Reisen Hamburg 2006 part 1: the Musical Experience (as if!)

Current books read: Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella and Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter by Galadriel Waters

This post is an update of this post.

Surprise! Miscommunication happened, yet again. I'm starting to get tired and bored of it. Why can't people communicate better, more effective and more accurate? Is it because we're Indonesians? Hrgh!

Just think about this. You were only given in total of 30 minutes to perform 4 performances in total of 26 minutes. That means you only have two minutes to load and unload our instruments on the stage that weigh half a ton literally! Two minutes! We only have around one-tenth man-hours to do the job. One tenth! Moving half a ton. How crazy was that?

Seeing this problem, there was only one thing to do: Say a big fat NO to the organizers. It is that simple.


Anyway, this confusion lead to a very messy music performance, and I hope that the audience still doesn't understand our music (cue the grin), and ones who do, will take the problem as a consideration. Eventhough there shouldn't be any excuse.

On the other hand, the dancers are awesome as always. Pictured here on the right is one of the most basic dance for female dancers. The dance is so basic so that almost every female dancers in our group can do it. It is called "Peacock Dance".

The funny part is, I was once told that this dance actually based on peacock's mating rituals. If they are done with young adults to adult dancers, I will totally get it. But however, everytime the cuties do it, it isn't always believable for me, and in the end, I would just think that the birds were just playing with each other.

Sounds like a mating ritual for man to me. Whoops.

My personal favorite was when my teacher and a friend of mine were dancing a dance based on one of the oldest love story in the world: Ramayana. We were all giggling among the audience only because we felt so unrest of how romantic the dance was.

I haven't been briefed about this dance ever. But I thought it just shows Rama romancing Shinta on one of their encounters together. I don't think that it was the first time Rama met Shinta, or the last day they were together before Shinta was kidnapped.

I have to be honest. I am more familiar with western pop culture than indonesian traditional culture. So watching this dance, is like reliving the end of the silent movie of Don Juan which is performed in Singin' in the Rain. So it would have been superb, if they danced to "Would You?".


After the performance, as typical Indonesians, we gather around the backstage to take pictures with each other. So here is the rest of the picture that are quite good, but somehow doesn't fit the narration, or the narration is R-rated. :)


Lucky for us it was all over on a great note.