Amrita workshop with JECKO SIOMPO
{ January 8, 2010 @ 4:57 pm } { Comments (1) }
"My name is Jecko, I was born in a jungle, when I was small i moved to the village, then i moved to the city, to Yogjakarta, and now I’m here."
The students (it’s just the Amrita students now; the Bophana ones are elsewhere doing a session with Ashok Sukumaran and Hu Fang), can’t really believe the stuff about the jungle. But it’s true! He screens "The Behind Is In Front" (Tokyo 2008) and "Terima Kos" (Singapore 2009); epic works fusing Indonesian Papua dance with hip-hop, detailing the culture shock of his people, shifted from the rainforest to the concrete labyrinths of modernity.
He plays a character, advancing in his tribal phallocarp and loincloth towards a boombox, curiously flipping on Michael Jackson’s "Black Or White".
Jecko: Michael Jackson always "Ooh! Ooh!!" And people in the jungle also "Ooh! Ooh!!!" I got idea from it.
He explains the images: he ducks and hides behind a woman’s skirt, referring to how in the jungle there are places where only women live, so men must crawl down when they enter the spaces to show they are brothers.
Jecko: If I don’t do that, they can eat me.
Rith Boon: Eat?
There is definitely a weird cultural corridor being explored. And this is all Asia, remember. Later translation tensions involve the word "ruh" – roots? No… "soul", says Zul, who’s on hand to translate from Bahasa Indonesia into English. No… "Spirit! Spirit! I thought it was like ghost…"
Later works feature characters weeping loudly over dead relatives transmogrified into mannequins, transforming themselves into Street Fighter characters, Super Mario.
Jecko: I try ballet, I try ballet jazz, I try tapdance, I learn hiphop and I learn Indonesian traditional, a little bit from Bangkok, like Cambodian tradiitonal. And it makes me think, "where am I?" And it makes me think where I was born, what’s thinkingin my heart. And I think I have to going back. And then these people from Japan, he said you have your own style: keep, keep.
This is when he turns off the projector, moves the desk out of the room, and starts to get the dancers on the floor.
He strikes the kangaroo pose: feral Tyrannosaur arms, one leg lunging before the other as if about to leap.
Jecko: I get my mood from animals, everywhere is animals, animal animal animal animal animal. Then I go to the city and its car car car car car. So I try to combine animal and car. So I feel same.
Kangaroo, there’s also in Papua and when I was a child I thought it was a lamb. And I looked again and it just jumped. That’s where my dance came from: kangaroo. Also rabbit, and then reptile. My style is three animals: reptile, rabbit and kangaroo.
(Incidentally, he says his people believe the King of the Kangaroos resides in Papua. He saw him once: a three, four-metre tall creature, running, running.)
Training, now. All these classical Cambodian dancers turn from princes, princesses and monkeys into kangaroos.
{ January 8, 2010 @ 8:04 am }
I’ll have to recap everything soon. But it’s been pretty awesome so far: Tarek gave a workshop this morning, followed by the Janez Jansas. Now I’m listening to Jecko: he’s got the students on their feet and is teaching them his Papuan kangaroo pose.
interview with JECKO SIOMPO, Papua/Jakarta, Indonesia
{ October 13, 2009 @ 10:08 am } { Comments (1) }
YS: So would you consider yourself a choreographer or a dancer or…?
JS: Choreographer is better than dancer, because choreographer have to think more.
YS: And what kind of dance do you do?
JS: I love dance, any kind of dance in the world, because I love everything. I love ballet, I love jazz, I love tap dance, I love traditional dance, I love Thai dance, I love Malay dance, I love Papua dance. You know tango? I love tango, salsa, capoeira. Everything, I love them. So for me I open my heart to, because I need also influence for every kind of dance. I basically came from Papua and a little came from hip-hop.
YS: Why did you decide to come to FCP?
JS: Because this for me is good for experience and then good to think about. And I have to decide, because I want to do more, I want to know more. And then this is good for also relationship for networking, and I know each other around the world. And then important thing: I visit my family, something like. I visit my family. I came to Cambodia, it’s like I want to visit my family here. And like visit other country, Singapore, Malaysia, it’s like family.
YS: I heard you were working with the kids at the Tiny Toones School last night. How was that?
JS: It’s good. I taught them something. Then I told them, don’t stop. don’t stop. I want to move it, move it. It’s like the African "Mumbata" song. The first I show them my movement, about hip-hop movement. Then I show them my own thing about movement. I speak bahasa a little bit?
(Zul helps to translate)
JS: In the past the movement of breakdancing was already there, but today it’s much more developed. Before they did it but it’s not so much. In hip-hop culture in New York, in Jakarta also… Old-school kind of, then new shcool. But I don’t want to say new shcool, because it just came from old school. It still develop. i don’t like they call me new school, new style. Everything they did before. I develop and then I… and then it become animal pop, animal lock, like, it’s my own character. And only to make contemporary dance.
And then I teach them some of my movements, some kind of my movements, like robots, how to locking, how to become one, how to become some, how to teach them so they can actually develop their own style. And I think they like it. Because they weas laughign laughing, laughign all the time. and sometimes i also make some joke but not joke like joke, i make something, something more fun for them to actually, because when you’re doing it thats fun it’s easy for them to grasp something of what they’re trying to do.
YS: And how do you find the Cambodian participants in FCP?
JS: I like them so much. I mean, they very exciting, they very curious and they want to know more. For example when I did workshop they had many questions, like many question very important for me. And I think they very curious and they more serious to do my move, to do my movement.
YS: Can you tell us about the Jakarta dance scene?
JS: Too big. I mean, a lot of dancers there, also a lot of traditional. You know they have many traditional? So I think they come to one city like Jakarta, many many basic of dance. So sometimes I have to doing more extra, more strong, because many cultures comes to Jakarta so for me it’s more strong, so we have to do more. They also have many characters, many different different type of dance but it’s similar, like what they want to do more, what they want to develop themselves. sometimes they get some confusing or they don’t understand how to develop.
For example, for me, I only think about dance only. How to make some choreograph. How to make the choreography. I think about the movement only until now because in my… I think about because in my tribe there is one motto. "No dance, you can be die. You not singing, you going to be die." I think it’s like a traditional principle.
For me, everything is dance. When I put coffee here, when I drink, i feel like also it’s dance.
YS: Could you describe a work you’re proud of?
JS: Every piece for me is important because they have own mission, own vision. For me, everything is they have their own background. It’s like a different different ruh, different different spirit.
(Note: this interview actually took place in Jan 2010, and has been back-dated for the sake of tidiness on the blog)
Ng Yi-Sheng