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Taking a fresh look at Diponegoro
New facts: Several dancers rehearse a scene in Opera Diponegoro
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span class="inline inline-right">New facts: Several dancers rehearse a scene in Opera Diponegoro. Sardono discovered new facts about Diponegoro and incorporated them into his choreographies.
How can an old classical hero be reinterpreted to be relevant to current times?
To most Indonesians today, Diponegoro, a well-known prince from the Javanese Kingdom, is remembered as any other national hero whose picture hangs in the classrooms of state schools.
What distinguishes him is the clothes he wears: the white turban and muslin shirt. To all generations, he is simply known as a prince who led the people in their fight against Dutch colonization. But in fact, the story of his life is very complex, and extraordinary for one who lived in those days.
His exceptional story will be told this coming weekend — Feb. 19 and 20 — at the Salihara teather, Pejaten, South Jakarta, in a dance performance titled Opera Diponegoro, staged by Indonesia’s most famous choreographer, Sardono W Kusumo.
Sardono, a Javanese himself, took an interest in the prince’s story after he discovered several little-known facts about Diponegoro.
In the early 1990s, Sardono started his piece by delving into archives about the famous prince and Javanese society during the mid-1800s. The first version of his work premiered in 1995 and, until today, Sardono is still doing research bringing a new context and interpretation to Javanese history.
His main idea was to present Diponegoro as a symbol of the new Java.
“I see Diponegoro more as a cultural hero than a warrior. It is his contribution to the new identity of Javanese society that is considered very important, not to mention his never-ending spirit to fight against the colonial government,” he explained during a rehearsal session in Solo, Central Java, where most of the dancers and musicians are from. 
Diponegoro is the representation of a rebellious spirit within the Kingdom of Yogyakarta during the 1800s.
He decided to leave the palace when he realized the Dutch government had influenced many of the king’s policies and it seemed that the palace itself had fallen into the hands of the colonial power. He then lived in a small village in Yogyakarta, worked as farmer and lived as a commoner.
Later, after he had experienced a spiritual awakening, he started to lead the people, some of them warriors from the Kingdom, to fight against the Dutch. From 1825 to 1830, his troops fought in forests and lived in caves in the southern part of Central Java, and this lengthy war was considered one of the major wars in the history of Java.
On some occasions, Diponegoro called himself Ali Bashja Sentot Prawirodirjo, to underline his Muslim identity along with his distinctive style of dress.
It is interesting to see how Sardono has captured the interaction of power relations within the Kingdom; the relationship between the Javanese and the Dutch (which can also be seen as between East and West) as well as Javanese society with its own beliefs.
“The way Diponegoro presented himself indicates an awareness to face the Westerner in a very different way somehow than most previous Javanese heroes.”
The early version of the work involved more than 40 dancers and musicians. Last year, the piece was performed in the hall of the Asia Society, New York, as part of the Muslim Voice festival that demanded the work be smaller scale.
“To adjust to the stage was not that easy. But, I felt fortunate because the story, basically written by Diponegoro himself, let the scenes and the songs tell the complicated story in a very simple way. Yet this smaller version would offer more poetic and symbolic scenes.”
The primary source for the story was the Ngayogyakarta version of the Diponegoro Chronicle. This manuscript, written in Pegon script (Javanese, written using Arabic characters), comprises 4,804 strophes, which take up no fewer than 800 pages. This autobiography of Prince Diponegoro was partly dictated to a colleague and partly written in Diponegoro’s own hand at his place of exile in Manado, Sulawesi, approaching the time of his 50th birthday.
Another important inspiration was the very famous work of art by Indonesian classical painter, Raden Saleh.
The painting is called The Arrest of Diponegoro. For this performance, Effendy painted a work with the same subject matter, which will be the main set for the entire one-hour performance.
“The artistic concept was based on a form of Wayang Beber, where people can see the whole scene through a transparent screen,” said Iskandar Loedin, the technical and lighting designer of the piece, who joined the production in its early stage.
Biyan Wanaatmaja, a well-known Indonesian fashion designer, gives an interesting touch to the work. It should be noted that the performance involves many of Java’s best dancers, such as Mugiyono Kasido, Fajar Satriadi, Nuryanto, Hanny Herlina and Rambat Yulianingsih.
The music, mostly played on gamelan instruments, was composed by Waluyo Sastra Sukarno.
As for Sardono himself, he has been acclaimed as one of the most cutting-edge contemporary choreographers and brilliant theatrical imagists of Asia, even at the beginning of his artistic career, and has been credited by Michel Cournot of France’s Le Monde newspaper as the creator of the five most captivating, yet silent, minutes of the Festival Mondiale at the Theatre de Nancy (1973).
His recent acknowledgement, as the recipient of the prestigious Distinguished Artist Award from the International Society for Performing Arts, puts him in the same league as ground-breaking artists such as Martha Graham and Pina Bausch.
— Photos by FG. Pandhuagie
