Interviews

Following guest performances in the wider Asian region, Indonesian choreographer Jecko Siompo has risen to prominence over the last year after he was invited to present his work in Europe. Siompo is neither willing nor able to pin down his choreographic and cultural roots, and yet these questions lead us to the very heart of his dance practice.

Jecko is enthralled by the hybridity and complexity of human habitats, both in his homeland of Papua, where the indigenous culture and its dances are still very much alive, and in the megacity of Jakarta. The sheer density of movement in these sites and our inability to unravel or control their idiosyncrasies makes them both captivating and indefinable. Jecko Siompo’s choreographic approach encompasses more than a mere blending of styles. Starkly formal figurative elements from traditional Papuan dances grapple with the spectacular mechanics of hip-hop in his works. tanzconnexions spoke with Jecko Siompo after the first performance of his work Terima Kos at the Tanz im August– International Dance Festival in Berlin.

While contemporary dance occupies a difficult position in Indonesia, you've somehow managed to produce over fifteen works.

Yes, and I need to. I try to begin something new each year. Of course, even those works that are nominally “finished” continue to evolve. Next month I’ll begin to work on a new project for a festival in Korea where we will present a two-part programme comprised of ten-minute works alongside a number of other choreographers. I will premiere a new duet at the festival, while the other piece will be an older work entitled Tikus-Tikus (“Mice”).

When did you begin to tour and perform abroad?

That was around 2007.

How has it affected the way that you work?

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to present my work abroad and to perform for audiences with a different way of seeing. The experience has been entirely positive so far. Touring presents its own challenges, but these tend to be of a more technical nature and, if anything, I find them rather interesting. There are the performance spaces to consider, for instance, and the task of adapting works to specific spaces. In order to perform Terima Kos here at The HAU in Berlin, we need to adapt it to the performance space. That can be quite tricky at times.

You have a real fan base in Jakarta. When you performed From Betamax to DVD at Goethe House as part of the 2009 Regional Dance Summit there were people chanting your name. European choreographers rarely enjoy that degree of adoration.

That's fantastic, of course. But I should point out that nothing like that had ever happened to me before. That was an entirely new situation for me. When I first came to Jakarta to study, I had to fend for myself, and things didn’t change much later. My first experience of dance was through traditional Papuan dance, which draws on the movements of the jungle and mimics the movement patterns of animals for instance. Breakdancing and hip-hop dance were just hobbies of mine initially. It wasn't until I moved to the city that I first encountered contemporary dance and began to grasp its potentials, albeit vaguely.

What can contemporary dance be?

Contemporary dance is about more than entertainment. It’s not commercial, and it's not pop. Creating contemporary dance is about finding something that fits; something originary. That is what defines a work of art. Creativity lies in the individual, and contemporary dance straddles the divide between the historical and the future, between what lies behind and what lies ahead.

Are you talking about history with a capital “H”? History in an official sense? Or are the histories we encounter in dance, if they are true works of art in the sense you describe, by necessity individual histories?

History figures in dance at an individual level as body history. At the same time, each dance emerges from a history that brings together the experiences of many different people, and it’s important to understand this history as an artist. You have to know who and what came before you, and understand what other people did in the past to establish your own dance practice. It's important to find out these things. In knowing the past you become receptive to the future. Contemporary dance is innovative.

In the West people have become very wary of the idea of artistic novelty – there is a tacit understanding in the arts that everything which could be done has already been done. According to this line of thinking, absolute novelty is an impossibility.

When I say “innovative”, I don't mean to imply that contemporary dance works are necessarily novel in an absolute sense. The jungle informs my movements, for instance. My first trip to the city –to Jakarta in 1984 or 1985 -also marked my first encounter with hip-hop. There were these guys dancing to a ghetto blaster in the middle of the street. I didn’t perceive their movements as something new; I actually felt a sense of familiarity. Their movements bore a remarkable similarity to those of certain traditional Papuan dances. The music was different, but the rhythm was the same. Following that experience I decided to study dance in Jakarta.

Was this sense of a certain affinity between Papuan and hip-hop dance confirmed when you learnt breakdancing? Aren’t the ritual dances more figurative in their mimicry of animals, while hip-hop tends to be more abstract?

There are clear similarities between the two, and they have a lot in common. B-Boy techniques such as top-rocking and up-rocking use movements that are very similar to those performed in the lead up to traditional Papuan dances. These “warm up” movements have very similar rhythms. Breakdance draws on its immediate environment in much the same way as traditional dances with figures with names like “Baby” and “Old Man”. These names often denote very concrete objects and figures that are represented through the dance. And that is a particular quality of contemporary dance as well: it draws its inspiration from everywhere and anywhere; from its wider environment and context – from anything. Similarly, if you go crocodile hunting in Papua, then you dance the crocodile’s movements before you set out. By dancing the crocodile, you assimilate its “spirit”, making it easier to track down and overwhelm your prey.

Contemporary and traditional dance forms are also similar in the manner in which they seek to communicate their ideas. If, for instance, my great-grandfather performs a dance that is related to the earth – one that I am unfamiliar with – then he touches the ground like this (Jecko reaches down to touch the floor of the cafe at the HAU 2 theatre) ... and then he moves ... (Jecko slowly raises his hand and moves it towards his cheek) … Now I might not understand the movement, but I can sense the “feeling” that these motions communicate. The dance might be old-fashioned, and it may be rooted in a primitive culture, but it speaks to me in the here and now, and to my mind these movements belong here. I experience them as modern – just like contemporary dance.

Before the backdrop of Europe’s colonial history, German critics and audiences are frequently concerned at the prospect of “misunderstanding” art works created in non-Western contexts. What role does understanding play in your work?

Understanding is not always a matter of reason. But people certainly react differently here. Our audiences in Jakarta tend to laugh a lot more than people here. They recognise the children and the old man on the stage, because we inhabit and observe the same city. These are familiar scenes to Indonesian audiences. And they “understand” the work in that moment. But they’re not just laughing about something they recognise – a particular scene or story –they also laugh about particular movements; not because these movements represent something amusing, but because they are amusing in and of themselves. At least that's what I think. There’s a lot more going on than “understanding” sometimes, and that’s fine.

Many of the movements in your works seem to have their origins in everyday situations. Does observation play an important role in your choreographic work?

Definitely. I enjoy observing people, and I do it a lot. When I begin to develop a piece, I work with my observations and impressions. Sometimes I like to sit together with my performers at night in the park where we frequently practise. We meet there to talk, smoke cigarettes and explore new movements. We talk about history, people, and humanity. I'm very interested in philosophy and the human condition. There are so many different languages in Indonesia; instead of just one history, we have a multitude of histories. Every tribe has its own story; known often enough only in its own language. These discussions might not feed into the choreography directly, but they are a part of my work just like everything else. Everything is part of a whole.

Is it difficult to establish a common language without a permanent ensemble?

Yes, in some ways. We are not a professional dance company and we can’t offer performers permanent contracts. You won't find anything like that in all of Jakarta. But we take a very professional approach to our work. We practise together like a family. The dancers are free to work with other companies. Any funding grants that we receive are tied to specific projects. On the upside, this state of affairs gives me the freedom to choose which dancers I would like to collaborate with on a particular work.

You also give dance tuition.

Yes, every now and again, primarily for financial reasons. Meeting with my performers and friends to talk about dance and to explore movements is an entirely different form of “teaching”. Those discussions are another way of pursuing my artistic vision. Sometimes I mention something in passing, and that idea becomes the catalyst for a new piece.

You are equally fascinated by the movements of the city and the jungle – would you say that cities have their own bodies and their own momentum?

Certainly. But it's something that cannot be grasped with the mind initially. That is how I am experiencing Berlin at the moment at least. Perhaps I’ll be able to put it into words later, but right now it's more of a feeling, a mood. Berlin is like Jakarta; just not as large. Jakarta is slow, while Berlin seems to move at a slightly faster pace. Berlin is a city that flows evenly, constantly, but there is so much going on below the surface and inside of its inhabitants. On the outside all you see is a traffic jam, but on the inside people are thinking and cursing and looking and reflecting – this and that and that and that – there’s this endless flood of occurrences.

Do cities resemble machines or are they organisms?

Sometimes cities seem almost like machines, and other times they are like the jungle. Sometimes I experience the city as a jungle, and other times I experience the jungle as a city. The sounds are the only real difference. There are escalators, cars, trains and all kinds of technologies in cities. But then I’ll be out in the jungle with a friend and he’ll signal to me to stop. Then he’ll disappear into the bush and return seconds later with a snake. He knew it was there. “Don't touch it,” he says. Or he’ll cry out – “Look!” – and suddenly there’ll be all these people with bows and arrows standing right in front of us. It makes me wonder, which is the more primitive technology? Which forms of behaviour are more precise and refined? What is more “primitive” – the jungle or the city?

You have come from one space to inhabit another – where do you feel at home?

I guess I'm stuck somewhere in the middle. I belong to neither one nor the other. I live in Jakarta. That's my base. I travel to Papua frequently, and I’ll be going there again soon, but not to the jungle region. Cities are beginning to emerge in Papua. I often feel as though the perpendicular focus of urban architecture skews our physical awareness. Everything reaches skyward. And at the same time people are less aware of what is going on around them.

Are you trying to open people’s eyes to the complexity of their surroundings, and heighten their awareness through your works?

Yes. The idea of bringing the jungle and the city together in Terima Kos was rooted in that aspiration. I am a choreographer. I don't write dramas or shoot films. My work is focused on the body and body language. Every little detail, thought, and problem has to be captured in movement – that’s why the end result is so abrupt and dense. There are so many different moments occurring simultaneously. The sheer diversity of people in the city adds another layer of complexity, while in the jungle people live in self-contained, discrete groups. Yet both the city and the jungle form a whole in which the individual threatens to disappear from sight. Everything seems to flow – the cars, the people, everything. And then something tips the balance and interrupts the flow. That is the underlying principle of Terima Kos: the same thing occurs over and over again, but differently each time.

How do you work with your dancers? Do you take an improvisational approach to developing your works?

I don’t use improvisation at all. Each movement is carefully considered. I demonstrate the movements, the dancers perform them, and then I make my adjustments. It’s like “editing”. It's all about finding the right idea for every moment. Dance is always about the idea; movement alone is not enough. It's what lies at the core of a movement that captures our interest.

We’ve already talked about “understanding” and “misunderstanding”. Is it important for you that your ideas are understood?

My audience means everything to me. They understand more than I do. That's why I don't like giving them explanations or telling them how to understand a work. That would be like telling them something, and then repeating myself in much vaguer terms. I don't want to repeat myself. I can use dance to suggest ideas and that's quite sufficient. My audiences are always cleverer than I am. I've noticed that people here in Berlin don't always like to talk about the work they've just seen. I like that. They prefer to talk about something completely different. It feels as though we’re simply continuing our conversation. It's a very pleasant experience. After all, I’ve said everything that I want to say on the stage.

Does politics play a role in your work?

One of my works referenced the violence that preceded and followed the fall of Suharto in 1998. Politics isn't really my topic, but it can be a source of inspiration. Politics is about our living conditions and the way we coexist. What really matters to me is questioning our notion of the possible. Both in life and dance. If we can imagine something, then we can make it real. I was all alone when I began to develop my dance practice, and to research and explore these ideas. Hardly anyone else believed in what I was doing. But I believe that ultimately reality is shaped by the imagination.

Jecko Siompo was interviewed by Constanze Klementz.