00:00You saw, right, just now I go very slow, very graceful.
00:04Then suddenly I go jumping, it's joggett.
00:07Yeah, so besides the form, it also comes with the feel to the ragam.
00:14How do we keep this new dance works to show our identity?
00:19It all comes up into fine-tuning the individual itself.
00:25We must also know that the Malay dance exemplifies the Malay culture at its best.
00:30Because we show them the best of our costume, the best of our beautiful face,
00:35the best of our art form as in our movement.
00:38So it's something that we should be proud of.
00:48Hi, my name is Fauzia Hanom Yusof.
00:51I am the President and the Artistic Director of Sriwana.
00:54Sriwana was first formed in 1955.
00:57It started first as a Kronchung musical group with our founder,
01:02Haji Nunchik Ghani, and his co-founder, Sulaiman Jim.
01:06I first started dancing when I finished my pre-U days.
01:10I guess that was in 1984.
01:13Yeah, so I was more on dancing on a community level until I started joining Sriwana in 2000.
01:20So here I am until today from a dancer and still here.
01:28What Sriwana has been focusing on is the Malay traditional arts form.
01:34How we maintain the core values and try to educate the public.
01:40We've been actively involved in performances as well as have our own internal dance workshops every year,
01:48which we give to the public for those who are interested to learn more about the Malay dance.
01:59For every Malay dancer, they would know, or they should know by heart,
02:02the five basic movements of Malay dance, which is the Asli, the Inang, the Zapin, the Masri, and the Joged.
02:10They should be very good in this knowledge of the different movements of the dance.
02:15Each character has their own symbolically meaning because every melody, every movement has their own different character.
02:24For example, if you see an Asli movement, you will see the hands going very slow.
02:30One, two, three, four.
02:33There's so much grace when it comes to Asli.
02:36Yeah, so that's Asli.
02:38Yeah, but when it comes to Joged, it has to be very, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
02:43They're very happy, you know.
02:44So it's a different mood altogether.
02:46So all these characters, I mean the dance itself, it exudes a different mood.
02:53Okay, you saw all right just now, I go very slow, very graceful.
02:57Then suddenly I go jumping.
02:58It's Joged.
03:00Yeah, so besides the form, it also comes with the feel to the ragam.
03:07The Malay dance form itself is very unique because in the past,
03:12it used to reflect the current situation of that time.
03:16So in the past, we had court dances which we normally portray,
03:20the kampung style, the relationship style in the olden days.
03:25Example of it is like in the past, you know, we used to have kampung.
03:28So we have the harvest dance where we have the farmers, yeah,
03:32who completed a very happy harvest dance.
03:36So we have lots of common props.
03:37We have the what you call the Tudong Sai Ji, you know, that triangle food cover.
03:41We used to see that in every household, but in a dance form, we use it multiple ways
03:46because trying to show different ways of using the foot cover artistically,
03:51for cover for the head.
03:52We can also use it as a shield as well as functionally.
03:55So all these different ways of doing that particular props
04:01is always being shown in the dance form in the olden days.
04:06But right now, because you don't see these props nowadays, so it has evolved.
04:10So the dance nowadays comes up with a different kind of props,
04:14reflecting the modern nature of the situation that we have now.
04:19All right, come. So now we are at the ladies' section.
04:28Okay, I will show you the different, similar style as the guys.
04:32For, you know, for Malay dance, when there's a more grand kind of dance items,
04:38we have outerwear, or they call it jacket.
04:40So we have very elaborate outer jacket like this.
04:44Can you see with all this, you call this sulam?
04:47All right, so we have this additional beadings, or to make it even more grand,
04:52we have this beads, which is, you know, you look at that.
04:55So these are all outerwears, which they normally use as a jacket.
05:00And then this is the songkit.
05:02Yeah, so a full attire will be like the earlier one, plus this outer jacket.
05:08And I forgot to show you the tanjak.
05:10That makes a complete hero-like dance attire.
05:17Okay, all right, come. We are good, let's go.
05:26One thing I feel that is being misunderstood is Malay dance is boring.
05:32Yeah, it's uninteresting because it's very outdated because the movements,
05:39sometimes the songs are not up to date, but they do not know behind that art form comes discipline.
05:47It all comes up into fine-tuning the individual itself.
05:52That's the behind the scenes which I think the public isn't aware.
05:56But we must also know that the Malay dance exemplifies the Malay culture at its best,
06:01because we show them the best of our costumes, the best of our beautiful face,
06:06the best of our art form as in our movements.
06:09So it's something that we should be proud of.
06:14The major changes in the Malay dance art form is trying very hard to stay very close to our traditional,
06:27our core movements, because we have influences from the modern world,
06:33which is much available thanks to the social media.
06:36So these are the kind of influences which look very interesting to the new ones,
06:41to the young choreographers, but if they do not have the basic knowledge
06:45of what's a core traditional Malay dance is, they might misuse and adapt the wrong technique,
06:53the wrong interpretation and compromise the dance piece itself.
06:59It's my responsibility to keep the heritage which I know other groups have been doing it.
07:05All those court dance pieces, at least six or seven of them,
07:10what was created in the 1950s, we've kept it alive and we've made them a part of the curriculum of the talents here.
07:18We've kept scripts of the work, the theatre pieces, done during the 60s, the 70s.
07:25We have to be relevant, but we do understand that we have to keep this traditional arts form,
07:32which is sadly, it's going, going, gone, because not many really understand the beauty of this Malay traditional arts form.
07:40So for me, preaching to the young ones, the beauty and the responsibility of keeping this traditional arts form.
07:48The challenge is, of course, how do we repackage it and then make it interesting
07:53so that the young ones will want to learn more and then they will continue and even enrich it.
07:59An example of what we did in the TikTok platform, so this is the, we call it the first dance challenge.
08:07Okay, so the dancers will do a dance challenge and then you can see the non-Malays doing it,
08:13and yet they're doing it in families. Yeah, so it becomes like more of a family bonding kind of thing.
08:20So you'll see all the different nationalities, the different ages, they are all keen to participate in the challenge.
08:31Yeah, so these are the kind of things that Sriwana has been trying to be relevant in trying to be involved more
08:39and making use of the social media platforms to reach out.
08:44People come and go, they want to, the young ones especially, the Gen Z especially, trying to understand them, you know.
08:50It's so different from the generations, my time and these people this time.
08:55So it's how we manage, how we balance in trying to understand them so that we keep these people.
09:01At the same time, we nurture them.
09:04Because for any form of a group, a performing arts group, I think financing is one of the key things
09:12which kinds of deters a little bit on the development.
09:16The expectations of us producing high standard of form of productions, but we are not getting the full finance.
09:25But that doesn't stop us because we will try to continue other means of getting other forms of revenue.
09:30But whether it's successful or not, I guess we have to be realistic.
09:34Sometimes certain years it does, certain years it doesn't.
09:41It's the performers, it's the people around you, especially in Sriwana.
09:44It's the bond, the family that we've created over the years, over those hardships, over those productions that have kept us.
09:53That makes me stay until today.
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