Basic swing of Tari Piring. The stick figure is holding china plates and swinging them up and down. Source: Image adapted from Hernawan et al. (2004: 70).

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... a semi-weekly class of the Afro-Brazilian fight-dancing art called capoeira . This particular morning, regular capoeira training was on hold because the instructor had decided to teach students the related Afro-Brazilian art of stick-dancing, Maculelê . Some students were playing a rhythm on upright atabaque drums, to which other students were practising dance movements with handheld sticks called grima . Each student held two grima measuring 40 – 60 cm apiece. Working in pairs, students tapped their own two sticks together for three counts and then struck one of their sticks against a partner ’ s stick on the fourth count. With a loud snap, the clash of sticks on the fourth beat was a rousing moment of impact representing contact between adversaries in combat (see Figure 1). While Maculelê is set to the rhythm of drums and accompanied by genre-specific songs, the emphasis is on the sounds and movements produced by the dancers. Self- accompanied sound is produced at specific and expressive moments. The tapping and striking of the sticks not only adds to the spectacle, it is a central feature. The three moments where dancers tap their own sticks provide a dramatic build-up to the moments where two dancers strike their sticks against each other. Some of the more dexterous students in the class intermittently tapped their sticks on the ground for dramatic effect and attempted spins and acrobatic manoeuvres before striking their partner ’ s stick on each fourth count. Rhythmic tapping kept the choreographic tension high and the fourth beat, the clash between dance partners, was a dramatic climax to each cycle of movement. According to a performance taxonomy that classifies genres of dance and music performed by the same person contemporaneously (Kealiinohomoku 1965), Maculelê can be categorised as a self-accompanied dance with an emphasis on dance. The sounds produced by the dancers are not incidental. Each strike creates a loud snap that animates the physical engagement and corresponds to moments of high choreographic tension. When the dance is performed with machetes, sparks are produced by the clashes — an added marker of the symbolic aggression that Maculelê portrays. Dancers produce sounds by themselves and with their partner to create fierce, dynamic and engaging cycles of movement and sound. In addition to the self- accompanied movement, drum rhythms and call-and-response songs further fill the performance space, garnishing the dancer ’ s movements with stimulating percussive patterns, lively commentary and an invigorating pulse. Musical sound and bodily movement can interact in multifarious ways. As a basic study to promote more holistic examinations of music – dance relations, this article deliberately focuses on correspondences between dance movements and specific associated sounds. To a Maculelê audience, the audio-visual relationship between the dancer ’ s movements and the sound of the clashing grima is discernible and direct. Maculelê dancers visibly produce sound when they tap or strike sticks. Not all self- accompanied dances have a direct relationship between sound and movement, which is possible when the sound-producing gesture is hidden from audience view and the symbolic link between sound and movement can be obscured. As Maculelê is a dance with direct correspondences between sound and self-accompanied movement, it serves as a good base comparison for other dances where the symbolic relationship between sound and movement is less apparent. When the relationship between movement and sound becomes unfastened, indirect and abstract, performance becomes a perceptual experiment. As a case study, this article will discuss the West Sumatran dance genre of plate-dancing, called Tari Piring , where the symbolic relationship between sound and movement is protean. In Tari Piring , movement does not explicitly create sound but movement-related sounds can be created at a variety of moments to emphasise the fragility of the materials of the dance and enhance the aesthetic engagement of the audience. Fieldwork observations of Tari Piring demonstrate that the timing of musical sound and bodily movement relates to cultural experience, physical training and neurophysiological characteristics. Pooling together a multidisciplinary body of research on the relationship between music and dance, this article provides groundwork for future research to engage more strongly with sound – movement interactions in studies of music and dance. During the two years prior to fieldwork in Brazil, I had been studying Minangkabau performing arts including Tari Piring at the Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia (now called the Institut Seni Indonesia) in Padang Panjang, West Sumatra. Tari Piring is a dance performed with hand-held china plates (15 – 30 cm in diameter) that performers swing in unison. Dancers hold the underside of the plates in their palms and, using inertia, swing them widely without letting them drop (see Figure 2). With their feet, they trace rhythmic spatial patterns. To add tension, dancers stand on eggs without breaking them or dance on broken glass without cutting their feet. A group of Tari Piring dancers do not need to train with music, but in performance the dancers can be accompanied by either a small group of Talempong Paciek kettle- drum musicians or a group of drummers playing double-sided Gendang Tambuah barrel drums suspended from their shoulders. Sometimes repetitive traditional melodies are played on a reed aerophone such as a Sarunai . Dance footwork shares metric similarities with the musical percussion and woodwind melody, but structural or phrasal relationships rarely connect the energetic movement of the dancers to the interlocking sounds of the music ensemble. In some reports, Tari Piring can be a dance led by a singer with movements to depict a story about work in rice fields (Sawanismar interviewed by van Zanten and Barendregt 2000). According to this account, dancers perform movements requested by a singer. For example, the singer tells the dancer to move as if hoeing, cutting grass, preparing rice plants or planting. This style of Tari Piring was not taught at the Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia in West Sumatra while I was there in 2007 and 2008, nor did any singer accompany performances of Tari Piring that I observed in Padang, Padang Panjang, Paninjauan, Bukittinggi, Molek, Batusangkar, Sijunjung, Pariaman and Jakarta. However, Tari Piring has no doubt undergone many changes since Indonesian Independence. Prior to the Second World War, Minangkabau women were reportedly not allowed to dance (Mahdi Bahar interviewed by van Zanten and Barendregt 2000). Performances of Tari Piring by women were rare because Minangkabau performance arts were generally taught to young boys by a maternal uncle or other senior male kin. Swinging a plate is not an easy task, let alone swinging two plates simultaneously. To emphasise the movement, add dramatic tension to their performance and further demonstrate their skill, dextrous performers tap their plates with a ring on one of their fingers as they swing their arms widely. When Tari Piring dancers produce sound to accompany their movement, Tari Piring — like Maculelê — can be classified according to Kealiinohomoku ’ s (1965) taxonomy as a self-accompanied dance with an emphasis on dance. Tapping the plates with a ring is complicated. As a practical consideration, dancers must find a moment least likely to knock the plates out of their hands. As an intersubjective consideration, dancers must also choose a moment that synchronises the movement of co-performers. Minangkabau dancers generally choose the zenith and nadir of arm swings as the moment to tap the plates. This general rule revealed itself during participant observation in classes at the Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia and in fieldwork observations of performances, and can also be seen in recordings made by Nugraheni and Hernawan (2004). Tapping the plate at the apex of movement, a point of momentary stasis, allows performers to synchronise the beginning and finish of arm swings. However, not all groups use this plate- tapping to synchronise movement. Some groups will be led by one performer shouting the timing; other groups use no auditory cues, relying instead on visual cues alone. In performances of Tari Piring during a Hari Raya festival in Batusangkar (Mason 2008), the lead dancer, a former dance student at the Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia, produced a tapping noise at the termination of each swing by hitting the underside of the plates with a ring placed around his middle finger (see Figure 3). This sound synchronised the movements of the dancers while simultaneously highlighting his skill and coordination. The lead dancer was male and the other dancers were his young students, who were all female. They performed Tari Piring in the same performance space in front of the village mosque on two separate days of the celebrations. On each occasion, the lead dancer produced the same tapping noise using the identical timing. By making the dance props sound, the lead dancer brought attention to the very materiality and physical textures of the dance, deeply imbricating movement with a multisensory perceptual experience. Not all performances of Tari Piring can be classified as a self-accompanied dance with an emphasis on dance. In performances of Tari Piring during the festival of Hari Idul Adha in Paninjauan (Mason 2009a), dancers did not tap their plates to accompany their movement. Tari Piring was performed by a female dance troupe commissioned from a neighbouring village. Two elderly women from the audience accompanied the Tari Piring performances by tapping glass bottles with spoons. The bottle-tapping sound was produced mid-swing and was mimetic of the plate-tapping sound (see Figure 4). The tapping was an ornamental novelty. Although not produced to synchronise the movement of the dancers, ...

Context 2

... Piring is a dance performed with hand-held china plates (15-30 cm in diameter) that performers swing in unison. Dancers hold the underside of the plates in their palms and, using inertia, swing them widely without letting them drop (see Figure 2). With their feet, they trace rhythmic spatial patterns. ...