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.
Shoebox living: '(A)part' captures predicament of city dwellers
A dance piece captures the surreal and claustrophobic atmosphere of life inside apartment buildings and boarding houses, in which many people are cramped to share a living space yet are condemned to solitude.
Change Size
Realm of the lonely ghosts: In this segment of Maharani Pane’s dance piece, "(A)part", the audience can see silhouettes of dancers moving behind a curtain, evoking ghost-like images. (Courtesy of Komunitas Salihara/Witjak Widhi Cahya)
I
ndonesian choreographer and dancer Maharani Pane had been living in an apartment building for quite some time to take for granted the fact that the residents did not care about each other – whether their neighbors live or die, that is.
She never bothered to get to know her neighbors because they did not care to get to know her either.
Until one day, the police discovered the dead body of her 30-something male neighbor three days after he had died. An alarmed superintendent had notified the police after receiving complaints from residents about a rotting stench coming from the man’s room. When the police came to the scene, none of the man’s neighbors knew his name, let alone his occupation or his family’s whereabouts.
Are vertical living residents that self-centered as people?
Haunted by this question, she gave birth to a dance piece called (A)part, which was performed recently by eight dancers at the Salihara arts center in South Jakarta.
Dancers opened the show by dancing behind a large box shrouded by a large white curtain.
In the pitch-black theater, audience members could see the dancers’ silhouettes in motion with only a small flashlight as lighting.
