Who would start a performance by banging a bass guitar with a hammer, and finished it with a sonic universe, and still left the audience in awe with a new audio and visual experience? Khuruksetra has successfully done all of the above in their latest performance in the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore.
“It was a fantastic performance. I can feel the battle to find the long lost love and I was amazed by the combination of the audio Khuruksetra produced, the video slideshow they put on screen, and the costume and theatrical performance by one of the members from Khuruksetra. It is simply magical,” Yayan Mulyana, the first secretary of Indonesian Embassy for Singapore, said.
In their third major city performance, after Sydney and Melbourne, Khuruksetra took on love as the theme for the performance. They took the audience to the khuruksetra battlefield to see how the Le’ak (creature from Mahabarata story) tried to find the love it could not get. It screamed, it scared, and it made the audience to stand on their feet.
Khuruksetra first heard in Singapore by one of the committees of the event who passed it on to the Head Committee, Yurika Gani. “I first saw Khuruksetra from their video performance in Melbourne, it was scary enough for me to decide to invite them come to Singapore for this event. But, seeing them live was so much different from what I’ve seen on the video, it was an amazing experience and an amazing performance.”
The Khuruksetra Singapore performance was ended uniquely, the audience left with three minutes of the visual slideshow still on play without knowing that the members of Khuruksetra has left the stage. Mikael Mirdad referred to John Cage, one the most famous sound artists of his era, for the occasion, “We left the audience seeing what’s left on the slideshow, a composition of trees, blood, and also animals. Khuruksetra is no longer part of the performance at that moment, it was the audience who has become part of the performance with their whispers and also their awkward applause. This is the statement that we wanted to delivered; Every sound in this world can be regarded as music, even silence. It was called Sonic Universe.”
The performance marked another milestone in Khuruksetra’s chapter. They have conquered Singapore, just like Sydney and Melboourne, by making the audience shivered and stood on their feet. But, they have never played in Indonesia. A performance that proudly brings Indonesian culture to its best and never played in Indonesia. Would it be caused by the audience who does not fit to Khuruksetra’s performance? But one thing for sure, they should have played in Indonesia a long time ago.
Khuruksetra
Indonesian Embassy for Singapore
Saturday, 28 February 2009
2 comments:
I was there during the performance! The performance was great! Didn't get any chance of thanking you guys for bringing such an art performance to Singapore..
I used to be in a theater group back in Indonesia where we delivered something similar to your performance. It was really impressive and satisfying to finally experience something like this again after 3 years. Keep it up guys!
Thanks for the support benny, it's good to have someone in the audience loving it. We have a dream to be playing in Indonesia for a very long time, if you can spread the words about what you've seen that night then it would be so great. Keep supporting Indonesia and Khuruksetra.
Post a Comment