Push for currency

The five Dance Diploma holders of Aswara burst forth with energy in Tapak 4, a silat-based dance choreographed by student Shafirul Azmi Suhaimi

Fitri Setyaningsih’s Colours From The Inner Earth. It was almost a somnambulistic experience from which one was shaken, not stirred, by the shivers coming out of the robes

A modern dance piece, Donna Miranda’s Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies was about breaking down border and isolation. Here’s she is packing for that distant land only to find she is comfortable back with her own baggage, and even at peace

Dancer-choreographer Klunchun, 37, is a master of the Thai court masked dance called khon. Thais today, he said, don’t know khon as it is performed just for tourists.

You could feel the collective gasp from other dancers, choreographers and writers at the Goethe Institute-organised summit, only the second after Sydney, Australia last year.

They had come from New Zealand, Australia and the Southeast Asia.

Klunchun had just performed a dance-workshop called About Khon, where he explained the moves, the characters — man, woman, demon, monkey — and the stories which revolved around the Hindu epic Ramayana called Ramakien.

It was khon unmasked, literally.

The whole summit was a learning experience as Klunchun, and the other dancer-choreographers, explained their performances and ideas after each staging.

Some came slightly panting, and others slightly sweaty.

For instance, Klunchun’s tourist-only delight statement came about 15 minutes after his workshop. The visual feast was still oven hot.

It seemed without a break really when Klunchun talked about his ideas and concept. Traditional forms like khon, he said, need to be developed with its core still intact.

To reach today’s audience, which is more in step with head-bobbing and hip-hop, khon needs to made more contemporary — but with its aesthetics still rooted in the traditional form.

Klunchun was actually in step with the aim of the summit, which was to make traditional dance a more contemporary form.

Contemporary dance arose in the early 1900s as a reaction to the strict rigidness of ballet. Traditional dance is rich in Asia. As such, it makes for interesting exchange and eye-level co-operation, as one Goethe official put it. This “DanceConnexions” will soon see German choreographers and dancers coming to the region (like Gabrielle Staiger to Aswara in January) to teach, co-operate, create, and produce pieces with local dancers.

However, what Klunchun also showed was that to appreciate khon or any traditional classical dance like odissi needs some understanding of the culture of each form.

Klunchun is trying to share khon with even Thais, let alone the summit participants. It seems an uphill task for the attitude of the public and the government must first change to see khon not just as a dinner show entertainment but as part of general culture.

While he’s now creating contemporary moves rooted in khon, Klunchun is also teaching khon with the aid of his five (only so far) students.

He and his gang are paid in kind — lunch or dinner perhaps. They perform wherever they can. He is trying to build an audience, he said, and gets the community involved by teaching children for free.

He stresses that he will never ever perform at a restaurant again after his only experience when he was still a university student. “The sound of the forks and spoons was louder than the music.”

Cambodia’s Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a dancer-choreographer and artistic director of the Khmer Arts Ensemble. The khmer classical dance also used tales from the Ramayana or Reamker.

For the summit, Sophiline staged two dances — a traditional Neang Neak and a contemporary Shir Ha-Shirim.

Neang Neak is about a mythological serpent who tries to fit with the humans but realises she and her tail will just have to be accepted.

For Shir Ha-Shirim, Sophiline explained that it was a commissioned piece by the Guggenheim Musuem’s Works & Process series, and it was set to a score, Song Of Solomon in Hebrew.

She candidly said the focus was on the technique as she herself didn’t understand Hebrew.

In the Khmer classical dance, it is quite evident that it needs years of stretching and bending, especially of the hand. The hand gestures and costumes are similar to khon.

For Sophiline, the title “transforming” should instead be “adding on to tradition”. “Tradition is a living library from which modern dancers study,” she said.

Malaysia’s Aswara gave excerpts of three dances — one contemporary Indian (called Varsha or Rain), one modern (Line) and the other modern silat (Tapak 4).

The five young male dancers offered energetic performances. According to Varsha’s choreographer Umesh Shetty, who didn’t attend the summit, the dance explores the energy of the elements before the rain and after. The 15-minute dance was quite beautiful to watch with music composed by Jyotsna Prakash and Kumar Karthigesu of the Temple of Fine Arts.

The National Arts, Culture and Heritage Academy (Aswara)’s head of dance Joseph Gonzales offered a spot-on take on the dance scene in Malaysia. When he said that the arts initiatives in the country came from the grassroots rather than the authorities concerned, eyebrows were raised.

We received a pat on our collective Malaysian backs for striving to put dance and our other artistic endeavours out there despite the odds. It was a vivid contrast to the situation in Singapore where the government set up a National Arts Council to oversee this area from every interested community, and gave sizeable funding too.

Interestingly, Indonesia didn’t offer the Javanese classical court dance but gave instead two modern works.

Choreographer Jecko Siompo in From Betamax To DVD offered moves from Papua New Guinea which were animalistic and then the city for which he metaphorically offered us cars speeding and rush hour. These were in head movements and sharp jerks.

“The dancers had to follow my vision but need find their own personality in the movements,” he explained.

“There was no message in my dance. In PNG, dance is a way to express yourself, especially in the mountains. I’m sorry if you didn’t get it.”

Fitri Setyaningsih’s Colours From The Inner Earth was even more abstract. Two dancers swathed in spiky robes moved slowly as if in a trance, then jerked crazily before trance set in again. Live music offered some respite to the intangible concept of change being a dance.

Tradition was not the issue here but the concerns of the “now” generation.

More ballet based shows — with videos incorporated — came from Tran Ly Ly of Vietnam, Donna Miranda of the Philippines and Joavien Ng Bong Na of Singapore.

A mix of ballet and abstract came from Australia’s Gideon Obarzanek who choreographed Glow for his company called Chunky Move. It was almost clubby with the light from a video tracking system following a dancer’s Hatha Yoga-hip-hop moves.

A very muscular performance was screened by New Zealand’s Black Grace Dance Company. Acrobatic and gymnastic, it was choreographed by Neil Ieremia, of Samoan origins, and was once performed only by men.

So on one side, the classical Asian forms were battling to stay current, and on the other showed modern dance going really abstract.

Be it khon or odissi, “transforming tradition” is really a reference to the spirit of contemporary dance in creating a freer expression and new choreography. This would no doubt help the classical forms reach beyond one’s continental borders.