Since I came to APU, I don't know why but it seems that my life turned out to be a life of a dancer lol. I danced a lot here, danced not only Indonesian Dance, but also another country's dance.
I am not a dancer, I never took any dance class in my entire life. When I was in junior high school, I learnt two Indonesian Traditional Dances from my bestfriend and that's it. I never danced ever since that day. It's been almost 6 years since the last time I learnt how to dance from my bestfriend (she is a true dancer).
I wanted to take Ballet Class back then when I was in Indonesia, but I am not confident enough to tell my parents. I like seeing people dancing, they look so beautiful in my opinion. I want to learn how to dance so gracefully. I also watched Hwang Jin-Yi (Korean TV Drama) and the lead actress danced very very good. They influenced me to learn dancing.
When I came to APU, I learnt some dances:
1. Piring Dance
Piring Dance is from Sumatera, Indonesia. I used plate in this dance. First, it's kinda difficult to do this dance because I had to keep the plate stay still on my hand. It's not a rare thing that the plate keep falling from my hand during the practice.
This Nature Dance is from Taiwan, it is a mix between Taiwanese Traditional Dance and Classic Ballet Dance. I like the choreography, it is so graceful. It is so nice to learnt other country's dance.
3. Saman Dance
You can also watch the performance over here:
This dance is really famous, it's from Aceh, Indonesia (remember Tsunami 2004?). It's famous for the speed. We sat for about 10 minutes and use our hands at fast speed to do the dance.
The first video was from the Entrance Ceremony for Spring New Students in APU (1st April 2011) and the second video was from the APU-Nest : Pray For Japan (Charity for Japan's Great Earthquake & Tsunami) at Beppu Station (2nd April 2011) and you can watch my performance from 3:58 in the second video.
For Saman Dance, I did some 'research'. I watched more than ten Saman's videos. And.. I learnt some lesson from that.
Saman is not about how fast the movement nor how difficult the choreography.
I saw a lot of videos that showing the dancers are smiling.. but they don't smile from inside.
I saw a lot of dancers only danced with their body, and left out their heart.
What is it being a dancer?
It's dancing with your heart.
That's what I really want to do as a dancer. I want to dance with my heart, that's why I try to smile as bright as I could when I dance. I want the audience not only enjoying my dance, but also dancing in their heart.
During the rehearsal for entrance ceremony, nobody gave me an applause; I thought my dancing was not that enjoyable anymore. But, when the day I performed, I heard more than one thousands people applause for our dance, I cannot hold back my tears. That's the honor for being a dancer.
I am not a professional dancer, but I love dancing. It's a place where I can express my feeling, through my dancing. I still have a lot of things to learn, and I think, I won't stop dancing. I am not a very good dancer, I didn't even go to dance class. I just want to dance and dance. That's all.
Thanks for reading my post.
See ya' and bye-bye!
Far from Japan,
Maya
