Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang dance by Retno Maruti and Bulantrisna Djelantik presented the idiom of Javanese and Bali cultures significantly on a stage. Philosophy doctoral student, Riana Diah Sitharesmi, found the essence of the dance through hermeneutics interpretation in the presentation and creation.
“The dissertation starts from the study of Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang as a dance art thas is founded on the reinterpretation of tradition and local wisdom amidst post-modern lives,” she said during her doctoral promotion on Friday (31/8).
She said that the process of dance creation had involved holistic experience. Intuition, creativity, and instinct are the main competence of all praxis and knowledge that are needed in a dance process.
Her philosophical qualitative method has specifically explored the existential and aesthetic values of the dance as a material object. Investigation of artistic works and intertextual analysis are done in the hermeneutics of H.G. Gadamer, with elements of methodical interpretation, hermeneutics cycle, holistics, sustainability of history, comparative, and heuristics.
“The combination of dialectics process in understanding Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang allows three main aspects of subjectivity, namely reflection to achieve self-knowledge, embodiment to personalise self-knowledge to different character building, and socialisation through tradition,” said the lecturer from Universitas Negeri Gorontalo in Sulawesi.
She mentioned that Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang analogically is the vehicle and space that relates types of subjectivity to include the combination of past knowledge with present perspective.
The postmodern culture has given room to Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang to achieve its true forms. This means bringing a tradition into a newness that is not shallow and to develop good value in the soul of the dance as part of human lives. By respecting heterogeneity and uniqueness, Bedoyo Legong-Calonarang has its existence as agent of aesthetics carrier, values that are ontologically allows the continuum of truth.
“The presence that is always in the mode of being has made Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang occupy a contemporary space, to always be open to other horizons, preparing further dialogue scope that strives for the production of another new interpretation,” she said.