Medium is a deeply personal portrait of Rianto the dancer. Featuring himself and Javanese musician Cahwati on a bare stage, the piece goes to the roots of Indonesian traditional dance and music, exploring nature, spirituality and ritual with a stark minimalism. Rianto, who dances barefoot with trance-like concentration, moves from controlled, hypnotic movements to frenzied shaking. In his body, we see a fluid amalgamation which has stored movements from contemporary dance, classical Javanese dance and lengger, a traditional cross-gender dance from Central Java, in which he has trained since young. Accompanying him, alternating between roles as partner, lover, friend and mother, is Cahwati, who plays a variety of instruments and contributes live vocals.

Morinaga (sound artist and music composer from Japan), Yudi Ahmad Tajudin (contemporary theatre director from Indonesia), and other artists across disciplines from Indonesia: Mian Tiara, Gunawan Maryanto, Dwi Windarti, Wulang Sunu, Ignatius Sugiarto, MN Qomaruddin, dan Arsita Iswardhani. It is a sonic theatre because in this performance sound is the main element. The theatre (movements, images, stories, emotions and perhaps meanings) in Gong ex Machina was created based on the sound composition, not a script. The event will also highlight and develop the presence of sounds as its anchor. The performance will be presented in a “3D-immersive” sound system, which will put sound output in the whole theatre room, not just from the stage. The sound will come from all directions and the audience will hear the sound from everywhere. Renowned sound engineer from Japan, Tetsushi Hirai, will design the sound system. The title of the performance, “Gong ex Machina”, is a word play from a technical term in ancient Greece in the 5th century: Deus ex Machina, which more or less means God in or out of the machine. The term refers to the technique to present actors playing as gods on the stage of a Greek tragedy using equipment like cranes, moving up and down, or a trap door, to allow the actor coming from below the stage. Hence, Gong ex Machina, a gong in or out of the machine. The concept of the performance evolves from a reflection following an extensive research by Morinaga on the gong culture throughout South East Asian countries. One of the significant findings of the research is that how a music/sound produced by a gong, as well as the gong itself, serves as a communication medium between human and supernatural beings (the ancestors, gods, and God) or even as the supernatural being itself (God in the Gong or through the Gong). Gong ex Machina also stems from the history of an encounter between music or sound cultures and the modern technology of sound recorder and player: phonograph or gramophone. Similar to other encounters between tradition and modernity—happened against the background of the industrial revolution and European colonialism in the 17th to 20th century—the encounter of gong culture with gramophone is a story of a complicated acquaintance. Apart from stories of adaptation and appropriation are also stories of distortion and manipulation. It was an encounter that changed the way we experience and understand music, in particular, or sounds in general. As a performance, Gong ex Machina tries to reflect on how sound or voice (or also noise) plays a part in shaping our experience and understanding of the world. Another contemplation is: which god we listen to and which god moves us?

This article is not available in English.

This article is not available in English.

東南アジアの島々全域で長きにわたり、最も重要な楽器とされてきた青銅器ゴング。人々の間で語り継がれてきたゴングにまつわる説話をモチーフに「過去と現在」「民族と国籍」「聖と俗」「肉体と魂」「時間と空間」様々な価値観を最新のメディアテクノロジーとサウンドデザインで越境する新たな物語。パフォーマー・映像・照明・立体音響、現代アジア最高のスタッフを結集し作り上げる舞台作品『MARGINALGONGS』。

Queen-size is a choreographic exploration that takes the form of a detailed study of the intimacy between two men. Played out on a charpoy, the duet examines the nuts and bolts – carnal, mechanical and emotional – of a close encounter between two male bodies. In deliberately making this encounter visible, Queen-size poses questions around spectatorship, privacy and dissent.

“Dans Utérus, pièce d’intérieur, pièce toute d’intimité, Foofwa d’Imobilité déplace le curseur de la virtuosité. Celle-ci ne se donne pas ici dans le brio technique des figures, ni dans le chatoiement d’une séduction spectaculaire. Elle se niche au contraire, en amont de toute forme identifiable, dans l’immense travail que Foofwa, Anja Schmidt et Raphaële Teicher ont mené pour rendre possible l’éclosion de ces mille et uns imprévisibles micro-événements dont chaque représentation est le creuset. Hormis son thème, rien, en effet, n’est pré-défini dans cette pièce. Son défi est de se concentrer, en direct, sur ces moments d’émergence fragiles où, à l’écoute des flux sensoriels et imaginaires qui le traversent, le danseur donne naissance au geste. Ce geste semble alors s’extérioriser spontanément, sans être tout à fait détaché encore de l’intériorité qui l’a nourrie. Mais ne nous y trompons pas : rien n’est plus difficile que cette apparente spontanéité. Il faut des corps savants, éminemment réceptifs et ouverts, pour accueillir cette gestation de gestes inconnus et en accompagner le déploiement. Il faut aussi qu’une profonde connivence se soit nouée entre les partenaires pour que leur trio parvienne à susciter l’impression d’une cohésion organique constamment renouvelée.”

“Ten Thousand Tigers” traces how the tiger has loomed large in the cosmological beliefs of the Malayan world, up until its tragic last days when it was hunted almost to extinction by the British colonial masters, reincarnating itself in the most uncanny of places and contexts, such as Japanese soldiers invading the Malayan peninsula during World War II, or guerrillas from the Malayan Communist Party.

"To Belong / Suwung" is an Indonesia-Japan international collaborative project, in which the choreographer, Akiko Kitamura takes a challenging role.  This project, based on elaborative researches since 2010,  was performed in Asian countries and earned high evaluations. The latest version of "To Belong / Suwung" was premiered at the Aoyama Round Theatre in Tokyo.

Artists, taking active roles in dances, music, and visual arts got together from each country to perform in this project. Dialogues among generations, contemporary dance, traditional dance, martial art, backbones of each artist, and interactions with keen bodily senses generated intensive magnetic fields.

The artists successfully reached the creation of new stage world by unifying the Indonesian tradition, mystic energy, and the modern expression.

This is a work by Mandeep Raikhy, an Indian choreographer of contemporary dance. He is interested in human physical muscles and created this work from his point of view toward male physical activities and their bases.