UNDERLYING DRIFT
Curatorial Team:
Linda Mayasari (In-house Curator) | River Lin (Co-Curator)
We are living through an unsettling time. Economic pressures are increasingly felt in everyday life. Environmental crises are reshaping landscapes as well as the ways we live. Conflict and forced displacement are uprooting people from the places they call home. Social and political tensions are testing how we live together. Across different places and circumstances, uncertainty has become part of how we inhabit the present.
In times like these, culture is often treated as something that can be deferred until needs considered more fundamental have been met. Yet how we live together is also shaped by how we understand values, difference, memory, the presence of others, and the futures we are still able to imagine. Cultural practice does not stand apart from the conditions that shape our lives.
What appears settled is not necessarily still. Beneath what seems unchanged, movement continues.
We enter a world that has already been arranged. Names have been given, boundaries drawn, histories told, paths travelled, and knowledge passed down. All of these shape how we understand ourselves and one another, yet the orders we inherit are never entirely settled.
No inheritance reaches us intact. Memory shifts as it passes from body to body, from one generation to the next. Traditions change with those who keep them alive. History leaves behind both traces and fissures. What was once lost may return, but what returns is never quite the same.
BENTANG
BENTANG presents choreographic works that grow out of diverse contexts and conditions of creation. Each brings its own way of articulating experience, knowledge, and questions through choreography. Within them, bodies can carry memory, traditions can continue to be lived in different ways, lived experience can become a way of reading the broader structures and relations within which it takes shape, and knowledge can take forms that cannot always be separated from the places and lives from which it emerges. Dance and choreography, therefore, do not emerge from a single history or system of knowledge, nor do they necessarily move in the same direction. Different ways of knowing, inheriting, creating, and experiencing the body open up their own choreographic trajectories.
KAMPANA
KAMPANA is an artistic development space initiated by Indonesian Dance Festival that provides time for body of works to grow through research, experimentation, conversation, and encounters.
In 2026, KAMPANA adopts a new approach by bringing together artistic development processes from various platforms across Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region: JICON with the Jakarta Arts Council’s Dance Committee; Producers Incubation Lab 2026 with Yayasan Kelola; Latitude—a joint initiative by Indonesian Dance Festival, Performance Space Sydney, and Dance Nucleus Singapore; New Creation Fellowship with Cambodian Living Arts; and Shifting Points, a collaborative platform between Kyoto Experiment and the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM).
WORKSHOP
During the festival, several participating artists are invited to share insights into their practices. This program is designed to facilitate the exchange and dissemination of practices, while also serving as a platform for dance practitioners and the public to experience dance works in depth.
DANCE TALK
Discussions aimed to examine and contextualize current issues regarding the evolution of dance and choreographic practices, the experience of spectatorship, and dance discourse within the dynamics of the dance scene and broader socio-cultural contexts—both in Indonesia and globally.
Dance Talks 2026 hopes to further unpack the Underlying Drift curatorial framework by engaging speakers across various art forms, disciplines, and nations. These discussions are open to the public and accessible throughout the festival period.
LINK IN MOTION
Simpul Gerak (Link in Motion) is IDF’s international networking programme, bringing together producers, curators, and performing arts practitioners from Indonesia with international colleagues who have experience, networks, and connections across different performing arts ecosystems. Through their participation in the festival programme and specially curated meetings, Simpul Gerak creates opportunities to learn about each other’s practices and working contexts, build strategic connections, and identify potential collaborations that can be developed further.
UNDERLYING DRIFT
Curator Team:
Linda Mayasari (In-house Curator)
River Lin (Co-Curator)
We are living through an unsettling time. Economic pressures are increasingly felt in everyday life. Environmental crises are reshaping landscapes as well as the ways we live. Conflict and forced displacement are uprooting people from the places they call home. Social and political tensions are testing how we live together. Across different places and circumstances, uncertainty has become part of how we inhabit the present.
In times like these, culture is often treated as something that can be deferred until needs considered more fundamental have been met. Yet how we live together is also shaped by how we understand values, difference, memory, the presence of others, and the futures we are still able to imagine. Cultural practice does not stand apart from the conditions that shape our lives.
What appears settled is not necessarily still. Beneath what seems unchanged, movement continues.
We enter a world that has already been arranged. Names have been given, boundaries drawn, histories told, paths travelled, and knowledge passed down. All of these shape how we understand ourselves and one another, yet the orders we inherit are never entirely settled.
No inheritance reaches us intact. Memory shifts as it passes from body to body, from one generation to the next. Traditions change with those who keep them alive. History leaves behind both traces and fissures. What was once lost may return, but what returns is never quite the same.
BENTANG
BENTANG presents choreographic works that grow out of diverse contexts and conditions of creation. Each brings its own way of articulating experience, knowledge, and questions through choreography. Within them, bodies can carry memory, traditions can continue to be lived in different ways, lived experience can become a way of reading the broader structures and relations within which it takes shape, and knowledge can take forms that cannot always be separated from the places and lives from which it emerges. Dance and choreography, therefore, do not emerge from a single history or system of knowledge, nor do they necessarily move in the same direction. Different ways of knowing, inheriting, creating, and experiencing the body open up their own choreographic trajectories.
KAMPANA
KAMPANA is an artistic development space initiated by Indonesian Dance Festival that provides time for body of works to grow through research, experimentation, conversation, and encounters.
In 2026, KAMPANA adopts a new approach by bringing together artistic development processes from various platforms across Indonesia and the Asia-Pacific region: JICON with the Jakarta Arts Council’s Dance Committee; Producers Incubation Lab 2026 with Yayasan Kelola; Latitude—a joint initiative by Indonesian Dance Festival, Performance Space Sydney, and Dance Nucleus Singapore; New Creation Fellowship with Cambodian Living Arts; and Shifting Points, a collaborative platform between Kyoto Experiment and the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM).
WORKSHOP
During the festival, several participating artists are invited to share insights into their practices. This program is designed to facilitate the exchange and dissemination of practices, while also serving as a platform for dance practitioners and the public to experience dance works in depth.
DANCE TALK
Discussions aimed to examine and contextualize current issues regarding the evolution of dance and choreographic practices, the experience of spectatorship, and dance discourse within the dynamics of the dance scene and broader socio-cultural contexts—both in Indonesia and globally.
Dance Talks 2026 hopes to further unpack the Underlying Drift curatorial framework by engaging speakers across various art forms, disciplines, and nations. These discussions are open to the public and accessible throughout the festival period.
LINK IN MOTION
Simpul Gerak (Link in Motion) is IDF’s international networking programme, bringing together producers, curators, and performing arts practitioners from Indonesia with international colleagues who have experience, networks, and connections across different performing arts ecosystems. Through their participation in the festival programme and specially curated meetings, Simpul Gerak creates opportunities to learn about each other’s practices and working contexts, build strategic connections, and identify potential collaborations that can be developed further.