TOWARDS THE LAST PLATE: NEGOTIATION OF MINANGKABAU WOMEN'S BODY AND THE PLATE SYMBOL IN CONTEMPORARY DANCE

Objective: The dance work "Menuju Piring Terakhir" (Towards the Last Plate) is a rethinking of Minangkabau collective memory in contemporary times that seeks to explore the contradiction between the high status enjoyed by Minangkabau women as Bundo Kanduang and their limited autonomy over their own bodies. Method: This research seeks to describe how the body is a site of cultural negotiation symbolically embodied in relation to fragile objects, like plates that are symbolic conveyors of ancestral-based values and collective memory. Combining Practice-Based Research (PBR) and experimental choreography, this investigation looks at embodied knowledge unfolding in the creative process, a change from withholding to rupture; a reconstruction of identity. Results: Seemingly complete but inherently fragile, the plate serves as a metaphor for women’s cultural status: kept and venerated but susceptible to pressure. Stepping into the plate, watching it break, and collecting its pieces becomes a performative act of contemplation instead of destruction. The results of the study show that smashing the final plate constitutes a climax of emotional resistance, and gathering up its pieces signals an attempt to reweave a torn-to-pieces identity. Novelty: This helps to clarify the situation of contemporary dance as a critical locus of tradition, gender, and embodiment.