Selvi and Hilda, Two Dancers with Postgraduate Backgrounds
Tauhid Nur Azhar
While enjoying a brunch, we engaged in a lengthy conversation about artworks and the creative process. About artists and the psychography of artists. “Man behind the Gun” as an artwork and its creative process. We discussed Saman and Sema dances, as well as involuntary movements. Delving into delusions, hallucinations, illusions, and madness, along with various psychological backgrounds of artworks.
Outstanding works from Van Gogh, Rembrandt, to Affandi. Surrealist, impressionist, cubist, waluhist (which doesn’t exist yet), fauvist, realist, naturalist, to romanticist paintings, we tried to make them the backdrop of our discussion. Vipassana, meditative dance a la Dr. Bulan Tresna, to the special skills of Babah Radwin and Brother Dr. Andry Dachlan, experts in Bikram, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, and Hatha yoga, we discussed them with the enthusiasm of endlessly chewing tuna jerky.
Then there’s Prof Suo, whom we brought into the conversation, his scientific writing style, which we placed on the table like a literary work. “Let him cook,” I said to the two charming young women who are from the same village as my adopted child, Uda Hendra.
Let Prof Suo, alias Prof Suyanto, an expert in AI and informatics from TelU, help with the recipe for his academic writing. But the focus of our discussion this time is the Amertha dance, which cannot be denied as the domain of my friend Babah Radwin, whom everyone in his circle calls the remaining magical figure of Nusantara.
The dance or involuntary movements that serve as a gateway to enter the DMN (default mode network) and return us to the fundamental concept of human nature that is sensitive to the universe. A dance that flows along with unplanned and distortion-free movements of intentions and the potential for disappointment. A sincere movement, the oxytocin knot in me. Like the intuitive movement of a baby seeking its mother’s nipple for the first time. A universal movement that is free and leads us to LOVE.
So, my advice to Selvi, who is originally from Tebo Jambi and not named Ananda, is to try to learn PNI (Psycho-Neuro-Immunology). Where subliminal dance movements, or subliminal half-conscious movements, are not just ordinary memorized movements and cognitive works of integrating memory with psychomotor planning conasi with the primary motor cortex that becomes the center.
Amertha is the vibration of the universe that interferes with our conscious waves. It operates in the parieto-occipital junction and most frontal areas, including its lower gyri.
So, I asked Selvi and Hilda, who are versed in the essence of symbols, signs, and the semiotics of where a work originates. They answered in unison, born from the spiritual womb of humanity, just as graceful and beautiful as the dancers they always portray throughout our meetings.
The spiritual womb is not a virtual kitchen confined by conceptual walls. It is a factual inevitability. There are ways and mechanisms that work within it. And a big question looms in the four eyes of these young Minang girls, if only Sjahrir and Tan Malaka were still here, they would have courted them.
If Amertha was born from the spiritual womb of Suprapto, an avant-garde dancer based in Karang Anyar, then it would be delightful if Selvi, the wild flower of Tebo, studied it. Curious like a girl deeply in love with her sweetheart.
Get to know Suprapto and the dynamics of his thoughts. What is implied and expressed from the timeline of his life. What major events has he experienced? What stories about him have reached his relatives, friends, and children? What are his wishes, and what is his legacy?
Who Suprapto is will be the key to this phenomenological research. Where phenomenology is a genre of descriptive inquiry that focuses on the study of appearances, the acquisition of experiences, and consciousness. Phenomenology, in short, is the study of experience and how that experience is formed. A study of stories and the appearance of stories within the framework of interaction in a world known as a phenomenon.
Kak Rizal Rickieno from Griffith is an expert, so he is often dubbed il phenomenon. The legend widely known in the world of scholarship hunters from Indonesia’s LPDP.
The interpretive paradigm of Edmund Husserl is fitting and profound for the case of the Amertha dance. A mystical dance with a dynamic subjective interpretation that needs to be examined with a systematic and structural critical approach.
Meanwhile, the psychoneuroimmunology of Robert Ader would be optimal as a tool to examine the relationship between ritual practices and the functional workings of the brain.
Isn’t almost every product and art system born from traditional cultures closely related to spiritual rituals? Therefore, searching for traces of art in the psychophysiological dimension is a concrete effort to examine causal relationships between movements, unique thoughts, beautiful works with aesthetic values that lead to the process of seeking esotericism.
Nerves and hormones are bridges biologically, while muscles and skeletons are formers of semiotic signs. Similarly, the speech center has transformed into a language factory, successfully constructing a conceptual world according to imaginative perceptions that reside on its forehead. A cognitive space that devours representations of shaded spaces and transforms them into a world dominated by the power to fulfill one’s own or group interests.
