In this two-way interview, Indonesian dancer and dance scholar Rachmi Diyah Larasati and American ethnomusicologist Christina Sunardi discuss the impact of the political genocide in Indonesia in 1965-66 on dance performance in Java. They will explore how experience and memory—both individual and social—influence bodily responses. As they trace the violent events of 1965-66 and focus on resilience, they discuss ways dance forms were altered in a post-1965 context to reinforce the new authoritarian government’s ideologies, and ways dancers resisted and maintained older practices, sometimes in hidden or altered forms, using their bodies as sites and holders of memory.
