My Facebook's timeline has been flooded with the opinions on failed-Patola dance, which appeared at the Sentani Lake Festival 2018 yesterday. As a fellow human being, I feel sorry for the MC, the children who got up the stage and danced, and the committee. But, hold on! How is Patola doing? After the failure?
I'd like to invite all of us to rethink whether the Patola dance is a culture or just a trend. I have read some comments, and one of them has repeatedly said that Patola is not Papua's culture. I agree! But whose culture is this? After all, don't we need to find someone or some people perhaps from different nationalities, tribes, or so to blame? Smile.
So here's what I'd like to point out. Patola dance should not be paired with Asmat or Yospan dance, or other respective cultural dances because it is NOT a culture. It is nobody's culture. It's a trend that some from our community picked up to show themselves for the sake of whatever reasons they might have." Before Patola dance made it to the surface, have you ever seen viral dance on the song, "turun-naik"? What do you think about the dance moves? Is it culturally acceptable? Oh, by the way, I enjoy listening to the song. My point here is to the dance movement. Or perhaps we can list more songs that came along with their moves in the past. How are they doing these days? They do no longer exist. Why? Because they are just trends.
Speaking of culture, it is something that binds a community together. It unites us. It shows our identity. In other words, it shows our quality as a person or society. It reminds us of the values and norms we uphold in our community. It proclaims what we believe despite the changes of the era. It is what we preserve. It is sacred. It is important. We do not pick our culture like pieces of the puzzle, trying to fit it into our society. No. We were born from it and live in it. We do not take culture for granted. Personally, it is not what I want to humiliate myself with because I respect it.
Meanwhile, the trend is vice versa. It does not bring people together. It makes us compete against each other, who shows it better, who wears it better, et cetera. Unlike culture, it is temporary. It is for a season. We follow a trend because it is fun and perhaps because we have seen many people do so. Trends come and go. Once a dance move comes out, and if it is way cooler than the recent one, we may follow. But if we want to.
Before what happened during the festival yesterday, I watched some teenagers do Patola dance and surprised by the numbers of the likes they got on Instagram, which somehow have helped to validate their actions. Despite the critics and harsh words hammering on their comment section, nobody or even these teenagers would have thought that the Patola dance they did for fun will bring critics from more significant numbers of people today. It is no longer fun when it is considered as a humiliation of our own culture, isn't it?
In the end, I'd like to encourage us to see Patola dance as a trend. It is seasonal, and it will not replace the culture we have preserved. It is prevalent for our young people to adopt certain behavior and follow trends to be accepted. We may have risen in different generations, but the attempt to figure out who we were in life when we were young is the stage we should go through. I am also sad about how quickly our young people pick a trend that seems inappropriate within our culture. But this writing is not to blame them or anybody. It is a relief that when people disagree with Patola dance being presented in a cultural event, we value our culture, and we want to instill the same value in our young people. I believe that we can help our teenagers, our children, and our young people promote our culture.
I want to help! What about you?
No comments:
Post a Comment