Europalia Indonesia

Charleroi danse and Europalia Indonesia have joined forces for this programme, bringing together two aspects of the incredibly rich varieties of dance found on the world’s largest archipelago.

A traditional offering is the Saman dance. Known as “the dance of a thousand hands”, the Saman is part of the cultural heritage in Gayo on Sumatra. This dance, performed by boys or young men kneeling in serried ranks, stages a ritual of repetitions and complex percussion. Meanwhile the young choreographer Otniel Tasman uses Lengger Banyumasan, a Javanese dance fusing the masculine and the feminine. This reference to an ancient tradition brilliantly challenges the topicality of debates on gender.