25 August 2008

South East Asian Night Market

Indonesian Stall (Photo courtesy of the Indonesian Embassy)

The Wayang Puppet Master "Dalang" is showing his art (Photo courtesy of the Indonesian Embassy)

Indonesian Performance at Wellington's South East Asian Night Market

IPC Students together with others from the Indonesian Students Association present "Tari Saman"

By Shirley Ghozalli

On Saturday, 16th August, a national event - "Asian Night Market" - was held at the TSB Bank Arena, Wellington. This event is designed to show the cultures of South East Asian countries to the public of New Zealand. The participating countries are Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Groups from these countries each presented their own dances, foods, art and crafts. The Indonesian Embassy in Wellington had nominated the Indonesian Students Association of Palmerston North to perform a traditional dance from Aceh region called "Tari Saman".

"Tari Saman" is a famous Indonesian traditional dance that is usually performed to welcome an honoured guest. It emphasizes teamwork and collaboration between 8 or more dancers and is well known as the "Thousand Hands Dance". In this dance, all the dancers kneel in a row or in a particular formation and while kneeling, they move together while singing a sequence of songs. The songs, which originally came from prayers, are sung by all of the dancers, led by a lead singer and a drum player. The dance usually starts with slow movements, which increase in speed and culminate in a wave-like movement that has never failed to amaze the audience.

For the performance in Wellington, our group of dancers consisted of 17 people including a lead singer, a drum player and 15 dancers. Among them were five students and one staff member from IPC: Amanda Chudori, the lead singer (a 2006 student), Indah Mayasari, Kusumawati, Satya Duhita (all 2007 students), and myself, Shirley Ghozalli (a 2007 graduate, now an IPC staff member).

We spent about 2 months practising the dance from scratch, because although we still incorporated some of the familiar old songs and movements, most of them were new to us. The choreography was designed and the music was selected and arranged by two students from IPC, Satya Duhita (a 2007 student) and Indah Mayasari (a 2007 student). To make our performance complete, with the support of the Indonesian Embassy, we had the Saman costumes made in Indonesia.

We left from Palmerston North at about 5 pm and reached Wellington at about 7 pm. There was a long line of visitors at the Main Entry gate of TSB Bank Arena when we arrived. We thought that we had to queue like everyone else but because we were performers that night, we were allowed to enter directly.

It was an unforgettable experience to be on the stage and watched by almost 4000 people. As we moved onto the stage, singing our opening song, the crowds cheered us. The dance lasted for about 7 minutes but it felt longer than that. We were very grateful when we reached the final wave-like movement and could hear the crowds encouraging us.

Our dance was followed by a fashion show of traditional costumes. For Indonesia, Hira Trisnoputri (a 2008 graduate, now a staff member at the Indonesian Embassy) modelled a modern kebaya with a deep red stylish jacket and a red-patterned batik skirt.

For more information, please visit the Asian Night Market official website: http://www.asianz.org.nz/node/1495 and the Indonesian Embassy website: http://www.indonesianembassy.org.nz/

The lead singer and the drum player (Photo source: Adri Widyanto)

The wave-like movement (Photo source: Adri Widyanto)

Hira Trisnoputri is modelling for the traditional costumes fashion show (Photo source: Adri Widyanto)

The beginning formation of the "Tari Saman" (Photo source: Adri Widyanto)

The closing formation of the "Tari Saman" (Photo source: Adri Widyanto)

<Back  |  ^Top