This work began with memories of Ela’s childhood experiences as a spectator of Bajidoran art. This Sundanese folk performance becomes Ela’s entry point to see the shift in the position of the hips and womanhood generally considered a symbol of fertility. The hips can be seen as the center of sexuality; expressive, personal, and intimate. However, for Ela, the hips are the main axis of movement that contains the meaning of the span of events in the past and present, between the transcendent and the profane, the private and the public, and between the body and the stage. Ela sees that the hips are proven to be adaptive, as it moves and becomes moved by the movement of the era.
Credits:
Choreographer: Ela Mutiara
Dancer: Ela Mutiara
Composer: Gin Gigin
📍 Teater Wahyu Sihombing, Taman Ismail Marzuki
Ela Mutiara
Choreographer and dancer born in Sukabumi, West Java. She finished her Masters in Artistic Creation in Indonesia Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta. Since 2016, her practice digs into historical events, tradition, lifestyle, and women in the Sundanese socio-cultural perspective. Auto-ethnography became the working method developed in her creative research and process, placing the body as the main medium expressed through dance works, videos, performances, and exhibitions.