Chapter 13 Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Adapting Euripides’ Hippolytos as Indonesian Dance Drama
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Abstract
This chapter gives examples of how cross-cultural adaptation offers insights into ancient Greek dance (in particular the choral odes of tragedy) which are not accessible from the surviving evidence preserved in ancient texts and visual representations.
Over the past twenty years, the Thiasos Theatre Company’s adaptation of Euripides’ Hippolytos (1998–2016) involved setting the original Greek lyrics to Jaipongan from West Java, a dancing style which integrates folk dances (Ketuk Tilu) with classical Javanese forms (Pencak Silat and Tari Kerseus). Java gives us a living analogue of the culturally central combination of mask, song, dance, and drama characteristic of predominantly polytheistic traditions such as those of ancient Greece. (Java’s dance culture still manifests its roots in a polytheistic Hindu performance tradition even though Islam has become Indonesia’s main religion since the 16th century.)
By drawing on Thiasos’ adaptation of Euripides as Indonesian dance drama, this chapter aims to show 1) how seemingly irrelevant evocations of myth and ritual song relate to the central themes of the tragedy, 2) how the symmetry of paired tragic odes (in which the verbal content of each verse differs while following identical rhythms) amplifies the meaning of the choral performances, and 3) how complex it is to derive dance movements from choreographic terminology.