My dream to travel to Asia came true by the year 2013 when I was chosen to participate in the Darmasiswa Scholarship to study one year in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. I confess that before going there I had little awareness of Indonesia and its culture. I decided to study traditional dances although I have never watched them. One night taken by a friend, pak Namastra Probosunu, I watched for the first time a Wayang Wong performance and visited several Wayang Kulit shows, and immediately fell in love with the Indonesian arts: the gamelan, characters, dance techniques, costumes, colors, texts, environment… everything deeply caught my attention.
During several months I studied dance at the former institute PPPPTK. I must say my experience learning for the first time Indonesian dances was not easy at all. The body positions, hand movements, rhythm and counting, the use of costume accessories like the sampur, along with the difficulty of not speaking Indonesian language frustrated me a lot. Once finished that year of scholarship I came back to my country with the feeling and determination that I had to return to Indonesia in order to deepen and continue my dance studies.
And so it was that in 2016, I was in Jogjakarta again studying at Institut Seni Indonesia, ISI Jogja. That year I made the best of my time trying to absorb all the knowledge possible of the Indonesian dances without wasting any single day. I took classes and practice at ISI-Jogja, NDalem Kanoman, NDalem Pujokusuman, Puro Pakualaman, and was admitted to practice classical dances at Kraton on Sundays. I did my first performance of the Javanese dance Klana Raja at Bangsal Kraton Sri Manganti and became the first Ecuadorian who danced and practiced there. For me it is important to mention this for I was, and still am, opening up a path for future Ecuadorians and Latin Americans who long to study dances there.
At the end of 2017 I came back to Ecuador eagerly longing to share and transmit my acquired dance knowledges. I contacted the Indonesian Embassy in Ecuador KBRI Quito, and was openly and pleasingly received by the Ambassador Diennaryati Tjokrosuprohatono and the Cultural Attaché Lailal Yuniarti. To make them appreciate my awareness of Indonesian dances I produced a dance performance named “Mataya” with the collaboration of Vera Rusli, an Indonesian dancer part of the embassy staff. For the first time the Ecuadorian audience had the chance to watch a classical Javanese dance and dances from Bali, Kalimantan, Sunda, Sumatra on one night. That was my calling card and the beginning of a mutual collaboration.
