TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Reviving the 'I La Galigo’ creation myth
Longer than the Mahabharata and comparable to Homer's Odyssey, I La Galigo recounts the creation and destruction of the Middle World, the realm of white-blooded descendants of the gods.
Change Size
Shadow play: The most recent performance of "I La Galigo" was held at the IMF World Bank meeting in Nusa Dua, Bali, last year. (The Jakarta Post/Wendra Ajistyatama)
I
em>I La Galigo may sound like the title of an Italian opera, but it is also the title of an ancient creation myth from South Sulawesi that American playwright Robert Wilson has translated into an avant-garde piece of performance art on stage, with movement, light and space as major elements.
And when the curtains open on its vernissage night on July 3 at Ciputra Artpreneur Theater in South Jakarta, where it will be staged until July 7, we will sense a different energy, a different rhythm (as Wilson once relayed) — something you have to experience. In fact, this ancient cosmic myth reveals a sense of the divine and the human experience at the same time.
Watching a procession of figures carrying goods from an ancient world slowly pass from right to left on a stage of changing hues is like entering a world of wondrous colors, where speech is replaced by stylized gestures and the passing of time indicated by the changing of a colored horizon; grey-green lined with light blue merge into various hues of blue, purplish grey, blood red and vibrant green.
As the procession proceeds in an almost never-ending rhythm, flying figures evoke the notion of natural movements, like that of the wind or thunder, breaking the rhythm of slowness and the silence of a world that seems to lie far behind us — but is in fact, very close.
The visuals are inspired by the epic creation myth Sureq Galigo, which has been reinterpreted to represent the Bugis world at the dawn of its history. Longer than the Mahabharata and comparable to Homer's Odyssey, it recounts the creation and destruction of the Middle World, the realm of white-blooded descendants of the gods.
The late Puang Matoa Saidi, former head of the Bugis society’s bissu (transgender shamans), said in an interview before the first edition was staged 15 years ago that every shade had a meaning, every place its significance.
