Sampung, A Tragic History Between Magic and Politics

I am interested in the theme of dancer's struggle for self-identity due to socio-political situations. That interest brought me to Ponorogo, a city in East Java. This city is famous as the origin of reog - a folk entertainment dance with magical elements. The main dancer wears a tiger-headed mask with towering peacock feathers.

The development of reog reached its peak around 1959-1965. At that time there were 364 reog groups, but in the New Order era these art groups began to dwindle.

When starting this personal project, I met artists and descendants of reog dancers in Sampung, a village that still preserves the oldest reog. This village became one of the bases for the communist victory in the first general election in Indonesia in 1955.
When reog became a tool of political propaganda, these innocent artists were drawn into the vortex of the dark communist history which ended in the disaster of 1965. They were kidnapped and murdered. In fact, the story of this tragedy is history that has not yet been written in Indonesia.

I became increasingly interested in this subject when their descendants told me about Reog's past with all its human and magical aspects. I thought, this story should be told through visuals—before everything disappears.