Ocean Cage: A Journey through Infinity in Time and Space

Takamori Nobuo

When we discuss Indonesian performing arts, we often have their various forms of traditional music and dance in mind, which are deeply intertwined.  Whether it is the court dance in Yogyakarta, Solo, and Ubud (Bali), or the shadow puppetry known as wayang kulit, the looping musical structure of gamelan always plays a crucial role in creating an enchanting, mystical atmosphere of dreamlike imagination.   Yet in Ocean Cage, a collaboration between Chinese contemporary artist Tianzhuo Chen and Indonesian dancer and choreographer Siko Setyanto, breaks free from these existing frameworks.  It attempts to construct an immersive performance (a practice Chen is particularly known for) through the interplay among theatre, dance, installation, and multimedia art.    

The story of Ocean Cage is set against the backdrop of Lamalera, a fishing village in East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timur).  Located on Lembata Island (Pulau Lembata) off the eastern shore of Flores Island (Pulau Flores), Lamalera is geographically distant from the birthplaces of traditional Indonesian music and dance, such as Bali and Java, as it faces the Savu Sea (Laut Sawu) where the ocean currents of the Indian and South Pacific Oceans converge across the Indonesian archipelago.  Due to its barren landscape, dry and scorching hot, in stark contrast to the lush forests found elsewhere in Indonesia, the people here preserve an ancient activity inherited from their ancestors: whale-hunting.

For the people of Lamalera, whale-hunting is never merely an economic activity.  It is also a cultural and ritual practice that embodies a profound community purpose between the villagers and the environment.  The villagers do not only rely on this generationally inherited tradition for physical survival, but see it as a crucial transformation bringing them into dialogue with the ancient ancestors, as they believe that the sperm whales riding the currents to the Savu Sea carry the ancestral spirits.  Furthermore, the local dry climate also allows the captured whale meat to be sun-dried and converted into a traditional food supply that can sustain the entire village for long periods.  

With a legendary yet difficult subject like this, how should the creators visualize the heroic practice of whale-hunting in a theatrical space?  Through their carefully crafted artistic orchestration, Ocean Cage incorporates social documentary footage of everyday life while simultaneously creating a multi-perspective spatial fantasy for audience to navigate.  As the dancer-protagonist enters the performance space on his motorbike, he seems to intrude upon the “stage,” distinguished as the realm of arts, from a remote Indonesian island village.  From this moment on, the director and the dancer have released the boundaries of the stage and give it back to the audience – much like the living space in the Indonesian village, where the mundane and the performative are always interwoven and juxtaposed.    
 
As a medium for storytelling, the dancer in Ocean Cage integrates elements of traditional Indonesian music and dance into the performance, not to lend it an exotic flavor, but to serve as a guide for the audience.  Following the storyteller’s narration, together with interwoven video and live choreography, the audience is invited into a labyrinth of imagery and sounds as the performance unfolds as a form of “durational theatre” built upon multi-layered narratives.  Here, the sense of space becomes obscure, and its multiple perspectives melt into one another.  With its ambiguous yet complex narratives, the creators extend temporality as it gradually immerses the audience in a theatrical sphere whose border with reality is blurred, and eventually erased.

Chen’s immersive-theatre approach, in fact, perfectly fits the form of traditional Indonesian performing arts, which are not bound by a conventional linear narrative of beginning, development, transformation, and conclusion.  Rather, its performance seeks to create an indeterminate sense of space and time.  Surrounded by this atmosphere, the audience can hardly distinguish the border of the stage, while their individual presence is gradually devoured by a greater whole through the oscillation of articulated movements.      

The whale-hunting ritual in Lamalera has remained unchanged for centuries – the sacrifice of the whales is both a blessing for the new age and a calling from the ancestors.  As the fishing boats brave the devouring ocean, the community nibbles away at the harvested whale meat.  Similarly, Ocean Cage is an interdisciplinary creation that reaches beyond its own potential, extending the traditional spirituality and temporality toward infinity.  Through its accumulative, interwoven layers of music, space, and video, a holistic perception – at once artistic and sensory – coalesces with an integrated sense of time and all living beings to realize a journey where the audience swims toward a remote fishing village.