Tepak Tari (2015)

Jaipongan is a popular ‘modern’ Indonesian dance and music style created in the Sixties. It is an underground genre rebelling against president Soekarno’s decree prohibiting the copying of Western rock’n’roll.

Sum to SUM is the reworking of set phrases from the Indian classical form kathak. The work reflects the choreographer’s inheritance transformed through exposure, cultural association, integration and assimilation and draws from these experiences to create the logic for the reworking

We often long to seek the forgotten innocence, far from the viciousness of our harsh reality.
And this longing is always beyond time and history, the same for now, as it is for the future.

Based on the gothic fashion concept of designer Amanda Brown, this work explores the mood and dramatic atmosphere of disembodied souls hovering in a lonely cemetery as the spirit of a woman, who has recently died, struggles to cross over to the other spiritual realm.

to give or send back in reciprocation
to give, take, or carry back; replace or restore
to repay or recompense, especially with something of equivalent value

The traditional stringed instrument called the rebab makes the melody which accompanies the traditional dance theatre of mak yong, especially prominent in its opening dance, Mengadap Rebab.