FUSE#2
FUSE is a bi-annual publication that documents the projects at Dance Nucleus . FUSE is a bi-annual publication that documents the projects at Dance Nucleus .
Element#2 BAHASA KOREOGRAFI Overview of Bahasa Koreografi by Alfian Sa’at I had the honour of spending time with four dancer-choreographers and their mentor, Helly Minarti, as part of a programme called ‘Bahasa Koreografi’. The aim of the programme is to explore choreographic language specific to Malay dance, and to uncover the discourse of dance in the Malay/Indonesian language. My deepest thanks to Daniel Kok and Dance Nucleus for the invitation. Over four intensive days, I listened, took notes, and marveled at the kinds of discussions generated in the studio, along with the demonstrations. Norhaizad Adam talked about Article 152 of the Singapore Constitution, the one which enshrines minority rights and the ‘special position of the Malays’ (those of you who still use the phrase ‘majority rights’ please wake up your idea, like now, immediately). As someone trained in traditional Malay dance, he wondered about the space for those ‘minorities’ like him who wanted to challenge orthodoxy. If he were to approach the various dance gurus and gatekeepers to formulate an analogue to Article 152, what shape will it take? What ‘special position’ will be accorded to the rulebreakers, and will the list of caveats and exceptions be longer than the article itself? I came in as someone who is still very new to dance, and with my own biases towards some forms of traditional performances. These biases often revolve around consumption, where spectatorship is often inextricable from a social duty to ‘support’ what has been branded as one’s ‘cultural heritage’. Given this starting point, of a culture that is under siege (modernisation/urbanisation/Westernisation etc), the tendency is for criticality to be subordinated to anxieties over whether a certain cultural form is even being ‘kept alive’. But what is on life support is often not very alive at all, and to settle for the ‘at least’ will lead to the proliferation of cliched mediocrities and a crisis of connoisseurship. Mohd Fauzi Bin Amirudin took us through some of the forms he was trained in, including that of the tarian piring, a Minang form where dancers balance saucers in their hands, and where the shifting of body weight (pemindahan berat badan) is crucial to its execution (the weight of the saucers assimilated as points of weight on the body itself; the saucers become extensions of the body). But perhaps most magical for me was Fauzi’s demonstration of the terinai, a dance from the court of Perlis, which have movements and phases with the most gorgeous names, such as ‘timang burung’ (weighing a bird on the palm), ‘ketam bawa anak’ (crab carrying its child) and ‘layang mas’ (golden kite). Performed while sitting down, the dance is hypnotic to watch, the majestic hauteur of the performer at points dissolving thrillingly into a series of liquid strokes. 11 12
Element#2 BAHASA KOREOGRAFI OVERview of BAHASA KOREOGRAFI by Alfian Sa’at Soultari Amin Farid talked about the Malay ‘lenggang’, which he describes as a Malay gait used in dance, involving the swaying of the hands. It is a gendered movement: the male lenggang derives its energy from the elbow, while for the female it is from the fingers. There are also other forms of lenggang recorded in the dictionary, like ‘lenggang janda’ (divorcee’s gait), used to describe a flirtatious walk; ‘lenggang patah tujuh’ (gait broken into seven parts), to mean walking through a forest and avoiding branches, roots and thorns; and even ‘personal signature’ lenggang, such as a swagger described in Hikayat Anggun Che’ Tunggal as ‘lenggang si tabur bayam’ (the spinach-sower’s gait), cultivated by the hero of the romance. Amin wanted to study whether there were national forms of the lenggang (the Singaporean, Malaysian, Indonesian) articulated during Nusantara (serumpun) festivals and how they could tell a story of the colonial dismemberment of the Malay world. Best of all, for me, was spending time just listening and conversing with Helly Minarti. A specialist in Minang dance, and a curator of the Indonesian Dance Festival in Jakarta, it is easy to be absolutely awestruck (kagum, segan) in her presence. It is rare for me to encounter people in real life who strike me as having the quality of a living library, and Mbak Helly is one of them. This is someone who can tell you the differences between the Solo style (more fluid) and the Yogya style (more geometric), recalls quotes such as that by Pina Bausch (“I am not interested in how people move but what moves them”), who cautions against jumping into dance dramaturgy without settling the question of what is dance choreography first. And yet throughout the sessions she was always nothing less than humble and generous. How brilliant to discover that we have so much, and even more brilliant to have someone show you what all of it is worth. Ayu Permata Sari discussed her research into codifying and embodying the movements of those men (bapak-bapak) attending a dangdut concert. Dangdut is a massively popular form of pop music in Indonesia, but which has a reputation in some quarters of being the music of the not-highly-educated masses (kekampungan). She was fascinated by some of the movements produced by the men at these concerts, often so immersed in the music that they would sway with their eyes half-closed. While interviewing them, she realised that for some of the men, the movements came from their working lives: there was keyboard-tapping, for example, or motorbike handlebar-twisting, turned into units of movements that were repeated and elaborated. By ‘borrowing’ these movements, Ayu wanted to see whether she was able to overcome the formal habits of her own trained body and to reach a stage of sincerity, or even innocence (keikhlasan tubuh), which for her was encapsulated in the phrase “menari dengan hati” (dancing from the heart). About ALFIAN SA’AT Alfian is the Resident Playwright of W!LD RICE. He has been nominated at the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards for Best Original Script ten times, and has received the award four times. His plays with W!LD RICE include HOTEL (with Marcia Vanderstraaten), The Asian Boys Trilogy, Cooling-Off Day, The Optic Trilogy and Homesick. He was the winner of the Golden Point Award for Poetry and the National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature in 2001. His publications include Collected Plays One and Two; poetry collections One Fierce Hour, A History of Amnesia and The Invisible Manuscript; and short-story collections Corridor and Malay Sketches. 13 14
- Page 1 and 2: FUSE # 2 Produced by Dance Nucleus
- Page 3 and 4: Foreword Developments at Dance Nucl
- Page 5 and 6: As BAHASA KOREOGRAFI was conducted
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Element#2<br />
BAHASA KOREOGRAFI<br />
Overview of<br />
Bahasa Koreografi<br />
by Alfian Sa’at<br />
I had the honour of spending time with four<br />
dancer-choreographers and their mentor, Helly Minarti,<br />
as part of a programme called ‘Bahasa Koreografi’. The<br />
aim of the programme is to explore choreographic<br />
language specific to Malay dance, and to uncover the<br />
discourse of dance in the Malay/Indonesian language.<br />
My deepest thanks to Daniel Kok and Dance Nucleus<br />
for the invitation.<br />
Over four intensive days, I listened, took notes, and marveled at<br />
the kinds of discussions generated in the studio, along with the<br />
demonstrations. Norhaizad Adam talked about Article 152 of<br />
the Singapore Constitution, the one which enshrines minority<br />
rights and the ‘special position of the Malays’ (those of you who<br />
still use the phrase ‘majority rights’ please wake up your idea,<br />
like now, immediately). As someone trained in traditional Malay<br />
dance, he wondered about the space for those ‘minorities’ like<br />
him who wanted to challenge orthodoxy. If he were to approach<br />
the various dance gurus and gatekeepers to formulate an<br />
analogue to Article 152, what shape will it take? What ‘special<br />
position’ will be accorded to the rulebreakers, and will the list of<br />
caveats and exceptions be longer than the article itself?<br />
I came in as someone who is still very new to dance,<br />
and with my own biases towards some forms of<br />
traditional performances. These biases often revolve<br />
around consumption, where spectatorship is often<br />
inextricable from a social duty to ‘support’ what has<br />
been branded as one’s ‘cultural heritage’. Given this<br />
starting point, of a culture that is under siege<br />
(modernisation/urbanisation/Westernisation etc), the<br />
tendency is for criticality to be subordinated to anxieties<br />
over whether a certain cultural form is even being ‘kept<br />
alive’. But what is on life support is often not very alive at<br />
all, and to settle for the ‘at least’ will lead to the<br />
proliferation of cliched mediocrities and a crisis of<br />
connoisseurship.<br />
Mohd Fauzi Bin Amirudin took us through some of the forms<br />
he was trained in, including that of the tarian piring, a Minang<br />
form where dancers balance saucers in their hands, and where<br />
the shifting of body weight (pemindahan berat badan) is crucial<br />
to its execution (the weight of the saucers assimilated as points<br />
of weight on the body itself; the saucers become extensions of<br />
the body). But perhaps most magical for me was Fauzi’s<br />
demonstration of the terinai, a dance from the court of Perlis,<br />
which have movements and phases with the most gorgeous<br />
names, such as ‘timang burung’ (weighing a bird on the palm),<br />
‘ketam bawa anak’ (crab carrying its child) and ‘layang mas’<br />
(golden kite). Performed while sitting down, the dance is<br />
hypnotic to watch, the majestic hauteur of the performer at<br />
points dissolving thrillingly into a series of liquid strokes.<br />
11 12