Indonesian music, dance, puppetry, and mask-making traditions


In a city where "multi-cultural" is most commonly experienced as bi-cultural and with a school system that tends to offer only a superficial handling of the arts, it can be difficult to gain a broad understanding of the human impulses that have shaped cultures, traditions, and individuals. Indonesian dancer, musician, artist, and teacher Endo Suanda will tackle some of these issues in a residency at the Southwest School of Art & Craft May 12-18. Suanda is one of the leading experts in the traditional arts of Indonesia. A Ford Foundation scholar and head of the Foundation of Education in the Arts of Nusantara, he is working to reintroduce traditional arts into the Indonesian school curriculum. He's also committed to the idea of translating this model to other traditions.

In a public lecture at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 14, at the Southwest School of Art & Craft's Russell Hill Rogers Lecture Hall, Navarro Campus, 300 Augusta, Suanda will provide an overview of how Indonesian music, dance, puppetry, and mask-making traditions function as an indivisible aesthetic unit despite the diverse regional, religious, and aesthetic differences that influence them. Using this tradition as a springboard, Suanda will conduct several mask-making workshops with area schoolchildren and lead a teacher training workshop to explore how traditional arts can be intelligently integrated into the overall academic curriculum.

For more information, visit swschool.org, or call 224-1848.

— Diana Lyn Roberts

This article appears in May 11-17, 2005.