The Psychosomatic Project is an independent movement dedicated to the development of contemporary dance. It views the performance of artistic dance as a means of communication, which utilises the body to the fullest. My dance art is illuminating in ritual and performance because the expression of body identity departs from the study of philoshopy, history, tradition and culture. I founded the Psychosomatic Project in September 2003 in Yogyakarta thus both choreographer and dance performer in the dance creation. The Psychosomatic Project seeks to understand body culture in its spiritual, psychological and physical aspects through experimental dance. In this endeavour the goal is to further the development of contemporary dance. It is my own background in common dance forms that has pushed her towards hitherto untried exploration of the body’s possibilities in dance, to reformulate and give meaning to dance exploration and dance as performance. My dancing can be perceived as radical but a sincere appreciation will discover the opposite. This ambivalence reaches its height in works such as ‘Fragile’ (below). The project is also rooted in social observation and body research and constitutes a complex statement on contemporary social life, particularly in Indonesia. Departing from experiences of self abuse and hypochondria, materialised traumas in the body have naturally contributed meaning to the confusion of the ongoing social/political developments in Indonesia. It is this conditioning of the body that has attracted me to observe the movements of humans in daily life through a kinaesthetic lens. In the creeative process the Psychosomatic Project cultivates psychological traumas manifest in the body. These are the main vocabolary, repertoire and capital of movements. Through the psychosomatic theme (the diverse mental and physical emotional conditions that humans suffer from, like anger and depression) I tried to understand the body’s spirit, covering the mentioned conditions, while developing dance and exploring the theme. In her approach she uses techniques from ballet and hatha yoga to explore traumas and to find the movement possibilities that can be part of a dance composition. The performance itself departs from and extracts the spirit out of classical Javanese and Balinese dances and it is adapted for the minimalistic stage she uses in my works. ‘Fragile’ was the first by the Psychosomatic Project to be performed on stage. The work explored new techniques of performing the body on a small stage. It was also a body therapy, which utilised 13 main points on the body as centres of movement control, each controlled through breath. The intention behind this technique was to create a basic exercise in which the dancer would learn to know her own body again, as well as adapting to the circumstances the dancer’s body has been through.
By Okty Budiati
Copyright @ 2007 Ruangkaret
