The circle of life: Dancers from the Sapphire Dance Creations perform a piece in a concentric circle formation in Jakarta.

Words Sebastian Partogi Photos Arief Suhardiman

The Sapphire Dance Creations presents global sociopolitical issues through choreographic influences from around the world.

In an age of increasing sociocultural polarization and homogenization, the Sapphire Dance Creations troupe from West Bengal, India, said they felt an urgent desire to present their pieces — which blend eclectic influences from India’s diverse cultures with Western dance traditions — to audiences across the globe.

Sapphire Dance Creations performed two shows in Jakarta, on Dec. 20 at the Gandhi Memorial Intercontinental School (GMIS) in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, and on Dec. 21 at the Tourism Ministry’s Sapta Pesona auditorium. According to the troupe’s artistic director and choreographer, Sudarshan Chakravorty, the two Jakarta shows were part of Sapphire’s Indonesia tour, which also covered Yogyakarta, Bali and Medan in North Sumatra.

Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya and Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Pradeep Kumar Rawat opened the Dec. 21 performance at the ministry’s Sapta Pesona auditorium.

The group is the brainchild of Chakravorty and co-director Paramita Saha, who founded the troupe together in 1992, when contemporary dance that mixed different traditions were still strange to many Indian performing arts connoisseurs.

Chakravorty and Saha defied expectations 26 years ago, when they started combining elements from traditional Indian dance forms, such as the bharatnatyam from Tamil Nadu province, the kathakali from Kerala province and the thang-ta martial art from Manipur state, with elements of contemporary European dances they had learned under their mentors from Germany, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Eclectic: Performers from the Sapphire Dance Creations, behind artistic director and choreographer Sudarshan Chakravorty (front and center) perform pieces inspired by both traditional Indian dance forms and European contemporary dance expressions on Dec. 20 at the Gandhi Memorial Intercontinental School auditorium in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta.

The bharatnatyam traditional dance is typically performed by solo female dancers, who use facial expressions and finger movements to convey emotion. The kathakali, meanwhile, is performed by a group of dancers with a male dancer wearing a colorful costume and mask. The thang-ta martial art is a form of armed combat that incorporates various offensive and defensive movements.

They blended these forms with elements of contemporary ballet and European acrobatics, although many Asian countries like China and India have their own unique form of acrobatic performances.

Sapphire Dance Creations has performed in India and in more than 20 countries across the globe, including Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the UK and the US.

Saha said that the troupe decided to infuse their choreography with different elements from Indian traditional dance, mythology and pop culture, along with Western influences, to challenge the common Indian stereotype and to showcase the country’s diversity and its people’s cosmopolitan nature.

“[In watching our shows] I hope our audience members get an idea of India. When we travel to different countries, people have lots of different ideas [about India], thinking only of elephants and snake charmers, but we want to show that we are more than that, being a country with so many languages, histories and people,” Saha told The Jakarta Post after their performance at GMIS.

Chakravorty said that initially, the duo received some resistance from Indian art lovers who insisted that their dance pieces were not “genuine dance”, as they did not follow the pure form of traditional Indian dances. After 26 years of building audiences at schools and community centers across India — and the Indian public’s gradual exposure to contemporary dance through television — he said that today, they were better understood as an artistic group.

Mask dance: Performers from the Sapphire Dance Creations perform a piece inspired by the Indian dance form kathakali, featuring a male dancer who wears a colorful ornamental dress and mask. This type of mask dance can also be found in Bali. The troupe’s show on Dec. 20 in the Gandhi Memorial Intercontinental School in Kemayoran, Central Jakarta, sought to highlight Indian-Indonesian cultural similarities.

Sapphire Dance Creations is known for highlighting controversial issues through their dances, like gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS. Saha said that for their Indonesia tour, the troupe reworked several pieces from their 10-year repertoire for “different times and different occasions” to accentuate the cultural ties between India and Indonesia, while conveying the message for humans to protect Earth.

Chakravorty said the troupe referred to Indian poet, writer and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s 1927 visit to the islands of Bali and Java, along with the poem he had written that was inspired by his trip to the country, The Sea-Maiden, as a jumping-off point to reinterpret the pieces for their Indonesia tour.

“Tagore founded a university called the Visva-Bharathi University in [West] Bengal [in 1921]. When you walk into it, you will feel as though you are in Southeast Asia. The influence of batik is also in Bengali culture; it is not separate from our Bengal identity. At the same time, batik is also completely Javanese, [completely] Indonesian,” he said.

They explored his India-Indonesia cultural connection further in Tagore in Symphony, which used the kathakali element of a male dancer in a colorful and intricately designed costume and mask. Indonesian audiences would likely be reminded of Bali’s tari topeng (mask dance), in which the dancers also don similarly intricate and colorful costumes, albeit using slightly different color tones and different facial shapes. Bali shares many cultural connections with India, particularly in Balinese Hinduism.

Throughout the show, the dancers moved in and out of a recurring concentric formation. This formation, common to many traditional Indian dances, was also infused with movements inspired by contemporary ballet and European dance styles, and used creative lighting and video projections. Now and then, a male acrobat appeared among the dancers to perform awe-inspiring movements that may not be for the fainthearted, suspended on a ring or a piece of clothing, or balancing atop a pole.

Opening the show: Indonesian Tourism Minister Arief Yahya (left) and Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Pradeep Kumar Rawat light a lamp with candles to mark the opening of the Sapphire Dance Creations troupe’s show on Dec. 21 in the Tourism Ministry’s Sapta Pesona auditorium in Jakarta. The troupe came to Indonesia to showcase dance in four locations: Yogyakarta, Bali, Jakarta and Medan, North Sumatra. (Photo courtesy of the Indian Embassy)

The dance showed the beauty of nature as Tagore captured in his poetry, evoking the changing seasons and flowers in bloom, but also warned of nature’s ferocity in natural disasters and climate change exacerbated by the advent of the industrial age, illustrated with thunderstorms created through lighting effects.

“We’ve been always very aware of what’s happening around us. And because we do contemporary dance, the form is inspired from what’s happening around us,” Saha explained, adding that natural disasters were also part of this observation.

Because of the group’s eclectic blend of influences, Saha said it could take two to four years to come up with a new dance, depending on how inspiration came to her and Chakravorty, and how they used it in their choreography.

“Some impulses very very physical, like martial arts or some indigenous arts form. Some impulses, meanwhile, can be very abstract, [an] idea or a theme. Then we have to transform this idea into an aesthetic form,” she said.

Both Chakravorty and Saha said that dancing onstage gave them enormous satisfaction.

“Dance is empowerment, which transforms all the pain and agony [into art], which helps me to connect with people,” said Chakravorty.

“As an artist, I have a huge responsibility to convey the right message to the audience and to tell my story. I’m part of the story that all of us weave together. A dance company [consists of] many parts that actually make [up] the whole. I’m also just an element in a larger picture,” he said.

Despite their responsibility as artists, dance as a form of expression also gives both Chakravorty and Saha pure joy.

“I’m at my best when I’m onstage. Every person has different versions [of themselves]; but my best version is when I’m onstage. I really enjoy myself,” said Saha.

— Istu Septania also contributed to this story.