Mixture of Dances

January Low (right) and Guna (left) in dance pose to express adbhuta (wonderment) in Ramli Ibrahim's Rasa Unmasked at Dewan Sri Pinang recently.

RASA Unmasked, a contemporary dance performance held at Dewan Sri Pinang in George Town saw several cross-cultural elements in music and dance brought to life.

The presentation, a Malaysia-Australia collaboration, saw various dance traditions such as Bharata Natyam, Odissi, Kuchipudi, Malay/Indonesian dance vocabularies and the merging of Javanese and Indian classical music.

The show, presented in conjunction with Australia Month @ KLPac, is the result of collaborative efforts between Sutra Dance Theatre’s artistic director Ramli Ibrahim, Lingalayam Dance Company in Sydney artistic director Anandavalli Sivanathan and American-Chinese gamelan specialist, ethnomusicologist, composer and musician Alex Dea who is based in Indonesia.

Eye opener: Ramli (centre) in a scene carrying the kavadi-like prop.

Rasa brought to audience the power of eight dominant ‘rasas’ or core human emotions which are divided into nine areas: sringara (love), veera (valour), karuna (compassion), adbhuta (wonderment), hasya (laughter), bibhatsa (disgust), bhaya (terror), raudra (anger) and shanta (serenity).

The performance also saw the revitalising and transformation of aesthetics into a framework that connects with the audience.

Surreal: Rasa Unmasked invokes the power of core human emotion to the audience.

Accompanied by a cross-cultural orchestra featuring the Javanese rebab and the traditional Indian percussion, the show saw dancers perform the choreographed work of Ramli and Anandavalli.

Sutra’s Sivarajah Natarajan was responsible for the imaginative and dramatic set design and lighting.

The show opened with the prakriti (female/nature) and purusha (male/ unma -nifested creative energy) lying on the Water of Existence.

Anandavalli did a Kuchipudi solo to bring out the most basic of human emotions —love — portraying a courtesan’s passion and longing for the love from the nayak (hero).

A scene showing a unique human formation against the stark black stage backdrop.

In the following number, Ramli used movements from both the Balinese and classical Indian dance styles to evoke characters from the Ramayana.

He performed a solo number as a Balinese warrior, displaying the valour of a hero who is invested with symbols of power and imbued himself with ‘sakti’ prior to his battle with Ravana.

The other numbers brought together the combination of the different intepretations of the rasas which resulted in a commendable and highly entertaining performance by the dancers.