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Obituary: The Pakkarena dance maestro is gone
Indonesia has lost one of its great artists
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ndonesia has lost one of its great artists. Coppong Daeng Rannu, a dance maestro from South Sulawesi, passed away last Wednesday and was buried the following day in her hometown of Kampili village, Pallangga district in Gowa regency.
The Pakkarena dance maestro, affectionately called Mak (Mother or Madame) Coppong, died at the age of 89 from asthma. She was rushed to Syekh Yusuf Hospital in Gowa, but after being treated for about an hour, she breathed her last. She is survived by three children and eight grandchildren.
Subaedah, 32, one of her granddaughters, told reporters that Mak Coppong died before her dream came true. Now, the only hope of realizing that dream lies with her other granddaughter, Nurlaela, 22.
All her life, Mak Coppong wanted to open a dance workshop to preserve the Pakkarena dance, a traditional dance from South Sulewesi that has been performed at various world art events.
Unfortunately, only a few people were interested in learning the dance, among them were several of her children and grandchildren, who practiced it intensively in the area beneath their stilt house.
”Mak Copping really wanted to open a dance workshop to teach children who were interested in the Pakkarena dance. She was really concerned the dance would die out because of the lack of public interest in learning it. However, the workshop never came into being,” Subaedah said, wiping her eyes.
The departure of Mak Coppong has left traditional dancers worried, as there is no one to assume her leading role as a Pakkarena dancer. They can only dance the standard movements that have different rhythms to those of Mak Coppong.
Four of her grandchildren studied it seriously, with Nurlaela being the most outstanding student, but none of them was able to master all of the 12 dance moves.
“I only mastered three moves, while Mak Coppong did all 12 moves of the Pakkarena dance,” Nurlaela said.
Mak Coppong had been teaching Nurlaela and her three cousins since 2004 and they usually accompanied her on stage.
The dance maestro saw that Nurlaela was the most talented, and she told her repeatedly to hone her skill in Pakkarena dancing and open a dance workshop.
“She kept telling me to do so. Before her demise, she reminded me of her words. And I promised to heed grandma’s advice,” she said.
Nurlaela currently has four students: her nieces, who are about 12 years old. “I teach them the moves I know,” said the mother-of-one. They, too, practice in the space beneath their stilt house.
Mak Coppong’s expertise in Pakkarena dancing always earned her spectators’ rapturous applause, wherever she performed. She moved so beautifully, with such slow and calm gestures, every time she danced, showing how deeply she was absorbed in her performance.
She was never affected by the rhythm of the music, the stage or the audience. She would execute the same performance, anywhere, and would dance nonstop for an hour. At the age of almost 90, she could still dance effortlessly for an hour.
“I dance not because I want to be admired by the public. I dance because it is a calling,” Mak Coppong had told The Jakarta Post.
For her, entertaining people was the most important thing. She would dance equally at a circumcision ceremony or a wedding in the neighborhood, as at national and international festivals.
In 2004, Robert Wilson, the American director of I La Galigo theater, gave Mak Coppong a special part in his visionary music-theater work inspired by the Sureq Galigo epic. Mak Coppong got the role of goddess Sangiang Seri, playing an interesting part in the show that was staged in Europe, America, Singapore and Australia.
Her last performance overseas was in 2008 when Mak Coppong danced at an art event in Italy.
A number of researchers from Germany, America and England visited her house, located more then 20 kilometers south of Makassar, to find out more about the dance and about how Mak Coppong could give her soul to the dance.
Mak Coppong began dancing when she was nine, initially learning from her father, Baco, who played a traditional drum. To get a deeper understanding of the dance, she studied intensively with a dance teacher in her village, Masoi Daeng Ngola.
Since then, Mak Coppong and her father’s art group often performed. The Dutch and Japanese colonial governments even invited her to perform when they ruled the country.
When she was just 14, the Dutch asked her to dance at Karebosi field in Makassar to welcome Queen Beatrix. It was during World War II, and she danced to the accompaniment of canon blasts.
Mak Coppong received several awards, including one from the Minister of Culture and Tourism in 2007, as an Indonesian dance maestro.
People, including foreigners, admired her performances. Ironically, she received little attention in her own region.
The South Sulawesi provincial government, and the Gowa local administration in particular, never paid attention to her talent, which should have been viewed as a cultural asset that needed to be preserved. At her funeral, no local officials showed up.
Now the dance maestro has gone, leaving sadness not only for her family, but also for the world of arts and culture, as no one has inherited her expertise in Pakkarena dancing.
