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KOMPAS/NINO CITRA ANUGRAHANTO

Rachmi Diyah Larasati

For all the places of the world Rachmi Diyah Larasati, 50, has traveled to, her home village in Indonesia now has her back. She has danced on stages across the globe. Her views on art and gender have been presented at various campuses. Now, it is the time for her to devote herself to the rural community.

The rays of the sun penetrate the bamboo trees in the yard of Diyah\'s house in Semail hamlet, Bangunharjo village, Sewon district, Bantul regency, Yogyakarta, on Sunday afternoon (11/8/2019). The orange spotlight blends nicely with the brick wall of the house.

On the terrace, seven girls sit in a circle, each with a serving of lotek (vegetables with chilly peanut sauce). Chatter and laughter are heard as they eat. Occasionally, Diyah laughs, too, at the sight of the children cracking jokes after their dancing class.

Diyah had made time to train these children in preparation for the soft launch of Omah Budaya Larasati on the following Wednesday (14/8). The culture house is Diyah’s own residence, hence it carries its owners name, Larasati.

Most areas of Diyah\'s house have been opened for the public. The only private space left to her might be the bedroom.

This culture house occupies approximately 550 square meters of land. According to the plan, the rooms inside are used for a library, dance studio and handicraft training. There are also language learning materials for children, both for English and Javanese.

"There is open space for practicing dancing, reading and learning languages. There is also a space for handicraft. I also plan to organize art shows and open dialogues that are interfaith in nature," said Diyah.

All the dances taught at Omah Larasati are traditional ones. They communicate values ​​sustaining the harmony of life between people and their surroundings.

Diyah was very sad to realize that people were gradually abandoning traditional arts and that the values ​​attached to those arts were forgotten. In addition, she said, the traditional arts were often brought into conflict with religious conservatism.

It is this conservatism that drove Diyah to open her home as a culture house in 2014. "I began to see the need. I have to give up my privacy and give [my home] to the public in response to things I have seen growing worse," she said.

Culture house

Diyah said the culture house was in fact the reason for her returning to Indonesia after spending decades in the United States. She had moved to the US in 1997 upon getting a master\'s degree in dance and performing arts at Gadjah Mada University in the same year.

"I had wanted to go home many times. I just didn\'t know the way. Could the knowledge and awards I received [in the US] and what I have to offer be used here?" said Diyah.

She wanted to contribute to society through the culture house she is currently running. She pursued the cultural path because of the flexibility it offers for dialogue with various thoughts. Cultural resilience, Diyah reckons, can protect people from the impacts of harmful new thought that could uproot them from their own sociocultural background.

That is what she later revealed through one of the most recent dance performances she created, the Butterfly Dance. She will perform the dance with the children of Semail at the opening of the culture house.

The dance is about the environment in the village that is beginning to change. At first, rice fields added to the beauty of the village landscape. However, the rice fields slowly disappeared and were replaced with buildings. Usually, butterflies would emerge from the green sidelines of rice fields in the morning. This phenomenon is already rare, as agricultural land is slowly decreasing.

According to Diyah, dance is a language of expression that touches the mind. It is not just aesthetics, but also talking about values, which are explicitly or implicitly communicated through meaningful gestures.

"My dance is not for evening entertainment or tourism but rather a space for self-reflection, regeneration and transfer of knowledge, so I will keep doing it for my own sake until it becomes physically and mentally impossible for me," said Diyah.

The dances Diyah staged in numerous countries range from contemporary to traditional styles. The traditional dances she performed included the gandrung, golek, beskalan and saman.

However, Diyah said, the number of performances was not a meaningful measure to evaluate a dance. Performances should not stop at repeating artificial aesthetics. The main goal that needed to be achieved was conveying value through dance.

KOMPAS/NINO CITRA ANUGRAHANTO

Rachmi Diyah Larasati

Rachmi Diyah Larasati

Born: Malang, 30 October 1968

Education:

PhD in Theory and History of Dance, University of California, Riverside (2006); Professor in Theory of Culture and History of Dance Structure in Politics and Gender Study, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States (2018-present)