2 features on Asia Dance Channel

I wrote two pieces for Asia Dance Channel: a review of Fitri Setyaningsih's The Colour of Inner Earth, and my impressions of Franz Anton Cramer's lecture, "Dance Criticism in the World and its (possible) Social Functions." Here are excerpts:

Dr. Cramer then discusses "dance history's master narratives," reminding us of the social, political and aesthetic categories in which dance exists. It is here that he differentiates modern from contemporary, after a brief historical look at the phases between and the different movements that came out of Germany, including expressionism, constructivism and Tanz Theater. Then he asks us what is contemporary, and what makes contemporary dance? Given that ‘contemporary’ equals ‘new,’ he posits that a work valued by its "newness" isn't properly assessed, and that the concept of "newness" is "extremely boring," and "cannot be the only criteria" for a dance to be contemporary. In a global setting, the definition is definitely more complicated.

He then talks about how dance is exoticized as West looks at East, giving several examples of exoticized colonies, including the 1931 French exposition and French archive of international dance, and books published within the same decade looking at folk dance practice in South East Asian countries. It would seem that Dr. Cramer is perhaps reminding us of instances where European and Asian relationships can go awry, which is interesting given that the dance summit we were attending was organized by Europeans for the South East Asian region.

from "Possibly Functional in Society: Dance Criticism"
Talk by Franz Anton Cramer
by Joelle Jacinto
Read the rest here

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The dancers are not just androgynous but also ambiguous. We do not know what they are or what they are doing, why they are doing this strange dance of alternating calm and frenzy. As this goes on for quite a while, I was beginning to create stories in my head about who or what they were and thought they fit right in the first Star Wars movie where the stocky desert people walked gracelessly over sand dunes in their bulky cloaks. The stage began to look like a desert then, and the faint pastels on the cyclorama behind them reminded me of the colors of the strange double sunset of the planet that Luke Skywalker had lived the first half of his life.

After what seemed a lifetime of this kind of movement, the ambient music began to get more frenetic, and the dancers began to get more frenetic as well. I don't remember how this started; sometimes, when we wait for something to happen, we unfortunately blink and realize we shouldn't have.

from "Enviable Exchanges in Jakarta
A Review of Fitri Setyaningsih's The Colour of the Inner Earth"
by Joelle Jacinto
Read the rest here

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There are also reviews of Donna Miranda's Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies by Choy Su-Ling and Pichet Klunchun's About Khon by Constanze Klementz, as well as essays and opinion pieces by Su-Ling and Renee Sariwulan in this special Indonesia issue. Go check them out on Asia Dance Channel.