Photos by Effendi Surjadjaja and Yul Ardiansyah
The fifth Art Summit Indonesia (ASI 5) was held in November, an international-quality arts festival that was short on publicity.
This year's Art Summit Indonesia (ASI) featured world-class artists and groups from around the world performing their masterpieces. One such performance, for two nights only, was a stunning contemporary dance suite, 10y10 Danzas, by renowned choreographer Monica Runde, who teaches contemporary dance at the Cristina Rota Dramatic Arts School (Centro de Nuevos Creadores) in Madrid, Spain.
The Jakarta Playhouse (Gedung Kesenian Jakarta) suddenly became romantic and melancholy those two nights (6 and 7 November) as this three-act dance drama told terrible tales of wives suffering domestic strife. Four dancers – two women and two men – portrayed incidents of conflict in the home. Their rhythmic movements were often slow and deeply touching, suddenly bursting into violence as the music flared up. Displaying a fantastic mastery of classic ballet moves, the dancers seemed to be playing, engaging in dialogues using their bodies; seemingly impossible movements became supple and enchanting. From time to time, bright spotlights focused the audience's attention on the dancers' poetic moves.
The dark, minimalist stage design was also arranged to depict the psychological conflict that occurs in relationships between the sexes. At the beginning, we saw flowers at the edge of the stage, along with bottles symbolizing alcohol abuse, and four chairs, facing one another to indicate the two couples' problems.
The dancers' costumes, simple yet elegant, allowed them to adapt their movements to dynamic shifts in the narrative; when a woman was being abused by her partner, this was signaled by changes in the configuration of her garments. Certain details made a dancer seem trapped by her situation, physically and emotionally.
In an interview after the show, Monica told us that around 60 women died in Spain last year from domestic violence. This fact inspired her to "speak out" about violence in the home, which occurs everywhere in the world. "I dedicate this work especially to those women who are too weak to uphold their freedom and independence and defend themselves against the threat of violence," Monica said.
Indonesia had the honor of hosting the world premiere of this piece,
entitled Social Tale. All the compositions in 10y10 Danzas were choreographed
by Monica Runde, who earned her Master's degrees from the London Contemporary
Dance School and York University in Canada. Her troupe has traveled
the world and met with great acclaim at prestigious festivals in Europe,
America and Asia.
Another dance-theater performance, by The Arts Fission Co and Angela Liong Dance from Singapore, was entitled Ghost Exchange Series II. This tale imagined a world supernatural conference, in which ghosts from different countries and cultures convened and interacted. Innovative visual projection techniques and vocal narrative effects made this work quite entertaining.
This year's Art Summit Indonesia presented 13 performing groups from 11 countries, with around 150 artists in all. As well as dance, music and contemporary theater were also represented. The opening night featured Wayang Listrik by Balinese dalang Madé Sidia at Teater Besar, Taman Ismail Marzuki. Tualen's Journey was a classical story in contemporary packaging: human nature has not progressed far beyond the other primates. The performance combined classical and modern wayang (shadow puppets) with video art, accompanied by well-integrated gamelan, keyboards, guitar and drums.
Another stunning musical performance was Rituality and Ecstasies in Latin American Art Music, presented by the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies Music from Argentina. No mere orchestral concert, this was a ritual, combining ethnic voices and over 100 different traditional Latin American musical instruments with modern electronic instruments. Conductor Alejandro Iglesias Rossi directed the performers' musical energies through a shifting, meditative atmosphere.
Art Summit Indonesia is held once every three years. This year's event cost two billion Rupiah but was quite sparsely attended. We hope that it will receive better publicity next time around.
