I created the dance work Tapak Samar starting from the myth of Nang Dudu, a wong samar¹ who lives in the memory of the people of Pujungan village, in Pupuan district, Tabanan regency, Bali. During the creative process I was interested not only in the story of an unseen figure, but also in the questions that arise when the story is set against how people treat nature. Those questions led me to something more personal: could what seems to disturb us from outside ourselves also have something to do with a side of the human being that we are not always aware of?

The question did not find its answer straight away. It developed through the process of creation, through encounters with the environment, and through artistic decisions that had to change more than once. It is this experience that I later reflected on in the book Tapak Samar. For me, the journey from myth to work was not simply an effort to transfer a story into dance. It was a process of questioning the meaning of that story again through body, space, sound and experience.

A Night at Tibu Blemantung

One of the experiences that shaped the atmosphere of Tapak Samar took place at the Tibu Blemantung waterfall. The still unspoiled surroundings left an atmosphere that I find hard to let go of. The trickle of falling water brings a sense of calm, yet it also brings silence. The rustle of leaves in the wind can be heard between the sounds of the water. When the work and the recording went on at night, the meeting of sound, darkness and surroundings built an atmosphere that felt ever more mysterious.

That experience mattered because the source of the work’s idea is tied to Nang Dudu, a wong samar figure in local storytelling. In that area there is a place where several springs meet, which local people understand as tenget². I felt that the meeting of the character of the place, the time of recording and the source of the work’s idea created an atmosphere that could not be built entirely through artistic arrangement in a performance space.

I do not see this environment merely as a setting that can be used to make a dance look more beautiful. The sound of water, the breath of the wind, the trees and the state of the place at night all took part in shaping the experience as the work came into being. The environment offered a quality of atmosphere that had to be answered, not just placed behind the dancers. At this point, making dance became a process of listening and responding to a place, not only of realising an idea that had been planned beforehand.

The experience also reminded me that a relationship with a cultural source calls for sensitivity. When working with a story rooted in the memory of a community and in an environment of sacred value, I did not want to turn these elements into mere devices for creating a mystical impression. The challenge was how to build an artistic experience without losing respect for the context that surrounds it.

When the Camera’s Eye Changed the Decisions

At the beginning, Tapak Samar was conceived as a dance work with an environmental choreography approach, to be performed live. The pandemic changed that plan. A live presentation could not be carried out as planned, so the work was then packaged virtually, using cinematic recording techniques.

The video of Tapak Samar was recorded in the area of the Tibu Blemantung waterfall, Pujungan village, Pupuan district, Tabanan regency, Bali. It was uploaded to the YouTube channel of Ter.kurung Art Space in August 2021 as part of the Final Project Examination (Ujian Tugas Akhir) of my master’s programme (S-2) at ISI Denpasar, now known as ISI Bali. At present the video is not shown publicly, but it can still be reached through a direct link. The move to a virtual format was not just a change of documentation medium. When a work first conceived to be experienced live had to be presented through a camera, the way I treated space changed as well.

In a live presentation, a wide space allows the audience to experience the relationship between dancers and environment more fully. In recording, attention has to go to those parts of the space that the camera can capture and that serve the needs of the image. So I adjusted my choice of filming locations. The range of space first planned as wide was narrowed down to certain points, so that the relationship between movement, environment and camera frame could be read.

In the Pilah-pilih process, I did not simply use all the space available in the Tibu Blemantung area. I considered the character of the place, the atmosphere I wanted to build, and its relation to the dancers’ movement needs and the idea of the work. These considerations became even more important when Tapak Samar was moved to virtual presentation. The change demanded adjustments in how the relationship between the dancers’ bodies, space, sound and the reach of the camera was built. Elements first planned to be experienced live had to be arranged anew so that they kept an artistic relationship when presented through images. This experience made me realise that choosing materials and building the form of a work is not just a matter of deciding what can be used, but of considering what is truly needed for the choreographic idea to be present through its form of presentation.

This is where I came to understand that the camera is not a neutral tool that merely records something already finished. The camera helps decide how space and body appear before the audience. What can be experienced live cannot always be conveyed in the same way through images. The change from live performance to virtual presentation began with circumstances that were not planned, but those circumstances opened up artistic questions that had to be faced, not just solved technically. For Tapak Samar, that process became part of the journey of creation, not only a final stage for documenting the result.

From the Figure of Nang Dudu to the Hidden Side of Humans

In the memory of the people of Pujungan, Nang Dudu is known as a wong samar associated with human acts that disturb or damage nature, such as hunting animals, taking large stones from the river, or felling big trees without permission. The story can be understood as part of cultural knowledge that reminds people of the limits of their behaviour towards the environment. In the process of creating Tapak Samar, I then asked a question that shifted the direction of meaning: can the disturbance of nature only be understood through the existence of a figure outside the human? Or can the story also invite us to examine the impulses within us that make us act without considering the consequences?

This question led me to a more personal understanding of what is samar, hidden or indistinct. Desire, fear and ego can influence human action without our always being aware of it. Something samar does not have to be understood as an invisible figure; it can also be a way of thinking about things within us that are hard to recognise, yet whose influence shows in behaviour.

However, moving a myth that lives in a community’s memory into the psychological reflection of an individual is not a simple matter. I am aware that an interpretation arising from personal experience does not automatically represent the community’s whole understanding of Nang Dudu. The story has a cultural context that I cannot claim entirely as belonging to my own interpretation.

For that reason, I see the creation of Tapak Samar as an encounter between cultural memory and personal questions. I do not intend to replace the meaning of Nang Dudu that lives in the community with a new meaning held to be the most correct. I try to trace what I can understand and question through the story, while acknowledging that the community’s relationship with its myth is wider than the experience of one maker.

In my experience, the response of the people of Pujungan to this work has tended to be positive. The work drew attention not only as an aesthetic presentation but also as a chance to remember the story of Nang Dudu again, which, in my experience, is becoming less known to some of the younger generation. This experience made me see that making art can be one way of bringing attention back to oral stories that live in a community.

Even so, this experience cannot be taken to represent the views of all the people of Pujungan. Understandings of Nang Dudu can vary, and my artistic interpretation is one possible reading of the story. The question of where personal interpretation ends and collective memory begins is an important part that I do not want to close with too easy a conclusion.

Finding the Movement Language of the Wong Samar

In the process of creating Tapak Samar, the interpretation of Nang Dudu and the wong samar was carried on through a search for movement qualities. Stimuli arising from the story, from memory, from bodily experience and from encounters with the environment were worked through exploration, selection, stylisation and transformation until they found the possibility of becoming choreographic material. This process did not always run in a straight line. Material that had been chosen could change again as it was tried, developed and placed in relation to the body, space and the artistic needs of the work.

This sequence is one way of reading how movement material was formed in Tapak Samar. The wider creative journey can be understood through Padu Rasa and Pitung Tindak³, which I describe in the book Tapak Samar. Padu Rasa helps explain how various sources, experiences, characters and artistic qualities are brought together to open up possibilities for new forms. Pitung Tindak, in turn, serves as a trace for reading the creative actions that took place during creation, from opening attention, imagining possibilities, trying, choosing, assembling and shaping, to deepening the result. In this way, the formation of movement material is part of a creative journey whose parts are linked, not a process entirely separate from the whole of creation.

Through this process I developed several motifs that became an important part of the movement language of Tapak Samar: Nandang Buluh, Tayog Samar and Kipek Saru. Their formation came not only from the interpretation of Nang Dudu and the wong samar, but also from encounters with artistic sources, the dancers’ bodily experience, and the exploration of the Tibu Blemantung waterfall environment. The three motifs have different characters but are brought together through the shaping of qualities of body, space, energy and time. Naming these motifs is part of identifying and developing choreographic material in the work, not a claim that these forms were inherited as traditional movement under the same names.

Nandang Buluh is a walking motif with the body tending to stoop and the lower body held in a cengked⁴ stance. The facial expression is kept relatively flat and empty, so that the whole body gives an impression of strangeness, of something not entirely natural. The stoop gives a sense of heaviness and instability; in the choreography, this motif works as a marker of the wong samar‘s bodily character, or of a change in the body when the figure is under the influence of something hard to control.

Tayog Samar is marked by both arms swinging repeatedly to the right and left, with a facial expression that tends to stay flat. The motif can be performed at a slow, medium or fast tempo. At a slow tempo, the movement gives an impression of heaviness, oddness and menace; as the tempo quickens, its quality can feel increasingly unstable and chaotic. A change of character therefore does not always require a change of basic form, but can be built through the handling of tempo and energy. Artistically, the motif gives the impression that the body is receiving an impulse that is not fully within the dancer’s awareness.

Kipek Saru centres on turns of the head in directions with no firm end point. The movement is developed through variations of direction and tempo, while the facial expression stays flat. The unclear direction produces an impression of unease and ambiguity, in tune with the sense of samar as something not entirely clear or hard to pin down. Sudden changes in the direction of the head also give the impression that the body is responding to something the audience cannot always see.

The three motifs — Nandang Buluh, Tayog Samar and Kipek Saru — do not stand as forms separate from the movement language as a whole. They can be developed through changes of tempo, energy, direction, level and repetition, and through the relationship between bodies. This handling allows the same motif to take on different functions and nuances according to the needs of a scene.

Padu Rasa and Pitung Tindak in the Creative Journey

In the book Tapak Samar, I introduced Padu Rasa and Pitung Tindak as ways of thinking that grew out of the experience of creating the work.

For me, the value of these two ideas does not lie in their ability to become a formula that applies to every choreographer. They come from the experience of creating Tapak Samar and serve as a way to read how ideas and artistic material develop in a particular context. A creative process does not always move in a straight line from idea to final form. Experiments, considerations, changes and artistic decisions can influence one another, even pushing the maker to look again at choices made earlier.

The experience of choosing a space and adjusting the form of presentation shows how Pilah-pilih and Ngawangun can be used to read the decisions that arose during creation. Space was chosen with the character of the environment and the idea of the work in mind, while the arrangement of form had to be adjusted when the plan for a live performance changed into an audiovisual presentation. This change concerned not only how the work was shown, but also the relationship between the dancers’ bodies, space, sound and the reach of the camera. The experience shows that a creative process demands sensitivity to material as well as a willingness to review artistic decisions when circumstances change.

I want to place Padu Rasa and Pitung Tindak as traces of thought that can be read, questioned and developed further, not as fixed stages for others to follow. A work is born from the meeting of the source of an idea, bodily experience, the situation of the environment and artistic decisions. Because every work has its own problems and context, a creative process also calls for a way of working that is sensitive to the circumstances at hand.

Rereading What We Inherit

Through Tapak Samar, I learned that making dance that starts from tradition carries a wider responsibility than finding an artistic idea. A maker needs to be aware of the relationship between a cultural source and the interpretation developed from it, and to understand that personal experience cannot replace all the knowledge that lives in a community. The myth of Nang Dudu gave me room to think again about the relationship between humans and nature and about the side of ourselves we are not always aware of. The experience at Tibu Blemantung brought that idea together with the character of the environment, while the change from live performance to virtual presentation forced me to reconsider how space and body are presented through the camera. Both show that creation is not merely the application of a concept already fully formulated, but a process continually shaped by encounters with reality.

The book Tapak Samar then became a space to reflect on that journey. I do not regard it as a final answer about the myth of Nang Dudu, nor as a universal guide to making dance. The book is a record of thought and experience from one creative process — an attempt to understand how cultural stories can meet personal questions and find form through making art.

For me, safeguarding tradition is not enough if it means repeating stories or keeping inherited forms. We also need to understand the context, listen to the community that tends it, and be careful when building new interpretations. Making art can open room for that process, as long as artistic freedom goes together with awareness of the cultural source it departs from. Among the sound of falling water, the silence of night, moving bodies and the gaze of a camera that limits space, Tapak Samar found a question I keep carrying with me: when we try to understand something samar outside ourselves, how far are we willing to examine the samar within?

Notes

1. Wong samar is a term used in Balinese stories and beliefs for a figure or presence held not to be fully perceptible to ordinary sight. In the context of the Nang Dudu story in Pujungan village, this figure is associated with acts that disturb the life of the community and the environment. ↩︎
2. Tenget is a term in Balinese culture for a place regarded as having a particular atmosphere or value, including one tied to sacredness and local belief. ↩︎
3. Pitung Tindak means seven actions used to read the creative journey of Tapak Samar: Nureksain, opening attention to sources and experience; Nglaca-laca, developing the reading and imagining of ideas; Tategar, trying and experiencing directly; Pilah-pilih, deciding which material to keep, change or leave behind; Mupulang, assembling relationships between elements; Ngawangun, shaping the artistic structure; and Nelesin, sharpening and deepening the result of creation. These seven actions are traces of creative work, not fixed stages that must always be passed through in order. ↩︎
4. In the description of the motif Nandang Buluh, cengked refers to a bodily stance with the position pushed slightly forward. ↩︎