Dance – Tukang Rantek Claudius

Tabi basa & greetings family & friends,

How was your day? Today I want to talk about dance in Sarawak. Throughout the history of Sarawak, dance is one of the important aspect of its cultural development, where most of the indigenous peoples has their own dance, derived from nature. For example, Rejang / Langgi for Bidayuh peoples are inspired by the movements of eagle in the sky. Ngajat, a warrior dance for Iban people and most of Orang Ulu’s dance is also derived from the graceful movement of hornbill, signifying the close relationship of these peoples with nature. Long time ago, the life of Sarawakian peoples was built in such way that it is in balance with nature, because it was based on preservation of life. For a start, for newcomers, it is good to see them in action at Sarawak Cultural Village at Santubong to know the brief summary of Sarawak’s rich culture.

Pak Bek (fourth from right) and his dancers

I myself had personally involved with dances when I was still in tertiary education, and had a good down-memory-lane whenever I see traditional dancers performing. Yesterday I had a chance to see Petra dancers in action, led by Mr Awang Harabi, or famously known Pak Bek.

Petra Dancers Story

Petra Dancers was founded in 1991, which makes them 28 years old this year. That gave them a lot of experiences especially in the dancing arena of Sarawakian culture. They can dance all kind of traditional dancers of Sarawak peoples, including Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, Melanau, Malay, Chinese or even Indian people’s dances. They one they performed yesterday was Iban’s Ngajat, Orang Ulu’s Kanjet Ngeleput, Bidayuh’s Rejang Beuh, Malay’s Joget Melati, and finally a group dance.

In terms of dancing experiences, they have performed all around the nation, including Brunei and have been representing Sarawak in the international level. They have a different kind of dancers category as well, with the one that we had yesterday was the junior to give them more exposure. For more challenging events, the seniors will go and perform.

In total, they have around 40 active members, with 3 assistant leader, namely Suharto, Kartini and Roberto. For big events, they will collaborate with dance groups from all around Malaysia, or Sarawak to make it bigger due to limitation of manpower and trainers. E.g. during Sarawak Day celebration, where there is a lot of dancers required.

They have their own studio at Wisma Ung Hwa Geok, Lot 418, Tingkat 1, Jalan Kulas Utara Dua, 93400 Kuching, which is the studio that they build at their own initiative without government support as they also runs bridal company, under Petra Bridal.

The current challenge that they face include the other group of dancers because customer tends to find a cheap but with quality dancers. It is a perpetual challenge, but with their reputation, they have little difficulty in that.

Pak Bek also emphasises on the well-being of the dancers, where for every performance, they will be covered their logistics, food and payment. Every week there is a performance, but it will be paid lump sum the end of the month.

Training schedule per week is on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, from 8.30 – 10.30pm, 2 hours per day. That is the commitment required from every dancers in Petra dancers.

Pak Bek hopes to maintain cultural diversity through their works and wishes that every dancers has the discipline to remain focused so that they can achieve whatever they want, be it winning an international award or just to be a good dancer.

Should anyone interested to join them, you may call 0168689226 to enlist yourself and dance.

Gear used: Leica M Monochrom and Noctilux 50.

Your Tukang Rantek,
Claudius Weson

Note: Claudius Weson is a tukang rantek (photographer) based in Miri, mainly doing portraiture (indoor / studio / outdoor photoshoot), weddings and event photography.

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I was born and raised in Sarawak, in a village called Pichin. Since my schooling days, I brought packed food, prepared with love by my mother from my kindergarten days until my Form 5 days. I don’t like canteen foods as I will have to spend additional money, energy and time to acquire one. Those schooling days were tough, and there is so much to be talked about, but there is one thing I really look forward to – Gawai time. During Gawai, Bidayuh peoples will gather at the long house, we call it “awah Gawai” to have a large gathering and be happy and merry. On the second day of Gawai, there will be the dances and rounds. For the first few years of my life, I took it for granted. But little did I know, it actually shaped me – forms and solidifies inside me as part of my identity and culture – a typical Bidayuh (that explains why I love to dance and sing, and “drink”).

Being away from home, I love to find something to connect to. Even the love of my life also a dancer (we knew each other for a long time, but grew closer as we prepare for a dancing competition, and we actually won it. It’s called International Cultural Festival 2011, organised by UTM Skudai. I can’t find the video, but its backstage video can be seen here.)

From my friend’s blog, Aziemah, I found few rare photos of me back in 2011.

Amin, Chris, Kama, Ajo, Map and I were doing the intro.

And… we won ICF’11 despite having technical difficulty with our audio system.

So when I travel to Langkawi for work purposes, during one of the dinner at Aseania, when there is a dance performance, I became excited. To make it even better, the dancers led by Shamsol Amy performed dance from Sarawak, and Sabah. At first I was skeptical, because usually the Sarawak dances performed outside of Sarawak and by non-Sarawakian is so-so. However, the performance by Aseania is quite good as well. The first thing that caught my attention was the music used. Balau oh Balau, the same music that we used in our performance! The dance moves captivates me and makes me interested to capture it in stills. Even before that, there was a magic performance as you can see below.

Magic Show

After the dancing performances, there was a pyro-works by Aseania staff as well. The pyroworks was amazing! I love it. I was busy with my camera throughout the performance to ensure that I captured it. Most of the interesting parts are captured here, for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

By the way, good job to Shamsol Amy and the team for the beautiful dance performances. Keep up the good work!