Abstract:
This paper represents a companion piece or supplement to Dancing in the Contact Zone. In that paper I introduced Ibu Sawitri, her dance, and my experience of our embodied cultural encounter.¹ The first part of this paper is also devoted to Ibu Sawitri, but is specifically linked to the ideas raised in the Ibu Box camera from the installation. Here I tell ‘my’ insights and interpretations of Ibu Sawitri’s life, which traverses a multitude of colonial and local patriarchies. The story is interwoven with transcripts of Ibu’s voice as presented in the installation and a range of other historical Indonesian women’s voices drawn from books and archives. In the second part of this paper I look at what it means to leave what Pratt terms the ‘contact zone’ (1992) with a body that is informed and shaped by this experience. Here I will discuss some of the main issues addressed in my camera box and the wall projection. I look at western audience reactions to the contemporary work I do in Australia with the dance and performance techniques learned in Indonesia. Based on these reactions I speculate about western perceptions of traditional and modern Asian art forms and what that says about our current western perceptions of Asia.
