Mekar yang Diam: Before the Stage

There is something I always ask myself every time I work with someone I have never met before, what can we really make, if the time we have is so little and the distance between us is so far?

Two years sounds long enough. But if we count it again, Yuiko Masukawa and I only met four times, each for two weeks. The total time we spent together in one room, on the same floor, with our bodies seeing each other, was only about two months. From there Mekar yang Diam was born, a duet work we presented at Dancehouse, Carlton, Melbourne, March 2026.

Solo, December 2024: Anxious!

I still remember that afternoon in the parking lot of Pura Mangkunegaran. The sun in Solo was so typically hot. From far away, I saw a woman about the same height as me, about the same weight too, smiling wide and waving at me. That was Yuiko, a dancer and choreographer from Japan who had long lived in Melbourne, with a background in ballet and contemporary dance. My collaboration partner in the Naarm/Solo Exchange Program, a partnership between Lucy Guerin Inc. and EkosDance Company. I was very nervous then. But her warm smile and the enthusiasm she brought melted all that anxiety faster than I expected.

We spent the first two weeks at RumaNari, the studio of EkosDance Company. The result? We talked a lot. We barely moved at all. Every practice session that started with warming up the body ended up as a long conversation that did not produce a single movement phrase we could keep. We were confused, we had too many ideas, and we were both quick to doubt and quick to give up. One day Mas Eko Supriyanto came and asked how we were doing. We told him honestly that we talked a lot, had many ideas, but nothing yet. His answer was short, "Just do it. Do what your bodies want to do." It was like a small slap that hit exactly the right spot.

The next week we started to move. We watched our own reflections in the mirror, drawn to the shadows formed with the help of the lamp light. We explored, we taught each other, we gave each other movement examples from our own bodily backgrounds. Those first two weeks still did not produce a solid piece, but I believe that is where everything started to grow. We learned to understand one another. And more importantly, we started to understand ourselves.

Melbourne, March 2025: Studio WXYZ and the Word Nggandul

The second meeting took place in Melbourne, after I finished the process of Lapse, a work by Mba Melati Suryodarmo in AsiaTopa. I came to Studio WXYZ in North Melbourne, and all that nervousness came back again.

On the first morning I joined the morning ballet class. My body felt extremely stiff, I lost my balance, as if I had forgotten I ever danced. In the studio with Yui, we were back in the same position. We had many references, many discussions, many arguments we tried to keep from hurting each other, and we still hesitated to make decisions. That was when I threw a Javanese word at Yui, nggandul. It means roughly hanging, relying on each other but also doubting each other. Everything felt floating. Everything felt half-done. But Yui saw the word from a different angle. For her, nggandul was suspend, a brief stopping moment that actually felt magical. From there came the idea of using props like long strips of paper stuck onto our fingers, forming strange, alive finger extensions when we moved. We started exploring that.

On the other side, I started looking for something to hold on to, to help me in the research process. I am someone who needs clarity of idea before I can move further. From the shape we built with the paper on our fingers, I saw something familiar, the image of a banyan tree. Roots hanging down, branches spreading in every direction, standing strong in many places across Asia and Australia at once.

The banyan tree is not just an ecological symbol. In the Javanese tradition where I grew up, the banyan tree is the center of life and that is where the best water springs are. That is where the guardian spirits live, and that is where our ancestors show respect with offerings and prayers. Not out of fear, but out of belief that nature and humans live side by side and take care of each other. From that understanding, this work slowly found its soul. Two different souls, growing in different spaces, yet influencing and supporting each other like roots underground that join together without us ever seeing it.

Lucy Guerin joined us sometimes in these sessions. She was busy with many things, but every time she came to watch our practice process, something changed. Not because she gave long instructions. On the contrary, she caught the small things that slipped past our own eyes. A transition that felt rushed. A quiet moment that had not been fully inhabited yet. Her calm and precise observations pushed us to be more serious in aligning our feeling and composition. Not so we would become the same, but so the impression we wanted to bring across would really land. Lucy's presence, even if not always full, became a kind of sign for us that this work deserved to keep being worked on seriously.

Solo, December 2025: Arranging the Body, Arranging the Form

The third meeting was back in Solo, and Jack Hancock joined as costume designer. It was his first visit to the city of Solo, and he brought eyes hungry for the colors and organic textures around him. We also started working more intensely with Rama Parwata, a music composer whose questions were always sharp and helped us clarify the vision of the work. And Alexander Nguyen, a diligent lighting designer, who at first wanted to bring a light installation to the stage. But in the end he chose a more restrained approach, and that is exactly what made our presence stronger. We used those two weeks to continue what we had already found in Melbourne, refining the structure of the work, while also preparing documentation and publicity materials for Dancehouse.

The day I waited for most was the presentation in front of Mas Eko. We prepared ourselves as much as we could, still carrying all our fears. Is this work too slow? Is the movement too simple? Will people get bored?

After we finished, Mas Eko was quiet for a moment. Then he wrote something down, and handed it to us,

“Two women move like water given intention. Skirts opening and closing like a blooming flower learning how to breathe and it feels like watching two swans in conversation, not performing at each other but listening, answering, pausing, then speaking again through a tilt of the ribs and the soft sweep of fabric. At moments the duet turns elemental, like two mountains talking across a valley, trading the lives of wind, trees, and time… what hits strongest is their partnership's clarity where they connect without grabbing. Closeness without collapse”

I saw Yui crying quietly. I myself could not say a word. I never explicitly told Mas Eko about the banyan tree, about the spirits, about the roots underground, but all of it was answered in the way he saw our work. As if the body and the space had already spoken on their own, beyond anything we had ever said.

Melbourne, February-March 2026: The Dancehouse Stage

The fourth and final meeting. I went back to Melbourne, picked up by Estelle Conley, a producer from Lucy Guerin Inc., and I stayed again at Quest Apartment, Southbank. The same room, the same floor, the same number as the year before. It felt like coming home to a place that was not mine, but felt like mine.

In the first week we went back to Studio WXYZ, arranging and remembering again what we already had. In the second week, we moved to Dancehouse, where we spent our time setting the stage, rehearsing with full costume, music, and lighting. This is where Shiv Geaney's role became very present. As production manager and operator who followed the process closely, Shiv was the one who made sure everything technical stayed in place. From the stage setup to small needs that often go unnoticed but are strongly felt when missing. Without Shiv, I cannot imagine how this process and its performance could have run as smoothly as it did. The costume designed by Jack Hancock was very beautiful, a cut resembling a kimono in grey with a structured, wide silhouette at the back, opening at the fabric joints, giving a large volume to our small bodies. Our dangling fingertips, colored red like a mark, like blood, like roots surfacing to the top.

The work begins with the two of us walking side by side, slowly, in light that formed a long corridor. Rama's music gave a contemplative and spiritual ambience, bringing the audience into the space in between. Yui and I then separated and sat far apart, on two different sides, as if we lived in two different worlds. I paid attention to every centimeter of movement, I wanted the audience to enjoy the process of change, not just the final result. We lit incense, and one by one we attached the long red finger extensions to our hands. Slowly, patiently, like a prayer that is not rushed. After that Yui scattered flowers across the stage, forming two lines crossing each other like the letter X. For me, that ritual was not just theatrical. The burning incense was an invitation into a deeper realm. The scattered flowers were markers of the path for spirits on their journey. And the long red fingers we wore were the shadow of that banyan tree, roots hanging and connecting without needing to touch directly. The ending of this work is the hardest to explain. The lighting turned red. The music grew louder, a rhythm suddenly appeared together with a touch of traditional Indonesian sound. Yui spun in the center of the main stage, in minimal lighting, her silhouette forming a shadow that seemed to break away from herself. I was on a small platform at the back, moving with an intensity different from the rest of the work. Many said that part looked like possession. For me, it is a question: what happens when we are separated? What is lost when two souls stop growing together?

How Others Saw It

When this work was staged on 11–14 March 2026, several reviews came out and made Yui and I sit quietly for quite a while again.

Andrew Fuhrmann from The Age gave it four stars. He wrote that Mekar yang Diam carries a calm, solemn air, where the movement, patient and unhurried, was shaped with real sincerity. He called this work a study of how to share space and time while still letting the separateness feel real. What struck me most was his observation that this work was not a patchwork of different influences, but a shared sensibility that had already been found, already settled, and felt coherent from within.

Yianna Dorward from The Belle Jar wrote that the most captivating part of this work was actually the ritual moment, when we did not look like we were creating an image, but were really doing something. She described that moment as a state where movement is no longer a statement, but knowledge living inside the body without needing to be thought through. Something beyond conscious will. I was very happy someone felt that, because that is exactly what we felt from within.

Dr. Priya Srinivasan, in her review, framed this work as a question about what it means to be a woman who is both sacred and profane, moving beyond the binary toward a third space. She saw the peak of our work as a moment where buried ancestral memory surfaced from deep within the body, which during the process appeared without us planning it, like Yui's grandmother's tea ritual, and the Javanese knowledge of spirits and offerings that we carried. She called it unexpected emergence, something that appears not because it was programmed, but because the space for it had already become safe enough and deep enough.

All of that made me realize, the body holds what the mind sometimes does not know how to put into words. We never intentionally put ancestral memory into this work. But it appeared because that is simply how tradition works. It is not something we remember, it is something we carry.

What Remains

I am not someone who easily believes that two months is enough to really get to know someone. But the process with Yui taught me that depth does not always need a long duration. What is needed is the courage to sit in confusion, to not rush out of unclear moments, and to believe that the nggandul moment is not a failure, but the place where something real is quietly growing its seeds.

The title Mekar yang Diam does not only describe the content of the work. It describes its process. Nothing blooms loudly. Nothing announces itself as suddenly finished. Everything happens slowly, in silence, in a presence that is not always visible to the eye, like roots underground, like two souls living in different worlds but still connected without needing to hold each other.

Thank you to Yuiko Masukawa, who turned the word nggandul into something beautiful. To Lucy Guerin, whose calm eyes always found what was not yet finished. To Mas Eko Supriyanto, who wrote what we could not yet say. To Rama Parwata, whose music brought the audience into another space. To Jack Hancock, whose costumes gave us new bodies on stage. To Alexander Nguyen, whose light never came before us. To Estelle Conley, who was there from beginning to end. To Shiv Geaney, without whom everything that ran smoothly could never have happened. And thank you to Dancehouse and everyone in it, who gave us not only a stage but also space and warmth to prepare everything calmly.

And to the patient audience of Dancehouse, who came, who were willing to enter the silent space with us. Thank you for being willing to slowly bloom together with us that night.

Mekar yang Diam (2026) is a duet work by Yuiko Masukawa and Mekratingrum Hapsari. Produced by Lucy Guerin Inc. as part of the Naarm/Solo Dance Exchange 2024/26, in collaboration with EkosDance Company. Music: Rama Parwata. Costume: Jack Hancock. Lighting: Alexander Nguyen. Producer: Estelle Conley. Production Manager: Shiv Geaney.