Courtesy of Rachel Cooper

As a US-based performing arts presenter whose work is mainly focused on Asia, it’s only natural for Rachel Cooper to be spellbound by Indonesia, a country rich in arts and culture.

In fact, Indonesia for her is more than captivating. It seems to have become a second home, a place she returns to over and over.

“I have been so inspired in my life by Indonesia, its people, the friendships, the artists I work with,”
said Cooper, now director of cultural programs and performing arts for the New York-based Asia Society, whose mission is to create a deeper understanding of the Asian art scene.

“It’s been such a major part of my life. I’ve learned so much from Indonesia,” Cooper, who speaks fluent Indonesian, told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of her recent visit to Yogyakarta.

The fact that she has watched some recent Indonesian movies including Riri Riza’s box office hit Laskar Pelangi (The Rainbow Warriors) shows how up to date she is with Indonesia.
Cooper first came to Indonesia in 1974, when she was still a college student. She joined a cruise with stopovers in a number of countries including Indonesia and spent 10 days in Jakarta. “Jakarta was not such a big city back then.”

She became more serious about exploring Indonesia when she studied world culture at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she took courses in Indonesian dancing, gamelan music and theatre from Indonesian masters.

In 1979, she returned to Indonesia to study Balinese dancing and gamelan in Bali for nine months. In the end, she spent a total of two years on the island for her studies.

This later drove her to co-establish a Balinese music and dance company in California where she comes from, called Gamelan Sekar Jaya, which to this day presents the arts of Bali across the US.

Balinese people are always staying at her house in California, she said. Because she has a Balinese gamelan in her house, gamelan teachers also like to stay there.

“Balinese artists have always been a part of the house. It’s like the house has everything Balinese. So it’s not your typical Californian house,” she said.

Cooper came back to Indonesia once again in 1981, this time to study Indonesian at Satya Wacana University in Salatiga, Central Java, for another nine months.

Ever since then, she has become more and more engaged with Indonesia. From 1983 to 1989, she taught English at a private English course institution in Jakarta. It was during this stay she started to work with many theater groups, played gamelan and experienced performances from other parts of the country.

“It was great in Jakarta. So many people came from all over the country,” said the recipient of the 2006 William Dawson award from the Association of Arts Presenters for Programming Excellence.
Cooper considers the Festival of Indonesia — more popular known as the KIAS (US Indonesia cultural) festival — one of the largest project she has worked on.

“In a period of 18 months, we brought over 400 Indonesian performing artists, each representing different concepts, to perform on 30 stages across the US,” she said.

She added that it would be difficult to organize such a large-scale program these days, given the lack of government finance and support.

However, she said that smaller-scale exchange programs needed all the support they could get to strengthen people-to-people relationships, which could later help reduce the negative stereotyping between people of both countries.

This, she said, is what her organization — in cooperation with other concerned institutions in the US — has been trying to promote.

Last month, Cooper brought with her nine other noted US performing arts presenters for a nine-day tour of Jakarta, Surakarta (Central Java), Yogyakarta and Bali, giving the group a chance to find out more about Indonesia and Indonesian arts and culture.

The trip brought leaders in the field of performing arts in the US to Indonesia to meet local
artists, performing arts organizers and cultural figures, to make connections that would allow for exchange of programs to happen in the future.

“My commitment is really in both places: In the US and in Indonesia. I try to create a model of how to do this kind of work,” she said.

Such exchanges, according to Cooper, can happen in many different ways, between artists, Indonesian artists visiting the US or US artists coming to Indonesia. Exchanges also happen through collaborative work or projects within art institutions and local government administrations.

What is more important in such work, she said, is that each party develops their relationship. The more direct the relationship is, the more real. Both parties can learn from each other and shouldn’t rush as it can take time to develop something fruitful.

“It’s basically about being global. You have to be local to be global.”

For people to have a global outlook, they must first start working at the local community level. Then they need to meet with people in other communities who are also working very locally to be able to understand who they are.

“It’s local and personal, but out of that comes something universal.”

Popular

Volcano erupts in North Sulawesi, hundreds evacuated

Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

Ramadan boosts consumer confidence, retail sales