Gadamerian Hermeneutics in An Artistic Process of Retno Maruti And Bulantrisna Djelantik’s Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang

Abstract

The research is to investigate the existence of Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang, as a dance piece, which its creation based to reinterpretation towards tradition and indigenous wisdom.  The dance brings Indonesian classical idioms and mythological sphere into a dynamic contemporary.  The dance attempts to avoid either the clichés or destructive forms.  It is imperatively seeking the ontology of Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang through investigating hermeneutical aspects in the process of creating, conceptual sphere, and spectacle representation.  The juxtaposition, in which the dance is presented, is a unique way to accommodate the process of inter-subjective understanding respectively amongst choreographers, aesthetical values of Java and Bali, the myth of Calonarang, and today’s reality. A philosophical qualitative is the foreground to investigate a new understanding about artworks through Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. Such perspective provides the interwoven understanding towards contemporary (of art-works), the critique of aesthetics, revitalizing the tradition, and dialogical pattern inside the effort of the fusion of horizons. Gadamerian hermeneutics is confidentially constructed through identifying choreographic concept and aesthetic codes from the analysis of dance structure and representation. Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang achieves its innovative, artistic ontological existence and its spiritual field, in the middle of Indonesian contemporary society. Its concept assertively suggests Indonesian choreography to accommodate contemporary innovation, while it also conveys its cultural identity into broader implementation of multicultural state. Keywords : Gadamerian hermeneutics; choreographic process; dialogical sphere; The Bedoyo-Legong Calonarang.