Is Hip-Hop the Rhythm of Papua?

Dancers from ‘We Are From the East,’ choreographer Jecko Siompo’s exploration of the connection between hip-hop and Papuan traditional dance. (Photo courtesy of Goethe-Institut) 

 

A group of 10 dancers kneel on the floor. The upper bodies of the male dancers are painted in black and white while their female counterparts wear short brown dresses. They slowly raise their bodies to the rhythm of drums amplified over loudspeakers to a heart-stilling thunder. As they rise, they move in unison with the music and, as the beat gets faster, so do their movements. Eventually the stage becomes a whirling blur of movement, limbs twisting and bodies twirling with speed and grace.

This is a scene from “We Came From the East,” a new dance production by Indonesian choreographer Jecko Siompo.

“Hip-hop was born in Papua. You don’t have to believe me. But my great-grandmother told me,” Jecko boldly declared during a press conference at the Goethe-Institut in Jakarta on Thursday.

Jecko was referring chiefly to dance moves from Papua, which he claims form the foundation of the hip-hop and modern street dancing movements, rather than hip-hop music.

This theory underpins “We Came From the East.” One of Jecko’s main goals for the performance is to show, through his choreography, how ancient, traditional dances from his native Papua became the basis of modern hip-hop and breakdancing.

During the hour-long show, his troupe of dancers — eight from Indonesia and two from Germany — use dynamic performances to illustrate the connection between traditional and modern styles, bringing together folklore and pop culture. The production also features Jecko’s signature choreography style, which he calls “animal pop” because it is based on the movements of wild creatures.

“We Came From the East” will be performed at the Goethe-Institut on Tuesday night before the troupe travels to Hamburg, Germany, for the show’s official world premier a week later. It will have a run in Berlin in August before traveling to Singapore and Melbourne in October.

“We hope that we can convince Jecko to perform ‘We Came From the East’ again next year,” said Frank Werner, the head of cultural programs at the Goethe-Institut.

“That’s because there is one thing that is quite typical of Jecko’s pieces — they change, they grow and they get better over time.”

“They’re like a good bottle of red wine,” he added with a laugh. “They mature.”

In fact, Jecko and Goethe-Institut share quite a long history.

“Our collaboration with Jecko is almost a decade old,” Werner said. “It all started in 2002, when Jecko staged a premiere here.”

That same year, Jecko received a scholarship from the German Cultural Institute to study at the renowned Folkwang Dance Studio in Essen, Germany. A graduate of the Jakarta Arts Institute, he has been a guest at international dance festivals and meetings around the world, both as a dancer and a choreographer, ever since.

Werner said that the show’s international tour proved that Jecko has, in addition to becoming a renowned choreographer in Indonesia, managed to make his mark outside of his home country.

“Of course, we feel very privileged and proud that Jecko always chooses the Goethe-Institut as the first stage to present his pieces, which makes us part of his international success,” Werner said. “But actually, it is more than just a collaboration — it has to be seen within the larger framework of ‘Tanzconnexions.’ ”

Tanzconnexions (Dance Connections) is a five-year project put on by the Goethe-Institut that aims to foster artistic exchanges in the fields of dance and choreography between Asia and Europe through workshops and co-productions.

In fact, “We Came From the East” can be considered a co-production between Jecko, the Goethe-Institut Indonesia, Kampnagel Hamburg, Hebbel-am-Ufer Berlin (both theaters in Germany), and the Esplanade-Theaters on the Bay in Singapore.

In early 2010, Jecko was invited by Kampnagel Hamburg to present his piece, “Room Exit,” which helped him gain renown at an international level.

Werner said, “‘Tanzconnexions’ contributed a lot to making Jecko’s latest production happen, but, in the end, it is his artistic skill, experience and genius that makes it a wonderful piece.”
‘We Came From The East’

 

Tuesday, April 12, 8 p.m.

Goethe-Institut

Jl. Sam Ratulangi No. 9-15, Menteng, Central Jakarta

Tel: 021 2355 0208

www.goethe.de/tanzconnexions

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Back to flapper days, with a twist

The Iwan Tirta Private Collection brings a 1920s flapper touch back, mixing it with batik to produce a modern yet sophisticated style.

Long before many Indonesian designers embraced and experimented with batik, Nusjirwan Tirtaamidjaja — popularly known as Iwan Tirta — was already passionate about the fabrics. He took the beauty of batik to a new level, from one stage to another and out into the world.

Almost a year after he passed away, the batik maestro “came back to life” with the latest display of his Iwan Tirta Private Collection (ITPC).

Set up by the designer himself, the private collection offers exclusive hand-made and high-end batiks with original royal patterns and luxurious materials like superfine cotton, silk organza and linen.

The collection blends both authentic and contemporary pieces in which royal techniques are still preserved, making them a combination of modern-day fashion and royal tradition.

The collection was created and designed by a special design team that used to be led by Iwan himself.

Back then, the famed flapper dresses were simple with straight silhouettes, dropped waistlines toward the hips and showing a lot of skin.

Today, Iwan’s designers combine the famous flapper style with the boldness and beauty of batik motifs like a coat with a pretty orchid pattern teamed with a long dress with the bird motif sawunggaling, a classic batik pattern that used to be worn by nobles.

Besides orchids and the sawunggaling, plumeria flowers in bright hues and the bird motif lokcan (phoenix), which is said to be the symbol of good fortune, were also seen in the collection.

Boleros, balloon dresses and Jodhpur pants were also seen on the runway. One design had Jodhpur pants with the ancient motif jlamprang (eight-rayed rosette motif set in squares or circles), paired with a bolero with a colorful sea algae motif.

Accents like tassels, gold coins and bells strengthened the flapper look.

Aside from the latest collection, the show also had the Restrospective collection as a tribute to the maestro.

A number of former models who used to work with Iwan Tirta, including Ria Juwita, Citra Nartomo, Dhanny Dahlan and Sarita Thaib, got on stage to showcase Iwan’s masterpieces.

Ria Juwita, for instance, dressed in a mini dress with a Hokokai motif, a motif that began to emerge during the Japanese colonial period in Indonesia.

The motif can be also found in a silk cropped jacket paired with an organza dress. The two aforementioned collections belong to Danny Dahlan.

Sharita Thaib strutted her stuff on the runway in Iwan Tirta’s Private Collection in a two-piece batik with the sawunggaling motif stunningly combined with the jumputan (tie-dye) technique of South Sulawesi’s Palembang region.

Prominent fashion designer Chossy Latu displayed his collaborative works with Iwan, showcasing two organza batik coats in two different motifs – the classical nitik and lokcan.

The batiks certainly remind us of the great works from the man, who dedicated his life to preserve and promote batik in a passion that he nurtured since winning a research grant from the John D. Rockerfeller III Fund.

Iwan Tirta, who studied at the London School of Economics and Yale Law School, fostered his interest in Javanese fabric when he did a research project about the sacred dances of the Susuhunan of the Surakarta Royal Court in Central Java.

His interest was also triggered by his mother’s batik collection, which included some of Indonesia’s best batiks.

In 1966, he wrote a well-acclaimed book on batik titled Batik, Patterns and Motifs, detailing the historical and sociological aspects of batik as well as the 1996 book Batik: A Play of Light and Shade. Iwan also custom-designed silk batik shirts for 18 attending heads of state at the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference held in Jakarta
in 1994.

The batik maestro may have gone, but his legacy lives on.

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Chasing the rainbow

A young barber from Padang in Sumatra has been on the road for a decade. Now 25 years of age, Marcel Arde lives and works in Bali after spending a few years hard slog in the nation’s teeming capital, Jakarta.

At just 15, Marcel struck out on his own to try his luck in the big smoke, carrying with him his tools of trade, scissors, a cutthroat barber’s razor and the hairdressing skills he had picked up from friends in his home village of Solok on Padang’s outskirts. Riding buses and ferries and sleeping rough, Marcel was carrying on the traditions of his Minang culture, meranto cino, where young men leave the nest to seek their fortune in the wider world. 

“I left Solok in 2000 and headed for Jakarta. I was looking for work and I wanted to study English. But I also wanted to experience life with people from other countries, so I came here to Bali and opened the barber shop. It’s going well,” says Marcel who trims up to 50 heads of hair a day in his traditional barber shop in Peliatan.

His barbershop is full most days, due — one client says — to his ability to keep up with trends while charging just 80 cents for a trim. 

“I can earn up to Rp 6 million [US $540] a month and the cost of living here in Bali is much less than Padang, so I can save for the future,” says Marcel who plans to one day marry a girl from Padang and return to his village.

Marcel is just one of the hundreds of people from Indonesia’s many islands that head to Bali each year in search of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, a pot of gold that can be found through hard work and an ability to overlook the daily hardships of loneliness, differing cultural practices and languages.
According to Ni Komang Erviani’s report in The Jakarta Post,

Bali’s population has increased by 20 percent over the past decade, most of this growth due to immigration from Java and islands to Bali’s east.

This migration to Bali from other Indonesian provinces is a byproduct of tourism, says soft furnishings manufacturer, 29-year-old Hermanto from Pemalang in Central Java. This softly spoken young man trained as a tailor in his hometown, known across the country as a center for excellence in tailoring. Hermanto explains its fame was also his downfall, with high competition levels that barred a young man any opportunities to open his own business.

“Because of the competition in Pemalang, I decided to come to Bali to find work and make a better life for myself. I started off working for a soft furnishing business in Denpasar. In Java I tailored trousers, so here I had to learn how to make soft furnishings. I saved every rupiah I could until I had enough money to open this home industry, Bagus Tailor in Lodtunduh,” says Hermanto who left Java with just bus fare to Bali and an SMSed promise of work. Several years on and Hermanto employs several machinists, also from Java.

“It is much easier to grow the business here in Bali because of the tourism. There are many villas and hotels that need our products and tourists also buy cushions, mosquito nets and bed covers as souvenirs,” Hermanto explains of the importance of tourism to his business. 

There is enough wealth to share, says Hermanto, who has no fears of his staff setting up their own businesses. “There are enough customers for more businesses like this one,” he says.

Machinist at Bagus Tailor, 25-year-old Ratno, has lived in Bali for the past two years and is inspired by what Hermanto has achieved through self-sacrifice.

“I like living in Bali because it is so peaceful and more open than Java. For the future I would like to do as Hermanto has and open my own business. I do miss my home, but I feel good that I am trying to make a new life here in Bali,” says Ratno, who, like Hermanto, works a 12-hour day, seven days a week and sleeps on the floor by his sewing machine to save every rupiah he can to build his future.

Bali’s relative immunity from Asia’s 1997-1998 financial crisis drove 54-year-old Ibu Holip to Bali from Madura more than a decade ago. 

“I moved to Bali during the crisis. Money was still ok here so I made a business selling nasi bungkus [packaged rice meal]. I’d walk from Tegas into Ubud,” remembers the tiny Holip who is still stick thin.

“I did well. From Rp 20,000 I could make 50,000 selling nasi bungkus. But other people got jealous and I was stabbed. I was in hospital for 14 days. But I’d made enough money to contract land down in Denpasar and built a little boarding house,” says Holip whose success has been up and down. 

“The land owners wouldn’t renew the contract so I went back to Java. There someone put black magic on my son and he’s been sick for the past three years. So now I am back here in Bali selling bamboo blinds. I earn enough to pay for his medicine, which I cannot do in Java. So yeah! I am happier in Bali,” says Holip with laugh, adding it is Bali’s strong tourism economy that allows her make a living.

Bali’s tourism dollars are the lure for people from all over Indonesia who hope to find work and create the businesses that allow them to eventually retire comfortably in their hometowns, which is what Flores born Ellen Ogom and her husband Wasek are close to achieving.

“We came to Bali from Flores 14 years ago to create a business. It’s much easier here to make a living than in Flores,” explains Ellen who runs a traditional weaving business in Ubud. 

However rising prices in Bali and a desire to return to her family has set Ellen and her husband on the road home.

“My husband is there now. Life is getting expensive here in Bali and my husband is working as a contractor building a new city in Nagekeo, Flores. So we are making plans to return,” says Ellen who is covering her bases in case tourism or weaving disappear.

“If we don’t have tourism, we don’t have a business and also young people don’t want to learn to weave anymore — it takes too long,” says Ellen, who has reached the end of the rainbow and can now return to Flores with her hard won Bali pot of gold that promises a comfortable retirement.

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Going back to the roots of batik in Pekalongan

Designer Edward Hutabarat was sitting cross-legged on the floor of one of the oldest Peranakan Chinese batik producer’s house in Kedungwuni, Pekalongan. Piles of colorful batik tulis (hand-painted batik) worth Rp 10 million were scattered on the ground in front of him. 

Next to him, batik producer Liem Poo Hien, with a pen and paper, a nervous smile and a frown, carefully noted down Edo’s — as the designer is popularly called — instructions. 

“Without tanahan, without boog, without tumpal,” Edo said, uttering words that may have sounded like a foreign language to the batik novice. In batik vernacular, tanahan means an intricate hand-painted background, boog is the arching lining on the edges of batik, and tumpal is the area that covers the front part of the lower limbs when a batik cloth is worn as a sarong. 

Hien looked apprehensive when agreeing to Edo’s instructions, but Edo was determined to have his way.
Edo is one of Indonesia’s designers who successfully turned the country’s traditional national dress and clothes into modern and global fashion. He is known for having revived the kebaya and batik, tweaking the nation’s traditional clothing into something modern and chic — on par with clothing from international brands such as Hermes, Gucci, and Bottega Veneta. 

Hien meanwhile is the fourth generation of Lim Ping Wie, a family of Chinese Peranakan batik producers in Pekalongan. She adheres to the tradition of the Peranakan style batik almost religiously. But Edo is convincing her to move beyond its rigid rules and produce batik cloth that will give him more freedom to design clothes.

The results of Edo’s fruitful collaboration with Hien will be on show in his next collection that will celebrate the former’s 30 years in the fashion design industry. His aim has been to bring batik into the world of international high fashion and ensure Indonesians’ love for batik lasts the test of time. 

Household products producer Kao Indonesia, which recently launched a liquid product called Batik Cleaner, and Edo, invited The Jakarta Post to Pekalongan in December to see how batik is made. 

The trip to Pekalongan, one of the 200 spots in Indonesia where the designer collaborates with local textile producers, aimed to explore the roots of batik. Central Java’s Pekalongan is one of the main production areas for the colorful batik pesisir (coastal batik). Being a fair distance from the Javanese royal courts such as Yogyakarta and Surakarta gave producers of batik from Pekalongan the freedom to explore batik outside the courts’ canon, resulting in vibrant and colorful patterns, with influences from China, the Dutch and Arabs.

Batik’s popularity has gone through ups and downs. But from the day Edo worked with batik in 2004, the fabric has been widely accepted and gone from being considered as old and traditional — conjuring images of the lovely grandmother wearing a kebaya and sarong — to a fashionable and stylish garment. 

The country has even dedicated a day to batik, Oct. 2, after the UNESCO declared the method of hand-painting cloth using hot wax as world heritage in 2009. 

“Not many know about the woman who paints batik eight hours a day without leaning forward,” he said.

Because of how elaborate batik looks, and how complicated it is to make, Edo’s philosophy on wearing batik is “less is more”. He isn’t a big fan of the many extravagant fashion shows involving batik. The big hair, the bows on the shoulders, appliqués, heavy makeup, and chunky shoes are so hillbilly, he went on.

And never wear batik with diamonds, he warned. “It’s tacky.”

Back at Kedungwuni, Edo asked Hien to create a 5-meter-long cloth. Batik cloth usually measures around 2 meters. They bargained on the length and settled for 3.5 meters. 

Besides worrying about the rigid rules Hien adheres to when making batik, she is naturally nervous she won’t succeed in producing such a long cloth.

Batik tulis production is a painstaking process.

To understand how intricate it is to make batik tulis, one has to spread the cloth wide and examine its pattern and colors. One of Hien’s Japanese-influenced Hokokai batik has ornate flowers, leaves and butterflies. Each of them are filled with different patterns of dots, lines, half circles and curves. These fillings are called isen-isen. In batik tulis each flower can have different pattern of fillings, depending on the artist’s creativity. In the background, a neat pattern of curls and dots can be seen, called tanahan. 

To create batik, Hien’s artists will sit and use their canting, a metal container with a needle. The canting holds the wax while it trickles down the needle allowing the artist to paint the cloth. 

After the wax dries, the cloth is soaked in color and hung to dry. The wax is then removed from the cloth when plunged into boiling water, a process called ngelorot. The batik artists will then paint the cloth several more times to produce the isen-isen and tanahan. 

Different colors might appear in one batik cloth. If three colors come out, the cloth will be soaked in color three times, and the batik artists will have to block the areas that do not need to be colored.

A very detailed batik might take a year to finish, not counting failures, Hien said. “So, if you see a batik that costs over Rp 2 million, don’t think that’s expensive,” Edo added. 

Hien believes she has a lot to learn from Edo. Responsible for around 30 batik artists, she candidly explained Edo was the only person she felt comfortable asking for money to help her pay her artists.

Given the meticulous nature of the batik-making process and its reliance on sunny weather to dry the cloth, Hien said running her business was tough work. She never sends her batik cloth to customers, the latter have to come to her place, in case the batik gets damaged when mailed. 

While Hien is Edo’s Chinese Peranakan batik producer, his go to guy for the more modern pekalongan batik is Nur Cahyo who produces batik tulis and batik cap (stamped batik) with natural and chemical coloring in Pekalongan. 

Edo claimed that of all the batik tulis Pekalongan he had come across, Cahyo’s was the finest. The two met in an exhibition four years ago when Edo discovered his products. Edo then contacted Cahyo and the pair started working together. 

On the world stage: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has named Indonesia’s handmade batik as world heritage.Cahyo’s batik tulis workshop is located in a modest lush green Angsana garden, surrounded by a lopsided bamboo fence. There, the batik painters sit in groups in a large hall. Edo’s design office is an open-air room looking over rice paddies.

When we walked in, the wind made lines of the crepe de chine batik hung on lines under the trees roll like ocean waves.

Cahyo, who likes abstract patterns, is more open to innovations in batik. He is currently working with Edo to make a masterpiece from a 9-meter kereta kencana cloth. Edo also uses silk rolls imported from Japan and is designing a flora and fauna pattern on it.

His batik tulis usually takes between 3 months up to a year to make. Using stamps, one can produce batik faster, up to 100 per week, which reduces the cost by hundreds of thousands of rupiah. 

“Still it is more noble than print,” Edo said.

Edo was optimistic about Cahyo’s production because his batik artists are mostly in their 30s and 40s. 

“I know that good batik will still be produced knowing that there is regeneration,” he said. 

There are still many villages in Pekalongan where elderly ladies make batik for a living or to pass time.

The ladies buy the white mori cloth from a middleperson. They ask the middleperson to take their cloth to workers who color and rinse the wax. While the middle person pays Rp 200,000 to Rp 400,000 for the batik, the price can go up to Rp 750,000 at the market, and Rp 1.5  million in Jakarta. 

Edo said more people should visit these artisan cities to learn about batik-making culture. The city of Pekalongan is a laid-back town with many batik workshops, a batik museum and good food — a great place for Indonesians to go on study tours and learn about their heritage.

 “Indonesians should know about batik,” he said. “This is ours”.

— Photos by JP/Prodita Sabarini

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