Karo dance filmed by Claire Holt (1938)
CLARA
BRAKEL. LEIDEN. Rolf de Maré, son of the Marshal of the Swedish Royal
Court Henrik de Maré and grandson of the collector Countess von Hallwyl,
was a globetrotter and a collector until the end of his life. He loved
the art of Dancing, and founded Les Archives Internationales de la Danse, the world’s first museum and research institute devoted to choreography, in Paris. His
comprehensive collections of European and non-European dance became the
foundation for the Dance Museum which he opened in Stockholm in 1953.
This Swedish nobleman was in fact ahead of his time in understanding the
importance of studying dance and dance-drama in European and in
non-European societies.The trip
In 1938, Rolf de Maré organised a
research trip of approximately three months to the Indonesian
Archipelago, starting from Sulawesi via Java and Bali to Sumatra and
Nias, in order to document the dance cultures of the various peoples
living on these islands. His research assitant was the dance expert
Claire Holt, who was living in Java at the time and arranged the entire
journey. The third person on the team was Hans Evert, a photographer.
All three of them took photographs, with Claire Holt documenting what
they saw, and Hans Evert working the film camera.
The aim of the trip was, according to de
Maré, “to collect as much data and material as possible, so that we
could make a synthetic study of dance-lore”, and “to give dance its
place in the contemporary social life of the local populations and, … at
the same time trace the original history and local development of the
dances”.
In Rolf’s opinion, the most important
results of the trip were the unique film material and the numerous
photographs of dancers and dance performances which they brought back,
together with dance costumes and accessories they had purchased.
Sumatra
In Sumatra, Claire Holt had asked the
Dutch philologist Dr. Voorhoeve, a specialist in Batak languages and
cultures, to guide them. After visiting Minangkabau, they travelled
around North Sumatra.
Here they were impressed by the ceremonial dances that are not often seen nowadays, such as the Huda-huda
masked dances in funerary rites from the Pakpak Dairi district. In
Pamatang Raya, Simalungun, they filmed a datu who danced with his staff
upon magic figures he had drawn on the ground. Moreover, they filmed an
elegantly dancing nobleman named Tuan Anggi, showing that solo dancing
and improvisation were common practice in North Sumatra at the time.
Last but not least, in Kabanjahe and on the Karo highlands they documented Karo women and men in stately Mulih-mulih
dances, performed at the conclusion of a ritual, in the beautiful
setting of traditional adat houses with Gunung Sinabung in the
background.
The unique films and photographs of
Sumatran dances are all kept in the Dance Museum in Stockholm, as part
of the Rolf de Maré collection. Following an exposition on Indonesian
dances in 2004, with a beautiful catalogue compiled by Dr. Elisabet
Lind, former curator of the Southeast Asian collections in the National
Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, the Dance Museum is now planning to
transfer the Indonesian flms of its collection to a dvd.
For this reason, Elisabet Lind is
presently in Leiden to discuss the contents of the films with Clara
Brakel and Juara Ginting, who are advising her on the production of the
dvd. It is hoped that, by making these films available on modern media,
they will serve as a source of inspiration for the study and development
of dance and music in modern Indonesia.
IMANUEL
SITEPU. PANCURBATU. Petugas Polsek Pancurbatu berhasil mengamankan 3
pria anggota sindikat perampokan ketika beraksi merampok truk Colt
Diesel jenis Canter, BK 9017 TN di Simpang Krikil, Desa Sei Gelugur
(Kecamatan Pancurbatu) [Rabu 13/3]. 
