familiar for
Indonesians, whose experience through the founding and spreading of several ISIs
(Indonesia Institute of the Arts), which operate in several main cities. Nevertheless,
in the case of the ISIs, nationalism has to somehow rub shoulders with the
respective locales they are set up in. This in turn brings about different emphases
in the local curricula. For instance, the Denpasar ISI in Bali, places an emphasis on
Soultari Amin frames his practice as artist researcher focussing on his
observation on and embodiment of the lenggang Melayu (Malay gait).
Here, the Malay gait becomes a movement infused with different
narratives of origins, and identifications of certain locales and
individuals (including the teachers). Amin understands the gait as a
form of gendered language that he has become fluent in, the intricate
vocabularies of which he now tries to articulate using his own body.
What I found rather shocking is that the identification of Jakarta's gait
as an influence on the local style in Singapore, and how Malay dance
was taught by teachers from Jakarta. One name that kept surfacing
in our conversations is Tom Ibnur, who came to Singapore to teach
and became a hegemonic barometer. Several years ago, when I
co-designed a programme on investigating Malay Dance as an
attempt to reread the practice of Malay dance in the Indonesian
capital, Jakarta was positioned as a diasporic location - if not a
peripheral one when it comes to Malay dance development.
The richness and the scope of Malay dance in Malaysia was revealed when Amin
shared with us the Terinai, a classical dance from the court of Perlis during a short
workshop in the studio of P7:1SMA (read as ‘Prisma’), founded by Norhaizad and
Hasyimah. This is a formal variation that has not found its cultural context in
Singapore, nor most probably, in Indonesia.
In his choreographic work, Fauzi also investigates the Tari Piring
(Plate Dance) from Negeri Sembilan in Malaysia, which
resonates with the Minangkabau silat as its origin of movement
vocabulary. However, outside the dance techniques that rely on
speed and virtuosity, and the silat steps that form the basis of
Tari Piring, what exactly are the ideas and questions that
stimulate him to dig deeper, especially that which relates with his
body and its contemporaneity?
For his next choreographic work, Norhaizad is interested to work
with the Article 152 that states the minority rights of the Malays
in Singapore. Choreography here becomes a strategy to
articulate different elements and mediums that often go beyond
the physical body, giving form to other bodies, such as the digital
body.
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