I hope you dance

Last Thursday I had a dance performance at an elderly-house nearby Utrecht (I can't remember the exact name of the place). When we first arrived at its gate, we were totally surprised because it looks more like a forest. The performing place was still 1 km from the main gate.

When we finally found the place, we came in and met with sort of the EO and we were brought to our dressing room. After a short chat with the EO, this elderly house is not a regular elderly house. This one is provided for the elderly who have psychotic problems. The security of the complex, particularly the building, is 24/7 strict.

Our dressing room which is regularly a common room for those elderly, has a kitchen, a long dining-table, and two sets of sort of living room for probably chatting time. What impressed me were the supported equipments. The couches for the sort-of-living room were not a standard one, they were automatic massager couch. The kitchen is a modern and furnished, complete with full-of-specially-made-instant-meal refrigerator, 2 spotless coffee machines and fresh fruits. There were many blankets provided there. And there are also child’s toys there, 6-piece puzzle and basic child books (probably for 5-6 years old kids).

Do you see bizarre things? I wonder why should they provide those elderly which is notably not productive at all anymore with those kind of kitchen and couches. I bet they will just simply open the fridge and grab one of those instant foods, but in the other hand do not they provide them with special meal in their rooms? And for the couches, don’t they will break their back if they use them? Why I wonder is because elderly who live there are not like those you see at the street. Most of them can’t walk anymore even can’t talk anymore, and of course also with psychotic relevant. Based on my assumption, probably our dressing room is just the most normal one. I do not hope so.

Back to my performance, the hall where we were performing and its entrance had been designed with Indonesian-wannabe thingies, helicak, barong, lampions (which are exactly Chinese lampions). The hall was not big and has no stage or podium. They didn’t give much decoration for the hall. We had so much time before our performance since we arrived sooner. We killed the time with chatting, eating snacks and having little rehearsal, particularly for Tari Giring-Giring as three of us (me, Resy and Lia) hardly remembered it.

5 minutes before performance....

We were called by the EO to stand nearby the hall, we got out…

We performed 2 dance sessions; first session was Tari Jali-Jali, Tari Tempurung, and Tari Panji Semirang. The second session was Tari Yapong, Tari Giring-giring and Tari Jaipong. I performed at Tari Tempurung and Tari Giring-giring.

When I first entered the hall, I felt no worries at all because I have performed this dance many times and I knew that the audience would not be as enthusiast as the others performances. So I carried on my dance. After a while and started to have eye contact with the audience, then suddenly a splash of thick air came to my lung and shocked me. They are indeed not a regular elderly people, they have the same white hair and same wheel chair and same wrinkle. But I can see different expression on their faces, either they are extremely happy, extremely appreciated or extremely careless with our dance. I will get you the picture.

One of our audiences is a very old woman who always raised her hands to get along with the rhythm. Her face was always extremely smiled with eyes wide opened. She looked very interesting with our dance. After the second session ended, as usual we had sort of ending dance where we asked the audience to dance with us. Of course, there, we had to really careful in selecting who would perform with us, since they are not much who could and would dance. Finally we got couple of people, among them there was that woman who surprisingly still could walk though slowly. She was there among the circle to dance with us still with the same expression, big smile and big eyes which say for happy. The ending dance lasted for around 7 minutes. She was standing between Lia and the EO who were tightly held by her. During the dance, she tried to express her feeling by communicating with my friend, Lia. She tries several times and Lia still couldn’t hear any voice came from her mouth. She couldn’t speak anymore.

There is the other audience. It is a man. He was there with his wheel chair. His head and face were not normal anymore; I supposed it caused by a stroke. He had 2 hands but only one performs well. I had an eye contact with him after Tari Tempurung ended. He was nearly at the last rows. It was so noisy because of the crowd of applauses. We went out from the hall and unexpectedly I heard mumble of 'mooi..mooi..mooi' which means 'great..great..great..' which came from my right side. There was that man who said mooi..mooi..mooi with his abnormal mouth and this one-handed clapping as his form of appreciation for us.

I saw those facts and they depressed me. I was there tried to perform Indonesian dances and I never knew that I would have such a great and beautiful appreciations from people who notably like them. I was truthfully amazed and thankful. I will never know that we, as the dancer, would deserve such kind of appreciation. Then, this case made me think again about my own life. Before this I never appreciate myself or think that I have such a positive point. That wished appreciation not come from people surrounding me, but from elderly people who met me coincidentally.

Sometimes, when we want to show or expect something, we will not see them at all in our daily life until it comes from the extreme one. Probably I have had appreciation from people for what I am doing, but I keep denying them until they say it extremely and loudly enough.

What I learned from here is simply about appreciation. How important it is for people and particularly me. Appreciation is the most basic, cheapest and easiest form of thank. But what is important, Appreciation would not effect much until you show or say it.