Serampang Duabelas…Your History Before, Your Story Now

A Serampang Duabelas dancer sporting a variation of the full dance costume – Sony Herdiana.

Serampang Duabelas

Your History Before, Your Story Now

The period of activity restriction due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which although hampered researchers in collecting data, turned out to bring new ideas about the Serampang Duabelas dance. It’s a social dance that was created around 1959 to have its own meaning.

The meaning of Serampang Duabelas must inevitably be linked to the cultural policy of Bung Karno, the first president of the Republic of Indonesia, which encouraged the development of traditional dance into a national social dance. This policy was taken as cultural resistance to the invasion of western music with Bill Hayley’s rock and roll dance fever that entered Indonesia through the popularisation of his films. Rock and roll music and dance were considered obscene and not in accordance with the personality of the Indonesian people.

Serampang Duabelas was created by Sauti Daulay, a schoolteacher from Perbaungan, Medan, in 1938 before World War II. Sauti felt the need to create a more regular dance based on Malay dance movements, as found in North Sumatra among rural folk communities as well as in the Malay palace environment, such as the Serdang Palace. At that time, dances that still functioned as social rituals were maintained as an effort to elevate Malay culture and an effort to gather inter-community associations. Sauti then worked on her new choreography using the love story of young people as a theme and made it a kind of wedding dance.

According to Tengku Lukman Sinar, a Malay cultural observer and author of Introduction to Ethnomusicology and Malay Dance, Malay dances at the time only used jumping footwork and agility of hand movements, prioritising eye glances to the rhythm of songs such as Lagu Dua. The Serampang Duabelas dance consists of twelve different Malay rhythms/songs such as senandung, mak inang, or rhythms influenced by Portuguese rhythms such as Lagu Dua, Pulau Sari, and Arabic influences like Zapin, Barodah, as well as Karo influences such as Patam Patam and Gubang.

The twelve (duabelas) kinds of rhythms in the dance convey the love story of the two lovebirds from meeting up, getting to know each other, harbouring feelings, intoxication, love signs, responding to signals, guessing, still not believing, answers, proposals, escorting the bride and groom side by side and, finally, intimate love encounters with handkerchiefs. The Serampang Duabelas dance as a paired dance has the complexity of agile and dynamic footwork, it can be a social dance that acts as an entertainment or a pop singer’s dance, or it can be improved into a performing art.

The entry of pop culture from the west through radio and films was considered to have an influence that was not in accordance with the Proklamasi ideology in 1959 and is not in line with the promotion of national personality at the time. The Serampang Duabelas dance was designed to fend off the social entertainment of dances that were becoming popular. This dance finally became suited to the era. It became a strong entertainment attraction for young people and students, including the elderly.

Popular Entertainment As Well As Tradition

The dynamics of these various rhythms with the agility of skilful footwork filled many popular entertainment shows in the ’60s with various variations by Malay entertainment groups, and perhaps it could be considered as a prologue to the “boom” of music and dangdut dances in the future. The variety was liked by young audiences because it was dynamic, lively, and exciting.

Malay-Minang celebrities such as Elly Kasim, Nuskan Syarief, and Yuni Amir became popular thanks to the undeniable groove of the Serampang Duabelas dance. Choreographers such as Syaugi Bustami, Yuni Amir, Nurdjajadi, who were famous for their singing fan dances, also became celebrities thanks to the development of Serampang Duabelas through popular media and films. Likewise, Nani Widjaja, a film celebrity, was originally a Serampang Duabelas star as well as Yuni Amir and Nizmah.

The 3rd Serampang 12 National Contest Medan April 21 - 28 th, 1963 - Perpusnas RI

The popularity of this dance then expanded to Singapore and Malaysia thanks to the cool hands of Tengku Yohanit, a dancer from Medan, and Suryanti Liu Cun Wai (Acun). Suryanti Liu Cun Wai, who was the defending champion of the Serampang Duabelas Festival competition, later became the maestro of the development of this dance in Singapore and Malaysia. Now Suryanti is the promoter of Indonesian dance in Hong Kong with The Southeast Asia Dance Troupe.

In the 1960s, along with other Indonesian dances, the Serampang Duabelas dance participated in various Indonesian Cultural Goodwill Missions abroad. This cultural mission influenced the development of Malay culture in neighbouring countries, especially Singapore and all over the Malay Peninsula.

Anyone who could dance and experience it at that time knew that the Serampang Duabelas dance was like the viral Covid fever that infected young people. However, the development of this dance was briefly halted in 1965, but thankfully, Serampang Duabelas rose again as traditional dance and was widely discussed everywhere. The climax was a Malay Dance Workshop at the Jakarta Arts Council Art Festival at Taman Ismail Marzuki in 1976. The discussion was expected to be an encouragement for the creativity of other Malay dance artists to catch up with this highly popular national social dance and at the same time respond to the fast-paced changing times. DKJ hoped that Malay dance would grow and become a factor in generating national culture. Furthermore, in the ’80s, Tom Ibnur came and gave rise to other alternatives in the development of Malay dance through Zapin which is a variation of Serampang Duabelas. Now, in 2021, suddenly an idea emerged to hold a Zapin Award.

Today’s Challenge

During its heyday, Serampang Duabelas only had rock and roll to face, now there are various variants of Latino ballroom dances to compete with such as the cha cha cha, samba, salsa, bachata, and Zumba (all are also social dances), as well as competitive performances in the Olympics – a programme from World Dancesports Federation. However, what is exciting is that there are also line dances in the style of local Indonesian cultures such as Poco Poco, Lenggang Jakarta, and Maumere.

Advances in media and technology played a major role in Serampang Duabelas becoming an integral part of expressions of entertainment arts including popular performing arts whose ups and downs can quickly change according to the dynamics of new and innovative tastes. In the west, we can see the tremendous development of popular entertainment and performing arts, which also has an impact on our country, thanks to globalisation, supported by the creative economy, which supports the political commodity of trade.

How times have changed, and now ideology has no more influence on popular entertainment it seems. However, creativity that comes from local dances can be considered as a competition to achieve various competencies, such as through the creative economy. It is interesting to note, that Indonesian local style line dances are being used and developed in the fitness and art sectors, considering how Serampang Duabelas used to be able to “possess” anyone like “covid”. It is important to raise popular entertainment arts to a wider arena and it would be better if it is supported by policies in the creative economy, especially for the development of dance. If not, Serampang Duabelas will be just a memory, left behind in the traditional realm. For now, it’s enough to perform the dance the commemoration of Serampang Duabelas Dance Day while remembering its fantastic boom in the ’60s. We give our appreciation to Bung Karno who once proclaimed it as a national social dance and to Sauti Daulay who performed it for the first time on April 9, 1938, in Medan. (Julianti Parani Ph.D. choreographer-dancer, researcher-writer, senior lecturer at IKJ)

Participants of a Serampang Duabelas contest in 1963 – National Library of Indonesia.