Date/Time
Date(s) - May 7, 2022
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Experience musical and cultural treasures from Indonesia!
Javanese Ballet & Shadow Puppet Performance
ARCINDA (The Arts and Culture of Indonesia) returns to our galleries with a special production of Javanese ballet and shadow puppets!
This performance will feature a story from the Mahabharata—an ancient Sanskrit epic poem—using gamelan music, dances, and shadow puppetry.
ARCINDA uses a special theater to showcase puppets: flat cutout figures made of leather are held between a light source and a semitransparent screen. The audience faces the “shadow” side of the screen so that the puppeteer can make the figures appear to walk, dance, fight, and laugh.
Today’s Javanese traditional dance will also incorporate original stories from the Mahabharata story. ARCINDA performers will introduce “…different casts, such as Arjuna (from Pandawa, the good guys), Srikandi (his wife), versus Kurawa (the bad guys) in their lifestyle, in which Kurawa always creates trouble to fight Pandawa.” This dance is adapted from the Central Java style, performing a battle between good and evil and mixing romance and comedy with tragic scenes to “…enrich the story. The good guys become the winner.”
Visiting Gamelan Artist: Pak Muryanto
Joining ARCINDA is Pak Muryanto, a gamelan artist in residence in the Education and Culture Office at the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. Muryanto was born into a family of classical performing artists in Central Java where he studied at the Indonesian Music and Dance Academy. He later graduated from the Indonesian Institute of the Arts and eventually became an official in the Department of Education and Culture in 1994. Since then, Muryanto has traveled extensively, teaching and performing at universities across the United States. He is among the highest gamelan experts teaching for more than 30 years in the U.S. Muryanto has also composed many traditional and contemporary pieces for gamelan, including collaborations with symphony and chamber orchestras.
Javanese Ballet & Shadow Puppets are produced by ARCINDA, Inc. (The Arts and Culture of Indonesia), a non-profit based in Fort Collins/Loveland that offers Indonesian cultural programs, events, presentations, workshops, lectures, and education. ARCINDA was the first Javanese gamelan group in Colorado and remains one of the few groups in the United States to present connections between gamelan and modern music with their “Classic to Contemporary” theme.
To view previous performances by ARCINDA, visit artmuseum.colostate.edu/events/javanese-gamelan-music-ramayana-dance-and-shadow-puppet-performance.
This production is partially sponsored by the City of Fort Collins Fort Fund and the American and Indonesian Cultural Education Foundation (AICEF).
