OzAsia Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 24 Sep 2015
Intimately connected to Cry Jailolo is Indonesian choreographer Eko Supriyanto’s most recent performance research work, The Future of Dance is Under Water.
Even knowing nothing about the work, or Jailolo’s reputation as a tourism diving location, you would recognise Cry Jailolo immediately as being deeply concerned with connection between a community and the sea.
Supriyanto expresses this in demanding choreography which, with seeming effortlessness, fuses the individual body and body of the community and sea as one. It is impossible to mistake it as anything else, as the gentle but intense opening moments of the production made starkly clear.
Slowly and gently, a solo dancer comes into view, spot lit at centre stage just below the knees, the light spot increases as the dancer moves at a slow pace downstage; his right foot tapping him forward as his left foot twists above ground rapidly.
Iskandar K. Loedin’s simple lighting against the stage floor’s green and black and the upstage black drop curtain throws into relief the red and saffron traditional men’s diver trunks. The total effect, as the light rises up the dancer’s body, is of treading water, sinking deeper into dark sea. This movement is foundational to the whole work as dance and cultural expression.
Supriyanto’s ensemble of seven male dancers take the audience through a series of tableaux and solo phases in which their bodies express men on the sea sailing. Then merging their bodies with the sea they powerfully work with and against its ebb and flow, rising and crashing like waves in motion akin to reverent worshipful prayer.
The ensemble’s intense, perfectly precise and uncluttered movement is equally meditative and spiritually gracious in execution. Cry Jailolo gives voice to a people pressured, proud and united in the face of odds clearly hidden by the glamour of tourism. That these odds might be environmental issues is strongly hinted at, if you don’t know more about Jailolo’s reality. Better that you don’t.
Cry Jailolo as conversation with an audience possesses the power to prompt questions to be asked and a dialogue begun.
David O’Brien
When: 24 to 26 Sep
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: bass.net.au
