#abnahaya

[abnahaya]

SALATIGA PEACEFUL WAACK

So once upon a time, a well-known national waacker came to the small Salatiga city and taught waacking class, she encouraged the students to build their own waacking community. I didn’t experience this background story at the first place, but since Salatiga was a small city, everyone knew everyone. I heard about this new dance community they were trying to build. This happened almost a year after my falling-out with my friends, I had just finished my final exam and all, waiting to graduation day. I missed dancing and I had nothing to lose.

I knew two people from the first meeting, they were my old dancing pals, one of them was also a member of DOS (see previous post). It was pretty challenging for me because even though I wasn’t really bad at waacking, but I couldn’t do freestyle like, bruh, I was so bad at it fr. Our waacking sessions went for 2 to 3 hours every Tuesday afternoon, consisting of basic drilling, choreography (if anyone has one to share) and freestyle session. 

Because it’s a small group, we grew closer, like really close. I became the mum of the group, and we would hang out after practice, talking shits and dreaming about dance projects we would like to do together. Since some of us were considered pretty “senior” in Salatiga dance scene, we also taught smaller groups about the basics of waacking and performed in small showcases in town. 

One of the memorable moments was when Salatiga Movement, one of the dance team in town, invited Safina, a waacker from Jogja, a neighbouring city, to teach a short class. I went and danced with everyone, and truly it was a different feeling to be able to dance in a big team (although we weren’t exactly a team, but some of them were also part of SPW so, close enough), it brought back so much nostalgia on my part, and I enjoyed it very much. After class, we held a small 7-to-smoke, a dance battle, between us. It was my first (and probably last) battle, and I had to say, it didn’t go as bad as I thought it would, I did pretty well. The next day we shoot a short choreography with Safina, in the legendary dance spot in Salatiga.

Sadly, my time was short with this team, since I had to graduate soon. So before graduation, I pushed everyone to make the first independent project of the team, which would be my last. We didn’t have much time, but I was stubborn enough to keep on going. I remember, I picked the song because it was the only waacking-able song on my offline playlist, when I decided to create the choreography with the team. We got help from our friends to shoot and edit the video, did it on the newly built hall, and held a small farewell photo session afterwards. Every time I watch the video, it brings smile to my face because it was perfectly like how I imagine it would be, everyone was slaying and moreover, I could say that all the drillings we did for a year did pay off, our techniques was good and we synchronised well. I was so proud of this team —and I still am.

[abnahaya]

Dance of Satya Wacana

I’m sorry I know I skipped to many days, but here I’m back with another nostalgia of my dancing days! *sob

In 2014, my dancer friends (or gang) and I were quite undefeated in the University. EDance won competition after competition, well, fair enough, it was the oldest dance team in the University, not many faculties had a dance team. Therefore, my bestie and I came up with an idea of what if, we created a University team, so dancers from different faculties can dance together, and the people from other faculties without any dance team can have the option to join a dance team. Sounds great, right? 

Long story short, we did it! After painful steps of University’s internal bureaucracy to sign it up under the Student Body etc, we created the team! As we were the very first batch, we didn’t hold any auditions —although that was the plan for the next years, and there were tons of students signing up! Sixty people showed up on our first regular practice, even though, not surprisingly, the number kept decreasing over the year —either because of the schedule or people having a hard time following the materials, thanks to our dearest coach who decided to “test the waters” from a high level.

The first year wasn’t the best, we had a pretty solid core team —who were basically the same people from the same two teams, and some others, lol- who had a lot of energy. We went from one performance to another (not including the ones with other teams) whilst struggling to pay our coach and competition fees. The video on this post could be considered the peak of our year —or me, at least. We didn’t win tho, the jury said our choreography was “too tight” without “room to breathe” or whatever he meant by that, I said we stayed the stage.

Unfortunately, my days in DOS ended quite similarly to the ones in EDance. My bestie and I had been drifted apart for some time, she spent a lot of time in the neighbouring city with her bf, and I spent 24/7 with mine (who was also an abuser), in the end we just stopped trying to complement each other again and as we were literally the two leaders of the team, it didn’t go well. On the evaluation day after the term ended, I felt cornered and I did what I did best —runaway. After creating it from scratch, I abandoned my baby because I felt like I had no more comrades in it.

Now that I think of it, nobody was wrong wrong, we all had faults that led to the pretty shaky end of term. The drifting away between my bestie and I turned us into trying to prove the other wrong, whilst in fact, what tied us together was actually our differences that complemented each other. I was in a really bad mental place and I couldn’t handle any more rejection (or in this case, harsh critiques) and I felt like I had to flee to save myself, which I wouldn’t say a bad choice, but I do regret the justifications I kept telling myself instead of admitting that I fucked up, in some ways.

BUT ANYWAYS! As it was stated in the two previous posts, my bestie and I are now fine and back being bffs again. And DOS still kept on going! In fact, after that rough start, they kept winning competitions and this year, they plan to compete in World of Dance, Indonesia. I’m beyond proud!

[abnahaya]

A Late Thank You

My second entry to the performer challenge is not an easy one to put into words. 

Fast forward into my Uni life, I transferred to UKSW when I was 21, it was still STiBA back then, a smaller college under UKSW’s umbrella. Honestly, I only enrolled here because it was way cheaper than the main campus. Moving from Bandung to Salatiga could be very overwhelming—esp to note that at that time I was burdened with an immense amount of guilt towards my parents (for not studying well in Bandung)- I felt out of place most of the time.

Then one my friends, asked me if I wanna join a dance team that she was planning to create. There weren’t many students in our campus and she needed at least 10 people to keep the extracurricular going (and to pay the coach in a fair share). I was probably still in my 2nd semester, feeling bored with the repeating materials and almost no close friends, so I agreed. Little did I know, that moment was a big turning point for me.

It was my first time learning hip-hop. I had been dancing almost all my life, but it was mostly traditional dances —the only one that wasn’t a traditional dance was when I created a modern dance for my primary school graduation, lol- so the whole thing was very different for me. In traditional dancing, I needed a lot of self-restraints: my poses, the length of my steps, my facial expressions, almost all of them has their own rule to follow, very precise and constant. As for hip-hop, the movements were huge and sloppy —I danced the female parts in traditional dances, which requires gentle and small movements- if I may describe. It was very rough and basically the complete opposite of the dance I had been learning so far.

However, dancing freed me. I was probably pretty depressed and stressed by the things happened in my life and I honestly couldn’t feel the joy as liberating as when I was dancing. Then we did our first performance as a team, and it was all history. I fell in love again with dancing, this time, hard.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit sad that until recently, I was in a big denial regarding the full story of how I fall in love with the street dance world. I was greatly affected by shallow thoughts and unhealthy relationships, even though I was indeed to young to notice. Today, I wanna embrace the truth.

Despite of how this might sound as a humble-brag, I was good, probably the best one in the group. Then I became an arrogant cunt (sorry, the Australian culture is rubbing on me). I started to feel superior between my team mates, and although it might be true, I wasn’t supposed to be like that.  

The superior feelings was also supported by the fact that I was the girl coming from the big city, and I felt like I knew better of the world from everyone else. I had the better fashion sense, I did make up better, I knew how to act on stage, and so on. Not a single bit I care about others’ journey and appreciate their effort to “level up”. I remember I kept being defensive, refusing to “tone myself down” for others because I believed they were the ones needed to step their game up. Whoa, I was a bitch.

No wonder no one liked me. LOL. It was pretty obvious that I was an outcast in the group, only there to even out the numbers instead of truly being a part of the team. I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t be bothered to try to blend in because I didn’t wanna change my self —which, I think, is not entirely wrong, but needed to be added more perspectives, I mean, being nice to others don’t always mean you gotta create a whole new personality to match them.

I was young and I had no life —like literally, I lived in online world for 2 years prior to my transfer to UKSW- and they were also young and inexperienced. We were all too naive to perceive a complex thinking manner that, it doesn’t always need to be black and white —as a matter of fact, there can never be only black and white. Our world was too small to see things in colours.

For many years, I considered this part of memories with this team as a “bad” one. I felt out of place, I didn’t like most of the things we did as a team, I didn’t like the costume choices, heck I despises the entire experience being in this team. But now I grow older, and I look at the pictures, and honestly I wouldn’t change a thing. This was the team that introduce me to the passion of my life, the thing I couldn’t think of living without, the biggest source of joy in me.

So today as I sit here and write this post, I laugh at our adolence years. How we liked to make simple things complicated even though we couldn’t handle the complication. But I also want to swallow my pride and say thank you, for the opportunity of making memories with you all. Years later, in the present day, all the black colour I thought I’ve poured all over that time, has faded away. What’s left is just memories.

The memories that makes me who I am today. And I will be forever grateful.

Love,

Ruth