T

housands of people converged along the roadside of Surakarta's (Solo's) prominent Jl. Slamet Riyadi on Saturday afternoon to enjoy the annual Solo Batik Carnival (SBC) with many participants wearing attractive batik costumes.

'The carnival is held to help preserve batik,' head of Surakarta Culture and Tourism Agency, Widhi Srihanto, told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the carnival.

As many as 141 participants with fancy batik costumes joined the carnival, parading from Solo Center Point (SCP) in Purwosari area through the protocol street of Jl. Slamet Riyadi and ending in the Gladag area, where a stage was erected for Surakarta Mayor FX Hadi Rudyatmo and other honorable guests.

In total, the parade took a distance of some 3.5 kilometers.

Along the street, spectators looked on enthusiastically at the parade. Although the organizing committee repeatedly warned them not to take pictures of the parading contestants, they kept stopping some of the participants to take pictures with them.

As a result, the organizing committee had to repeatedly ask the respective participants to keep walking in the parade formation.

This year's carnival was a bit different from previously as participants from outside Surakarta also took part in the event. They came from Balikpapan, East Kalimantan. They wore their respective traditional costumes and a woman in Enggang (hornbill) attire became the center of attention. Enggang is widely found on Kalimantan Island.

'The theme this time is 'Memayu hayuning buwono',' said Widhi, referring to the Javanese concept of preserving nature.

In accordance with the theme, participants wore costumes that represented the four elements of nature: water, air, fire and earth.

The fire-inspired costumes, for example, were dominated with the color of red. Those representing the element of air were dominated with light blue and the ones of earth with brown. Most of the costumes were sparkling and had batik accessories.

'With the theme, we hope Surakartans can help to preserve nature, so it will become more beautiful and everlasting,' Widhi said.

He added that this year there were fewer participants in the batik carnival, but said that in terms of quality and spectator management it was much better.

Previously, over 200 participants had taken part.

'We also hoped that with the carnival, more tourists would visit Surakarta and they have done. Hotels and flights to Solo are fully booked,' said Widhi.

Dynand Fariz, the carnival consultant, said that the carnival quality needed to be continuously improved, especially to make the participants perform better.

The costumes, as well, are expected to be much more innovative in the future.

He also suggested a better spectator management, pointing out that SBC had become a tourist attraction worldwide. Otherwise, spectators would damage the beauty of the carnival. As a result, 'not all spectators could really enjoy the carnival', said Dynand, who had been successful in organizing the Jember Fashion Carnival in East Java.

A tourist from Jakarta, Rayfa Haidar, said he liked the carnival very much. He happened to be spending school holidays at his grandmother's home in the city and could finally manage to enjoy the SBC.

'This is good. The costumes are attractive,' said Rayfa, a junior high school student.