Contemporary dances express love, life and individualism

Irawaty Wardany ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Denpasar   |  Mon, 06/16/2008 10:03 AM  |  Bali

In the arts, there is always room to express oneself, including in dance.

Such self-expression was seen in four contemporary dances performed at the Ksirarnawa Theater in Denpasar Art Center on Thursday night. The performances were flavored by different types of dance, ranging from hip hop to ballet with a taste of Japanese culture thrown in.

The event was part of the We're Gonna Go Dancing! tour by the Japan Contemporary Dance Network in Indonesia. The tour will also take in Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta.

First up in the Bali performance was Kentaro!!, a 27-year-old soloist who performed a dance called "From Far Away, The One in the World", which was heavily influenced by street hip hop and featured the stamping sounds of music during the piece.

"The dance I performed just now contains so many messages about love, loneliness and other human emotions," Kentaro said.

The apparently chaotic choreography drew on his insecurity as a young man living in modern Japan with its dynamic lifestyle and fast pace, which have led to a wave of individualism.

Balinese dancer I Nyoman Sura offered a complete change of pace, with a quiet, calm performance called "Lost".

The dance, performed by three artists -- Sura, Jasmine Okubo and Gunadi Putra -- had a theatrical touch with the effect of a live puppet show.

Sura and Gunadi had a long red sheet stretched between them as a screen for Okubo, who wore a floral yukata (traditional summer kimono).

Okubo appeared behind the sheet with a candle in her hand, to give a puppet-show effect, and sang a Japanese song that tells a story about separation.

Sura said the choreography, which he created about three months ago, tells a story about the pain of losing someone.

"Unfortunately most of us do not appreciate the one we have until we have lost them, when it is too late," he said.

The piece by Dance Theater LUDENS, titled "Be", had a similar message to "Lost".

However, the dance, created by Takiko Iwabuchi and performed by Yukari Ota and Keiichi Otsuka, used a ballet style, showing off the dancers' limber bodies as they performed difficult moves.

Be told a story of a woman who did not realize how important her boyfriend was until she had lost him. It took a while for her heart to mend, but she had learned her lesson and took better care of her next relationship.

The last performance was by KIKIKIKIKIKI, a dance quartet from Kyoto whose dance was quite difficult to understand.

The quartet presented a piece titled "Beehive 007", which contained a lot of violent acts. The piece, created by Kitamari, did not present a beautiful or harmonious dance; rather, each member of the quartet seemed to move according to her own will.

The group, established in 2003, is known for its original movements and choreography created by each dancer's body formation.

They often perform dances with the theme of love and violence and flavored with a cynical humor.

I Wayan Dibya, a dance critic who is also a lecturer at the Indonesian Art Institute, said even though the dances seemed haphazard, the dancers' bodies were very well trained.

"I see it from a kinesthetic perception. As for the message of the dance, let the audience make its own interpretation," he said.

He said the dancers used their bodies as an instrument to express their sense of art.

The dances were generally not based on really difficult ideas -- they were just dancing, "but that is the characteristic of contemporary dance", he said.

Okubo shared a similar view, saying she chose to learn contemporary dance because it imposed no limitations on how to express one's sense of art.

"In contemporary dance we are free to express ourselves because it does not have certain rules like traditional dancing," she said.

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