Error: 404 Page Not Found: Jakarta Cultural Parade ~(O.O)~

Hello readers! :) If you guys read my first post on 10 random facts about me, you guys will know that one of my hobby is dancing traditional dances. I know it might sound strange for a teenager to choose traditional dancing rather than modern hip-hop, but I have a reason behind all this.

My first point is that Indonesia is a very rich country with various traditional cultures. It is our job as Indonesia's next generation to keep this culture alive. Indonesia has a wide range of culture starting from cuisines, martial arts, paintings, puppet art, dancing, music and many more. As an individual, I chose to do my job as Indonesia's next generation to keep Indonesia's traditional dances alive.

Deep inside, I feel proud when dancing in front of my friends and families. Performing in big and small events to show everyone how rich Indonesia actually is. Helping them realize that Indonesia actually has what it takes to be known and heard by the world.

Enough on the introduction, my latest performance was during the Jakarta Cultural Parade. Basically this event was held last August with participants from 30 or more provinces in Indonesia as well as attendance from a couple of governmental businesses like Garuda Indonesia and PLN.

In this event, each province from Indonesia presented their own unique dance, clothes, and music. Jambi, one of Indonesia's province, recruited 100 dancers from Jakarta and 25 musicians from their own province.

I felt very lucky to be recruited as one of the dancers. The committee gave us 3 weeks to practice a dance routine involving 100 dancers dancing 6 different dance. The dance included an umbrella dance, a kentongan dance (a type of indonesian traditional bamboo musical instrument), an ambungan (weaved baskets) dance, a caping (weaved cap) dance, a rebana (a type of traditional indonesian percussion) dance and last but not least, the umbul-umbul (flag) dance. I was chosen as one of the ambungan dancers and was very proud of my part.

The music was played live which in return resulted the drainage of energy from the 6 meetings we attended. Why? Because as dancers, we have to be in sync with the music. The length of the dance, including the entrance and exit, wasn't more than 2 minutes.

All of a sudden, it was the big day. On the 18th of August, we gathered at TMII (Taman Mini Indonesia Indah) to put on our make up and costume. By 9AM we arrived at Monas where all the groups from 30 provinces gather and compete against each other.

The route of our parade was to circle Monas. We walked in groups of the province. Each province would dance on 4 different spots including inside the president's house (Scream!), the city hall, and two spots in the middle of the parade.

Monas (National Monument)

The parade started at 10 in the morning but the province that I represented was number 28 on the list, making us wait another couple of hours to shine. By the time we performed and began our journey to circle the Monas area, it was already 2 PM.

The weather was not supportive at all. Right before the parade started it rained cats and dogs. But then as the parade started, the sun shone like there was no tomorrow! I felt like I was boiled that day, especially in my traditional Jambi clothing. Long sleeved blouse, long pants, long skirt and a meter long weaved basket on my head!

But everything payed off. People enjoyed our performance and lots of foreigners asked for a picture or two. When my group was going through the street route, an American was dancing right beside us! Clapping and following anywhere we went for half an hour, dancing and enjoying the music.

We performed our routine in front of the president and his wife. I think he enjoyed it as much as we did, because we won fourth place! Isn't it awesome? I was very happy and my group was beyond happy. We danced our way through the end of the parade.

After the parade ended, we said our goodbyes, thanked each other and wished good luck. We really hoped to meet each other again soon.