RAMPOE UGM Raih 1st Winner & Gold Diploma di International Online Dance Competition
RAMPOE UGM Raih 1st Winner & Gold Diploma di International Online Dance Competition
In the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the UGM Rampoe Team was triumphantly gaining achievements at the international online dance competition. Rampoe UGM, an Acehnese dance community, originating from Universitas Gadjah Mada, contrived to get the 1st Winner & Gold Diploma and The Best Dynamics on The Stage in the International Online Dance Competition.
The competition was held online by the Folklore Festival Association from 1 September 2020 to 30 October 2020, with the amount of 50 teams from 25 countries participating. These participants came from Romania, Croatia, Slovakia, Turkey, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, and Russia.
Folklore Festival Association which organized the competition is an international dance association based in Macedonia and Serbia. This association has been established since 2003. It has successfully held various festivals in various countries, such as Spain, Serbia, Greece, England, Russia, Germany, and many other countries.
The Vice-Chairman of Rampoe UGM, Ken Istifarni, explained that Rampoe UGM presented the Ratoeh Pukat Dance in this competition. Ratoeh Pukat Dance is a blending of Ratoeh Jaroe Dance and Pukat Dance.
The Ratoeh Jaroe dance is a dance that represents the life of the Acehnese people that leads to high solidarity. While the Pukat Dance is a dance that depicts fishermen's lives while they were fishing in the sea. It represents the people of coastal Aceh who have livelihood as fishermen.
"We are delighted with this achievement. Yes, Rampoe UGM remains to strive to spread Indonesian culture, especially Aceh culture, both at the national and international levels," she said at the UGM campus on Friday (13/11).
He explained that this was the first time for the Folklore Festival Association to hold this competition online due to the pandemic conditions that appeared bordering today's world community. If there is no pandemic, the Folklore Festival Association regularly launches competitions or festivals in several countries, such as Russia, Spain, Italy, and others.
"Certainly, Rampoe UGM routinely engages in various competitions or festivals both nationally and abroad, whether during a pandemic or not," said Ken Istifarni as a 2017 student at the UGM Faculty of Cultural Sciences.
During the pandemic, Ken admitted that UGM Rampoe preparations for the competition were quite compact. The UGM Rampoe team acquired information about this competition only two days before the closing of registration.
"Rampoe hastened into an online meeting and decided to register. And we decided that the dance to be performed was Ratoeh Pukat, which was a combination of Ratoeh Jaroe and Ratoeh Pukat Dance involving 16 dancers and four musicians," she explained.
Furthermore, Ken revealed that because the organizing committee had requested the participants to use videos produced in the last five years, the UGM Rampoe Team finally only selected videos from several documentations of performances that had been done. Even so, Rampoe still frequently creates new dance videos for other dance competitions.
"Yes, because this year, Rampoe is pretty active in competing in other virtual competitions. The total preparation for this competition lasted two days. We had no practice because we only took videos from previous years," said Ken.
Ken Istifarni also explained that the offline competition made the UGM Rampoe Team more common and closer to the organizing committee because of the intensity of communication. This closeness made Rampoe UGM have new relationships and the opportunity to preserve and introduce Indonesian culture to the international level.
"We have a habit of always rushing in registering flow. Yet, we assume it as a challenge to make us more excited. For competition this time, the hardest competitor is from Russia. They performed a traditional ballet dance with choreography named Zadumka," she added.
Author: Agung Nugroho
Translator: Natasa A