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Leading the children on a merry dance
They danced in circles
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They danced in circles. They beat drums.
They turned somersaults.
(JP/ID Nugroho)
As the unique sounds of the Ponorogo gamelan swept across the stage, 12-year-old Peter and his buddies had the audience in stitches during their performance closing the Reyog Ponorogo Festival late last December.
As they performed the Bujang Ganong, a dance named for a character in Reyog Ponorogo, the young comedians amazed the crowd with their witty and athletic performance, raising laughter with their comedy and inspiring admiration with their acrobatics.
Peter - that is, Holsea Peter Agung Saputra - is one of a growing number of children getting involved in Reyog Ponorogo, a traditional comic performance by three to five comedians who dance in a circle, each carrying a different-sized drum tied to his waist by a sash.
He was still in kindergarten when his parents, Andik Riyanto and Lidya Trimurti, introduced him to the world of reyog.
"Very early on we could see his talent for dancing, and when I introduced him to reyog, he loved it very much," Andik told The Jakarta Post.
Since then, Peter has not stopped dancing.
After school, Peter gets one-on-one training from his father. During these lessons, he has to learn all kinds of dance movements - not to mention those somersaults. For little Peter, all this was nothing but fun.
"Peter loves dancing so much," Andik said. "He had his first big achievement in dancing when he was a fourth grader at elementary school." At that time, Peter won first place in the Bujang Ganong Dance Contest for Elementary School Students from all over Ponorogo.
After that success, Andik began to prepare Peter to enter the road to be a professional artist. For this reason, he sent Peter to Singo Aglar Nuswantoro, a reyog workshop led by Shodik Pristiwanto.
That Peter found a place in the reyog arena in Ponorogo shows the effort being made to ensure the tradition continues among young people. Like so many other traditional art forms, reyog is facing the threat of extinction under the impact of modern culture. The Ponorogo regency, aware of this threat, saw a need to establish "Reyog Ponorogo for Children", better known as the "Mini Reyog", to encourage the development of new reyog artists.
"This is one of the ways to preserve Reyog Ponorogo," said Wiwik Dyah Pratiwi, head of the tourism promotion section of the Ponorogo tourism and art and culture office.
Mini Reyog is a Reyog Ponorogo festival specially designed for children and teenagers. The festival, which first started five years ago, is a venue for schools and reyog studios all over Ponorogo to perform.
"Almost every reyog studio and school in Ponorogo has its own reyog group," Wiwik said. "It is during the Mini Reyog Festival that they show off their skills."
Each mini reyog group has at least 40 artists, he added
The artists in a mini reyog group perform as the Jatilan dancers, Dhadak Merak dancers and singers. As well as the Mini Reyog Festival, Ponorogo regency also organizes an annual event called the Cultural Parade, when reyog groups from all over the regency perform their dances in a carnival through the city.
This is not the regency's only strategy for ensuring traditional performing arts continue down the ages. As part of the local school arts curriculum, schoolchildren in Ponorogo learn about reyog in detail, from its history, its costumes and the dance movements of each character in a Reyog Ponorogo performance. These lessons ensure most local children and teenagers in Ponorogo develop a complete understanding of this form of art.
Shodik Pristiwanto, a local reyog artist and a leader of the Singo Aglar Nusantoro reyog workshop, said the local curriculum made it easier to ensure the continuation of reyog artists.
"This local curriculum has at least laid a strong art foundation for reyog artists in Ponorogo," he said. His student Peter, Shodik said, is a model for this.
In Shodik's eyes, Peter is a young artist with a strong artistic value. So Shodik did not hesitate to cast Peter in the role of Bujang Ganong when the group took part in the National Reyog Festival 2008, where the group won first prize. This achievement, he said, was inseparable from Peter's performance as Bujang Ganong.
"If the Bujang Ganong was bad, we would not have won first prize," Shodik said. "So this victory is the victory of all workshop members, including Peter."
The urgency of ensuring a new generation of reyog artists is also felt by reyog troupes outside Java, such as the Reyog Margomulyo Group from Tarakan, East Kalimantan.
reyog artists in Tarakan, which is near the Malaysian border, were among those angered when, in early January, the website of the Malaysian Tourism Service claimed reyog as its own.
"Now imagine," said Sarju Prasetyo, chairman of the Reyog Margomulyo Group, "Malaysia even had the hide to claim reyog as part of its traditional culture."
The future of the dance, he said, depends on the development of a new generation of reyog artists.
"There is no other solution in this respect rather than the regeneration of reyog artists," Sarju said. "What will happen if there are no more reyog artists?"
