Title: Tarian Baru Dari Indonesia
Location: Powerhouse Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse
Description: Brisbane Powerhouse and Brisbane Festival 2010 present – Tarian Baru Dari Indonesia(New Dance from Indonesia)

Forging a marriage between ancient tradition and modernism, two compelling and unique Indonesian choreographers bring Tarian Baru Dari Indonesia (New Dance from Indonesia) to Brisbane Powerhouse as part of this year’s Brisbane Festival from Tuesday 7 September to Sunday 12 September.

Two breathtakingly beautiful and original dance works make up this extraordinary presentation: Di Dalam/Di Luar (In/Out) by Hartati and a double bill by Nan Jombang Dance Company, SangHawa (Eve) and Rantau Berbisik (Whisperings of Exile).

The Minangkabau region in Indonesia is famous for food and dance and is home to the country’s most important contemporary choreographers. Its unique alchemy of martial arts, folk dance, spiritual discipline, social formality and a penchant for migration creates the nucleus of these works. The two choreographers featured in Tarian Baru Dari Indonesia, Ery Mefri and Hartati, both have their foundations in the coastal highlands of West Sumatra.

Hartati’s work is a dance of beauty and ideas and of the mysterious but lucid language of the female body. She has performed and presented her work extensively in Indonesia and has collaborated as a choreographer with artists from around the world. In Di Dalam/Di Luar, three women are in boxes. They struggle to escape only to find themselves in another box, and then another, trapped in an infinite regression. The human body becomes the voice exploring the urge for emancipation and the quest for freedom. This season of Di Dalam/Di Luar is the first time this work has been performed outside Indonesia.

Nan Jombang Dance Company first performed outside Indonesia at Brisbane Powerhouse in 2007. In matriarchal Minangkabau culture, property is owned by women and passed from mother to daughter. In SangHawa (Eve), choreographer Ery Mefri contemplates Eve, the first woman in the story of creation as shared by Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Rantau Berbisik (Whisperings of Exile) is inspired by the long tradition of Minang men migrating across the archipelago to make their fortune before returning home.

These works are a remarkable blend of the old and the new, the traditional and the contemporary, to tell the stories that are distinctly and uniquely Indonesian.
Start Date: 2010-09-10
Start Time: 18:00
End Date: 2010-09-12