Body Nothing Performance

My first 'come back' to Gedung Kesenian Jakarta after 5 years and was happen in same time with Jakarta Anniversary Festival. I've been carefully picked a couple of performances from their program this month. One of it was The Body Monologue Performance 2010! (Tubuh Mengambang di tiang-tiang). I was interested on the genre - contemporary dance theatre, the brief and how the poster look.

Anyway, my expectation was dropping to my knee level when I looked at the synopsis flyer (badly designed) and after steped in to the auditorium because there wasn't much people came actually, I'm pretty sure most of the audience are their (dancers) own family. And they decided to change the title to: The Body Nothing Performance, although the staff said the whole concept were not changed.
The Body Nothing Performance is the performance to listen the strength and the ways the body heal it's social wounds, far from the mainstream identity loudspeakers that lasted through politics and arts.
Director/ Choreographer: M Aidil Usman

The last gong was hit, Lights were dimmed down. A moment after that six bald males in various body shapes in their stripes boxers just charged in to the middle of the stage doing chaotic movement - It was so confusing, I re-read the synopsis again just to make sure we were not seeing Gollums Monologue.




Then everything started to get interesting. I'm not loving it, but have to say I enjoyed all their body movement, how they tell the story with their bodies, limited vocals and lighting on stage. I love Wirman Simago, his solid yet flowing movement. In the synopsis, they mentioned about a body of an old actor which haven't been on the stage for a while. Was it him? And how come he looks familiar?

It was a great performance, they all make sense after we discussed it again on the way home. Too bad they closed the performance by playing "We Are The Champion" - I was screaming in my head "why, why, why, why?" with painful smile while clapping my hands off.

photos: courtesy of Antara Photo by Fanny Octavianus