YOHANES NYOMAN SUKO UTOMO

Indonesia's Ambassador of dance                                              

Indonesia’s got original talent – so why do many acts mimic Western pop?

Why has the plump South Korean rapper Psy’s Gangnam Style You Tube video garnered more that 620 million hits (and rising) while the indigenous Poco Poco gets scant attention?

(An Indonesian version has attracted only 200,000 viewers –a Swedish clip with women in overalls trying to imitate the Indonesian moves almost six times more.)

These questions puzzle choreographer and dancer Yohanes Nyoman Suko Utomo (below) as he tries to decode the international entertainment industry.

Unless the media-manipulated appetite for hype over substance is reversed, Nyoman will remain bemused long after his supple limbs succumb to cramp.

In the meantime he throws up his hands and laughs:  “Itulah Indonesia.” (Well, that’s Indonesia.)

However there may be another explanation for his Blitar Rose Dancers not getting the publicity they deserve.  Nyoman dances not just for dollars but to delight.

“I’m not money oriented,” he said.  “Money must not be first. Art cannot be measured by money.  Art is to provide satisfaction.”

These sound like the words of a virgin dilettante yet to be bruised by a world more interested in profit than supplying soul food.

Yet Nyoman is no ingénue.  He has performed in Turkey, Switzerland, France, Holland (three times), South Korea (eight times), New Zealand (where he spoke to The Jakarta Post), Britain (twice) …

The list must stop somewhere but a phone call halted the flow.  Enough to say he has danced through desert sheikdoms and robust republics, showcasing Indonesian culture for much of his adult life.

Now 42 he’s old enough to be sour and cynical about a business that chews up and spits out the good, the bad and the luckless.

That he’s not says more about his sunny outlook than torrents of words.  Like many artists Nyoman prefers to communicate through his medium, often referring to himself in the third person, a distracting trait for the interviewer. 

A favorite punctuation involves drawing his hands up from his stomach, expanding the palms, and then thrusting outwards.

It’s a gesture that embraces a flowering of expression from a deep inner source, and it illustrates advice given by his teacher Guruh Soekarnoputra:  “Let it flow – don’t expect anything too much. Trust.”

Although a member of his sister Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, Guruh is best known as a performer than a politician.

The youngest son of the late president Soekarno ran a dance studio in Jakarta.  Here the multi-talented Nyoman (he can play several instruments), studied for two years before turning professional.

Nyoman’s first group formed in 1995 was called Suryo Linuwih (see more light).  Two years later the title shifted from Javanese to English and became Blitar Rose.

What’s in this name?  Best consult Shakespeare: ‘That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.’

“Many people love roses,” said Nyoman. “The name attracts.  It’s different and I love Blitar.  It’s where my grandfather performed in the kuda lumping.”  (A traditional Javanese dance featuring mock horses.)

The East Java city and last resting place of Soekarno was also home to Nyoman during his formative years.  Although he says his affinity for art encountered few obstacles at school it hit a hurdle that’s tripped many other creative kids from conservative families.

As the son of a policeman who believed only a public service career could provide security, young Nyoman didn’t glide into his chosen career. 

The situation might have been different if the family maid hadn’t taken her charge to a concert of classical dancing.  He was just four and remembers it clearly.  The door to the magic had been unlocked.

Later after Nyoman had visited Holland and seen modern dance he declared:  “This is the real me.”  His father relented and the gifted lad skipped out of a future of khaki-clad boredom and onto the stage.

Much of Blitar Rose’s international work comes through Kemenparekraf (the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Energy) to promote Indonesian culture abroad.  It’s currently touring four works featuring five women and two men, including Nyoman.

The dances originated in West Java, Bali, Aceh and Sumatra and include the mesmerising Tari Piring (plate dance) where the swirling artists perform with large pieces of crockery ready to spin away and shatter should concentration lapse.

Nyoman has adapted the dances, shortened them to suit modern audiences and fit the locations where Blitar Rose performs.  These are often diplomatic and trade events where culture is a warm up, not the principal purpose.  Cavernous convention centers aren’t ideal venues.

Getting and holding the attention of an unfocussed audience is a tough gig. Nervous presenters shuffle notes; distracted delegates adjust nametags hoping they’ll be spotted by VIPs. 

So Nyoman’s technique is to present short, dynamic, high-energy dances that shout ‘stop and watch’.  That’s because they’re clearly professional and refreshingly different from the shuffle-and-twist TV routines. 

When the dances end the audience is left wanting more, not thankful they’ve done culture and can now do commerce.

“I watch modern and traditional dance from elsewhere and I like some of Michael Jackson’s movements, but I don’t borrow from other choreographers,” Nyoman said.  “Everything is from my head. I design the costumes and steps, combining the traditional and modern. 

“I select dancers from the 60 students at my Jakarta academy. I choose them for their attitude and ability to bring out their inner beauty.  Their skills must be professional. I prefer dancers who are tall and slim. I use my instinct and I’m usually 99 per cent right.”

Nyoman laughed a little at the suggestion he’s an ambassador of Indonesian culture.

“I prefer to take a low profile,” he said.  “We are here to entertain.  It’s difficult to change people’s perceptions about Indonesia but we try through art. 

“I love my country and our culture and showing it around the world.  I don’t want it discarded by the younger generation.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 November 2012)

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LUDRUK IN MALANG

Grassroots theatre rising again in East Java © Duncan Graham 2007

Organizers reckoned around half a million people attended this year’s five-day Malang Festival – a marvelous annual free event staged in the East Java city's elegant boulevard – Jalan Ijen.

Official participants and many onlookers wore period costumes; favorites were the floppy light khaki of the 1945 Revolutionaries and the pith helmets and twirly mustaches of the Colonialists.

The mood was nationalistic, fun and upbeat. The crowds were enthusiastic about the huge blow-ups of old time photos that lined the street – their genuine interest proving history is not bunk.

Overwhelmingly popular were the ludruk (grassroots theatre) shows, coarse, traditional, improvised knockabout music-hall style performances with men and transsexuals playing the roles of women to the clang of gamelan. The language was low Javanese and the huge crowds loved it, particularly the rude words.

Before television spread to the towns and villages ludruk artists could be found almost everywhere. According to one researcher, by 1965 there were 40 times more dramatic groups in Java than in the US.

Ludruk producer, Henri Supriyanto a lecturer in culture and art at UNESA, the State University of Surabaya, said: "Ludruk is the theatre of the poor. It's a political movement.” Other academics have described it more formally as theatre that 'amplifies and highlights issues of social importance drawn from everyday life.'

Founding president Soekarno was a fan and reportedly hosted 17 performances at his Bogor palace. But Soeharto's New Order government was intolerant of criticism. At first ludruk was controlled, and then suppressed.

A crowd favorite at the Malang shows was East Java singer Kadam a long-time performer who became famous under the patronage of Soekarno where the vocalist with an extraordinary range became a court favorite.

Nicknamed 'Golden Voice', Kadam first met Soekarno at the Presidential Palace in 1960. At that time the 17-year old was a member of a ludruk group from Surabaya invited to perform in Jakarta.

"He took a real liking to me and I returned to the palace and his home in Bogor 13 times," Kadam, 64, said at his home in Malang. "He even picked me up because I was very small, and always waited for us to change after our performances so he could chat to us.

"I was never frightened of him because he treated everyone as equal. He didn't discriminate between high and low. He felt he was in touch with the village people – and he was.

"He was a teacher. He hadn't come from a business background. Unlike other leaders he never forgot his roots. What he said was in his heart and people understood that.

"He was a most exceptional person. There has never been anyone like him. I feel that God has accepted his soul."

Kadam said he earned enough money during the ludruk heydays to buy land and help him survive when the shows fell out of favor.

The Jakarta Post went backstage (meaning behind sheets of ripped plastic and rusty corrugated iron). We watched the players preparing to set the audience roaring with delight at the slapstick routines, songs and robust social comment on everything from the Lapindo mud volcano to politicians' behavior.

The actors had to improvise, do their own makeup while catching the director's orders, rehearse lines, calm nerves, fix their outrageous costumes and boost each other's egos – and all for Rp 30,000 (US $3.50) a night.

Maybe it was like this in Elizabethan England when Shakespeare's plays were performed in a similarly rugged environment by people who wanted to act – not for gain and glamour – but because the stage is their world.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 2 November 07)

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IKAT IN INDONESIA

THE UNITED COLORS OF INDONESIA © Duncan Graham 2007

The range is vast. The designs are intriguing and enigmatic, deceptively plain and cunningly complex, mysterious and multicolored; some are smoldering, earthy and raw, others are jolly, bright and glossy, enhanced by threads of gold and silver.

Just like Indonesia.

The symbols of other countries tend to be landmarks; the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House. Not all are human constructions. Canada has the maple leaf and Lebanon the green cedar, but only Indonesia has ikat.

This is the textile made from pre-dyed threads woven to ancient patterns remembered and passed down through the generations. Like Scottish tartans each one belongs to a specific community.

That exclusivity is waning for the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese are already producing cloth using precious Indonesian motifs that no one in the Republic has bothered to register.

So consumer beware; you may think you're buying hand-made craftwork from a hillside hamlet in the hinterlands of Java where gnarled fingers lovingly teased thread into loom. But the chances are growing that your purchase came from a computer-controlled production line mill in smog-filled Shanghai.

Along with the characters of the wayang kulit puppets there are probably no other symbols or patterns that so clearly belong to the archipelago as the designs of Indonesian textiles.

Weaving is believed to have originated in Egypt. The technique moved to India and China through trade. It probably arrived here from Vietnam about 3,000 years ago, along with the secrets of wet-rice cultivation.

At first the products were crude. Necessarily so because the materials used were bark and fronds. When cotton became commonplace the techniques could be refined.

Then ikat – and to a lesser extent batik - spread. There are now at least 6,000 distinctively different designs across the 17,000 islands, ranging from the abstract to the realistic, and no one person would know all.

However art and design lecturer Arma Subijanto from Jakarta's Trisakti University proved herself adept at identifying most when challenged by The Jakarta Post.

Confronted with a sea of sarongs, shawls and accessories draped on tables and sideboards for an exhibition at Malang's Tugu Hotel, she was able to accurately pick the provenance of almost all without peeping at the labels.

"I feel passionately about ikat and the designs that we've developed over the centuries," she said. "In the pre-Islamic era when animism was common women used to pray to the gods as they made the cloth. So they saw the inspiration for the designs as sacred.

"This is our heritage, our culture, our contact with our ancestors. Ikat unifies the nation. But sadly it's seen by many as old fashioned.

"The history of many textiles and designs are related to royalty so could only be worn at special events or by particular people, like pregnant women. Even today batik tends to be reserved for formal occasions, though former president Soeharto made it mandatory for public servants to wear batik on Fridays.

"That may have helped the clothing industry but it was just a gesture. It did nothing to help understand the culture. The challenge is to make it relevant to the present."

How anyone could think traditional Javanese wear frumpy is beyond this furtive fashion observer. Because sarongs haven't been cut to fit they tend to emphasize the bottom, an effect enhanced by high heels.

They also hobble, making steps shorter and movements more pronounced and provocative, as every woman knows well. No need to look at slinky Western gear where brevity rules – Javanese costumes hide almost everything, but they reveal much more to the imagination.

Even if you're not prepared to wear Indonesian textiles they make brilliant wall-hangings, bed and cushion covers, tablecloths and curtains.

By Western standards the cost of hand-made products is low. Even in up-market shops outside Jakarta a splendid sarong can still be bought for less than Rp 180,000 (US $20) meaning the lady at the loom would probably get only a quarter of that amount. Machine-made textiles can be bought for even less.

As she opened and folded the lovely linens Arma identified flawed labels. A textile from Lombok may have been bought there but the design was from much further east on the island of Timor.

She can also tell in a flash whether the dyes used are natural and made from plants and earths, or chemicals. (Hint: Natural dyes tend to have a matt finish.)

Arma said factories in industrial towns like Gresik (East Java) are making textiles using motifs from Sumbawa then being sent to West Java for sale.

Patterns that appear to be abstract and minimalist are often symbols of people and natural objects that – like Chinese calligraphy – have been reduced to an outline. Other designs from East Nusa Tenggara are more naturalistic, showing deer and horses.

A few have lettering, a style introduced during the Dutch era. Chinese and Indian influences can also be found in ikat from Sumatra. Designs from the Toraja in Sulawesi show their distinctive high-roof houses. Only in Flores is the designer also the weaver; in other regions the tasks are separate.

One way to preserve the designs and textiles is to use them in modern clothes, and not confine them to sarongs and kebaya (tight-fitting blouses) only to be used at weddings. That's already being done by Malang's Rien Bambang Guritno, a textile collector who promotes Indonesian designs through displays like the one at the Tugu Hotel.

She's using ancient patterns on casual wear together with semi-formal outfits that any smart woman would be happy to wear in public.

"So many people are trying to forget the past," Rien said. "We have a culturally rich country. Our crafts unite us. We should be teaching these to our children during their school holidays, not just let them do nothing.

"There's a view that Indonesian textiles are heavy, hot and difficult to maintain. That's not correct. Many are lightweight.

"Malang is known as an educational town. (It has more than 30 universities). I also want it to be internationally recognized as a city of culture.

"I've found in my travels abroad that there's more interest in Indonesian textiles overseas than in this country."

Her friend, Jakarta-based interior designer Sri Sapti who has spent many years in Europe agreed. "There are books about ikat, but they're not easy to find," she said. One of the sources she carries is an out-of-print text in English, more than 20 years old.

"The message we want to put overseas is that Indonesia is much more than Bali."

(Sidebar)
WEAVING THROUGH THE ARCHIPELAGO

Ikat has many meanings including influence, association and bonding. Here it's the term for textiles where the threads have been dyed before being woven.

Double ikat has the threads dyed on both the warp (the long threads on the loom) and the weft (the shorter threads that cross the warp).

Batik is created by applying lines of molten wax to cloth. The wax cools and then resists the dyes. When the cloth dries the wax is boiled off but the dyes remain in the unprotected areas.

Songket refers to the inclusion of silver and gold threads. Originally reserved for royalty, these textiles are now popular in Bali.

The National Gallery of Australia claims to have one of the 'richest public collections of Indonesian textiles in the world' with more than 1,200 items. Many examples are on the Internet. Check www.nga.gov.au

First published in The Jakarta Post 8 May 07)

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GARIN NUGROHO

WHO’S INDONESIAN? THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY © Duncan Graham 2006

To pad out programs telecasters everywhere screen station promotions.

Favored are clips of jolly industrious people in clean and colorful costumes smiling as the camera pans landscapes of loveliness. Flags flutter with pride. Clean-limbed youngsters look upwards and ahead through clear skies; satisfied oldies smile in contentment. Stirring music leads to a climax of achievement.

The idea is to create an image of one big happy family with the TV station an integral part. It’s all part of the quest for national identity.

Angst-driven Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho likes to try his hand at catching that slippery concept, but takes a different approach.

The same sort of people fill his frame, but their ragged clothes are as faded as their hopes, their blemished faces seldom joyful. Instead they’re angry, sad, resigned, gutted by grief or exhausted with frustration. Some have passed through the pain to find a level of resignation. There’s a leavening of humor.

“What’s it like to be Indonesian?” he asked. “Trying to express identity in a country of so many islands, regions, languages and ethnic groups is difficult.

“Film can let us discover what it’s really like. Listening to sobbing is being Indonesian. The human face is the face of our archipelago. See the face and you understand the family.

“All the clichés of pluralism and multiculturalism can be made honest through film.”

Though only if you point the lens into places where most dare not go. Nugroho has done this by, among other things, traveling to Papua and documenting the independence movement.

He got away with it by exploiting the window of tolerance briefly opened by fourth president Abdurrahman Wahid – and by being himself.

For the cherubic Nugroho comes across as a naive philosopher rather than mad plotter determined to dismantle the Unitary State. He’s just one friendly little man, not the rabid leader of a mob – seemingly more dreamer than devious.

He must have driven the security apparatus in Papua mad; here was this gentle Javanese importing 400 Morning Star flags and encouraging people to sing the prohibited anthem for his camera, yet claiming all the while to be a nationalist who didn’t want to cause trouble.

(This was to make Bird Man Tale, dedicated to murdered Papuan leader Theys Eluay.)

“I don’t want separatism,” Nugroho said. “I feel rich if we have Papuan culture. If we lose that, we lose a beautiful thing. This is neither about the economy nor about losing access to natural resources. It’s about losing someone from the family.”

All very reasonable, but unlikely to soften the hearts of the hard men wearing wrap-around sunglasses and bulky objects in their waistbands.

These guys and their bosses tend to take the George Bush line – you’re either with us or against us. Nugroho’s middle way confuses. So does his language. He thinks a chat, a laugh and a smile are the ways to solve problems when the policy seems to be that only force speaks sense.

“I’m not harming anyone,” he said. “So why should anybody want to harm me? I respect anyone who doesn’t use violence.”

Nugroho comes from a cultured Yogya family. His siblings are artists or academics. His father published books and Mum ran the post office. In 1965 when the military came and demanded lists of communists in the area Dad refused to oblige.

That made him a fellow traveler in the black or white reasoning of the guys with guns, but another factor confused this simplicity; Dad was also a national hero having fought the Dutch for Independence.

For two months he was under house arrest. The tension eventually passed and the family survived the bloodletting that followed the rise of Suharto. This ghastly period was recalled in Nugroho’s film A Poet – Unconcealed Poetry.

Young Nugroho went to an Islamic primary school and a Catholic high school – though he remains a Muslim. When he wasn’t in class he was in the front stalls saturating himself in the possibilities of cinema.

He went to university and studied filmmaking for four years - and law for a similar period. He graced the courtroom for only a twelvemonth before abandoning the security of profiting from people’s misfortunes to showing them on the screen.

Though not to his own profit. One of his first films was about street kids. Making gritty documentaries is no sure road to a fortune in Indonesia. Nugroho has nine films to his credit – he says only two have made money. His topics have been the poor, the marginalized and the brutalized – unpopular issues in his homeland where audiences overloaded with their own problems prefer escapism.

When he’s far away Nugroho, 45, gets the accolades for leading Indonesia’s new wave cinema. A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.

He’s won numerous prizes in Europe, Singapore and Japan – and enough cash from overseas to open an independent studio in Jakarta where he employs 20 people.

In Perth, Western Australia to show his work at an international conference on media policies and culture in the Asia-Pacific region, Nugroho spoke to The Jakarta Post.

“I always chose difficult issues,” he said. “I’m not opposed to films with happy endings. There are plenty of these, but we also need films to discuss social problems.

“Tragedy also raises questions of what it’s like to be human. If it bleeds it’s alive! That’s why I choose open endings for my films.

“I love oral traditions and poetic language. Song is an important part of narrative. Song is prayer.

“Indonesian television is about the rich and glamorous, the vulgar gossips. It’s the language of violence. Consumerism is commercialism without ethics.

“When I was making films during the Suharto period I was up against the military. Now the opposition is materialism and centralism. This is a pluralist society, a multicultural country – how can we understand this nation from Jakarta?

“I don’t belong to anyone. I’m free. My responsibility is to give people room for non-violent freedom of expression. Many politicians don’t want to hear the anger, the crying of the people.

“The problem now is not the military but market forces and censorship by society. Hindus and Muslims have opposed my films. The ultimate censor is loss of sponsorship.

“I’m not against globalisation unless it’s delivered on other people’s terms. It’s good when different communities can get the best out of each other for each other.

“My films tend to be shown only in universities and abroad. The early 70s were the golden years for Indonesian cinema before it was killed by censorship and pop culture.

“There are now around 40 films a year made in Indonesia. Most concern horror or teenage love. Very few are good.

“I’m pessimistic about the future of film. The archipelago is rich in stories, but there’s no money to get them made. Cinema is only surviving in the shopping malls for the middle classes.

“It’s not that film is important by itself. The importance is because it’s the medium of dialogue, the way we can understand each other.

“Indonesia doesn’t have a regional cultural strategy – this shows we don’t respect multiculturalism. Yet this is the only way that we can define ourselves.”

(First published in The Jakarta Post 6 December 2006)

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DONI REKRO HARIJANI

THE DIFFERENCE IS CHANCE © Duncan Graham 2006

“Never underestimate the potential of Indonesian village women. And never doubt their intelligence.

“The only difference between them and people in the city is chance. The chance to get a broad education. The chance to encounter different people and ideas. The chance to travel.”

Now opportunities are becoming available as more women from the regions seek higher education or go overseas to work. And according to Dra Doni Rekro Harijani they’re returning home with ideas both good and bad – but which are changing Indonesian rural life.

Doni, 67, who was trained as an educator and administrator, has published a book on the issue – The Work Ethic of Village Women. This is based on research she conducted while her husband Soetrisno was the regent of Nganjuk, about 150 kilometres south west of Surabaya.

Her study was undertaken in Karangsemi, where women specialise in handicrafts, usually making plastic handbags.

“I don’t know why I chose that village,” she said. “I’d never been there before but I felt drawn to it. It’s a mixed farming area and not well off.

“Most of the women are mothers, wives or daughters of landless farm laborers,” she said. “Many earn more than their men but they play down their income and achievements to honor their husbands.

“They are seen as the second provider in the family and just claim to be helping their husbands. My research showed they often get up to double their husband’s income.”

Doni said the lives of rural women were changing as three major influences impacted – education, the media and work overseas. However she said not all experiences were beneficial.

On one occasion she overheard young women chatting on their way home by plane from Hong Kong.

The maids were talking about boyfriends and urging one to ‘try before you buy’, meaning to check compatibility prior to marriage by living together. This practice, regarded in Indonesia as a Western evil, is usually known as ‘free sex’.

In some overseas countries maids are treated as equals by the family and sit together at meals. “That would never happen here,” Doni said. “The distance between the maid and the mistress is not too great, but it’s still there.

“Workers who have gone overseas have seen how other people live and the way that women are treated. They read newspapers and magazines. They watch TV. Back in Indonesia the women want a better life.”

Now her husband has retired to live in Surabaya, Doni teaches home economics at a vocational school. Next year she’ll go to Suriname (the South American republic and former Dutch colony) to teach the descendants of Indonesian laborers the elaborate make-up arts used in Javanese weddings.

Doni said life for village women was hard. They were expected to do all the domestic chores, care for the family and earn money.

One of the things they could not do was refuse their husbands’ sexual demands.

“In Javanese culture each gender has its responsibility,” Doni said. “It’s just expected. It’s not ordered. It’s automatic. The pressures are social.

“There are no rape-in-marriage laws in Indonesia and it’s impossible that a wife could refuse sex however tired she might be. It’s her role to obey – she can’t plead a headache!

“I once asked a group of men: ‘When you wake up in the morning do you ever fold the blanket?’ Not one confessed to ever doing that simple job. It’s difficult to change the mindset of men and women. It’s happening, but slowly. Step-by-step. It depends on the individual.

“The old proverb banyak anak, banyak rejeki (many children, good fortune) no longer applies. Women know that a large family means low education and poverty. They fully understand the need for family planning.

“Girls now marry older and teenage pregnancies are getting rare. Unfortunately marriages sometimes take place with a couple that’s related. They want to keep their land and other possessions in the family rather than share with outsiders.

“This can lead to children being born with handicaps like deafness, and birth defects.

“Money is status. It helps give women independence so if there’s a dispute in the marriage she no longer fears being kicked out and becoming destitute. However some estranged couples stay together, maybe sleeping in separate rooms, to preserve the social conventions. Divorced women still have status problems.

“Close communal living also puts constraints on domestic violence because it’s difficult to hide from neighbors.

“Working with the local government we introduced a credit scheme where families were able to borrow Rp 1 million (US $110) to start home enterprises. The annual interest was about one per cent. This was a success.

“Things are now much better than ten years ago. The quality of life for the women and their families has improved. One woman has become the first from Karangsemi to get a university education.

“Village women have a strong work ethic, but they suffer many cultural and social constraints. They need encouragement from the wider society along with moral and material support to help them feel more confident.

“Many things still need to be done. Next time you go to a shopping mall look in the up-market boutiques.

“You’ll see handicrafts priced for Rp 400,000 (US $44). Maybe the women who made them have been paid only Rp 20,000 (US $2). They don’t have anyone who can promote their work.

“When I started doing this my friends asked why I was bothering. My husband had a good position and status. I didn’t need to work and study.

“But it’s my duty to share my education and knowledge with others.

“If we don’t do this our learning is like a big tree – but one which carries no fruit.”

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(First published in The Jakarta Post 14 November 06)
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