Lost in translation? Nope!

Edmund Metzold: seudati workshop, 09.01.14

Although a great deal of this trip is focused on music and the arts, it wasn't until our third day in Indonesia that we had our first workshop where we watched and learned seudati, a traditionally all-male Acehnese fighting dance inspired by both the Acehnese war against the Dutch and the Islamic profession of faith. From watching the performance by eight male dancers in traditional garb, accompanied by two male singers, it was obvious that they rehearsed very often, as there was not a single mistake in the entire performance.

Then it was our turn. I danced a lot in high school and in musical theatre productions for many years, so I was excited to dance again and to learn new dance forms. Separating us by gender, the male performers starting teaching me and the other guys the steps. None of our teachers spoke English, so the we learned the dance solely by observation and repetition with no explanation. Despite my dance experience, I had never learned dance without explanation in English to accompany the moves. And while this presented a new challenge to me, my dance experience allowed me to pick it up quickly enough. However, a lot of us had more trouble. For example, we first learned the moves all facing the same direction, and then we got into a different formation where we all faced towards the center, with some moves facing a different direction. This change of what direction is "front" throughout the dance confused us all at first because it wasn't explained in words, but I was able to recall the techniques from my dance classes and I remembered enough from the performance to make sense of it. But what may have been harder than learning dance with a language barrier was dancing in a hot and humid room with no AC, two dozen other dancers, and twenty observers. But in spite of the heat and exhausting conditions, learning a new and foreign dance and learning it in a way I'd never experienced before made dancing seudati one of the best and most interesting times I've ever had dancing.

 

Posted with Blogsy