Indonesian traditional dance shows the diversity of Indonesia’s ethnicity and cultures. One of folk traditional dance in Indonesia which is performed in group is Saman dance. Saman was created by Syekh Saman in 14 BC in Gayo’s highland, Aceh.
Saman dance is one of the media for spreading Islamic religion. This dance reflects the educational, religious, manners, heroism, solidarity and togetherness. In Bali on November 9 2011, UNESCO announced the traditional Saman dance from Aceh province as a world intangible cultural heritage. The dance is characterized by its fast-paced rhythm and common harmony between eight to twenty dancers. The difficulties of Saman is also known as “The Dance of Thousand Hands” by a group of people forming a line by a music player of gendang (Kendang). Even though learning Saman is relatively difficult, Saman has several benefits, such as boosting solidarity, exercising self-discipline, and preserving traditional culture.
First, the benefit of performing Saman dance is boosting solidarity. Among the wide range of dances from all over Indonesia, Saman dance is very interesting. The characteristic of this dance depends on the amazing harmony movements. Saman dance needs a lot of dancers to perform the dance, so it obviously needs collaboration and matching movements from all dancers to follow the rhythm of the music harmonization. Kneeling on the floor, eight to twenty male or female performers make various kinds of torso movements accompanied by songs, clapping their hands and chests, slapping their hands on the floor, etc. The movements use two elements of the basic elements of the dance: Clapping hands and clapping chest. Saman dance is among a quite unique dance, because it doesn’t only show the motions of applause of other movements, such as shaking movements, kirep, lingang, surang-filtering (all of this motion is in Gayo language). Saman dance usually led by a Sheikh ( a leader in Muslim community). There should be a cooperation between the dancers and the sheikh to able to work together in order to create a harmony and unified movements. The tempo of Saman dance usually is increasingly getting faster so that the dance becomes interesting. The dance also needs consistency of the formation and timeliness. There’s also synchronization between the music and the dance tempo, so that the spectators could enjoy the rhythm of music and the dance. The difficulty of Saman dance is so high that the dancers should practice together during their spare time, in order to train their solidness.
` Second, Saman dance exercises self discipline. In order to build the solidarity between the dancers and match the movements, the dancers have to train based on the schedule so that they will remember the steps without leaving behind the movements of other dancers. The reason is that when they don’t train based on the schedule or lazy to practice, it will be difficult to synchronize the movements between them. The training or practice based on the schedule is very useful to increase self- discipline and make them more responsible. During the practice, the dancers have to focus when the dance couch gives the instructions. With focus during the practice, they will know their mistakes so they can memorize the movements quickly. To show the movements beautifully and harmonically needs regular practice. The reason is that with the regular practice, they will not only memorize but also become familiar with the movements. If they have memorized all the movements, before the show they can refine the movements by remembering the small details or voices while singing. Otherwise, if they don’t practice regularly, maybe while in performance they will forget the movements and the performance become less than interesting. Although they don’t practice based on the schedule, as far as possible they try to remember all the movements by practicing the movements alone at home or ask other dancers the single details of what movements haven’t been known before. High concentration and stamina are required by the dancers during performance because if they don’t, the performance will not be attracting. The movements are intense and powerful because those movements also form the rhythm of the dance. Besides the sound of claps, chest slapping or hand hitting on the floor there’s only one person reading a narrative in Acehnese tone. The person should read the narrative powerfully, because if he doesn’t nobody will hear anything and if he’s out of control, he not only will ruin the rhythm but somebody may get hurt. Therefore, before the performance, the dancers should eat or drink in order to increase stamina. Dancers may exercise before the performance, but not too hard so that they can perform the best performance.
Third, Saman dance also help preserve traditional culture. In this globalization era, only few people know and care about Indonesian culture. Based on a survey, it is known that the values of Saman dance become degraded and misinterpreted. This problem will threaten the existence of Saman dance. Television, internet, and westernization effects are the main causes of that degradation of the values and interpretation. This really becomes a threat against the sustainability of Saman. Therefore, people especially teenagers who concern about Indonesia traditional culture have to give concern about traditional dance especially Saman, by trying to learn the movements or watching the performance of Saman dance. For foreigners whose visit Indonesia, they can recognize its uniqueness when it is presented in front of them. Through the uniqueness of Saman dance, Saman is not only popular in Indonesia but also in outside of the country. Saman dance is usually performed in Australia and Europe. Recently, to celebrate the victims of Tsunami on December 26 2004, Saman dance was performed in Australia. Besides that, the dance serves to re-introduce Indonesian traditional culture. By presenting Saman dance, people may love and want to learn it. Take for example, someone whose name is Qaramitha Aziz (Mitha). She knew Saman dance from Youtube. At that time, she felt weird about the dance. Then, she fell in love at the first sight with Saman, which is a flexible and dynamic dance. “First of all, I don’t like traditional dance. But when I saw Saman dance, I fell in love at the first sight with it, hahaha..” she said shyly. Finally, she joined Saman on the tenth grade at 36 Senior High School Jakarta. In addition through Saman dance, Indonesia hopefully can demonstrate and promote that the regions have some potentials in order to attract the foreigners to come to Indonesia. Furthermore, the dance promotes Indonesia traditional culture heritage to the world so that Indonesian traditional culture has a significant progress to compete in this modern era.
In conclusion, learning Saman dance is actually not difficult at all, because by doing that we can take the advantages that are useful for ourselves, such as boosting solidarity, exercising self-discipline, and preserving traditional culture. It all depends on yourself on how you can absorb the benefits of the dance and become interested in it. Besides, the most important thing is that we have to be proud of our traditional dance that we have, especially Saman dance, and preserve it from extinction. When you perform Saman dance, you should synchronize the movements and the music tempo by doing the practice regularly to preserve the traditional dance.
By : Ditha Saumi
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