Sardono Kusumo: Vibratory Heat, Juxtapositional Disruptions, and Danced Rupture

This chapter examines how the oeuvre of Indonesian contemporary choreographer, Sardono Kusumo, generates heat both through the principle of vibration, that is the source of movement for him, and his choreographic strategy of “juxtapositional disruptions,” where the adjacent placement of different aesthetic practices ruptures the possibility of neat narratives of cultural flow. It also looks at specific moments in his choreographic process and performance to identify recurrent thematic concerns in his work: human-ecological relationships, different inspirations from practices that emerge from the Indonesian archipelago, rhizomatic choreographic structures, and investigations of “Tradition” that often become controversial.