Recently, my school held a cultural festival on Saturday 27th 2014. Its name is 'MATSWAPATI'. It is to celebrate the anniversary of Bandung. The name of the festival was taken from the name one of the wayang (traditional perfomance in Indonesia) named Prabu Matswapati. Prabu Matswapati is the great king of the Wirata Country, a king who reigns of king.

In this cultural festival, there are many perfomance that shows Indonesia's culture especially sundanese culture like anglung, traditional dance, traditional martial arts and many others. But this time I'll tell you about the traditional sundanese dance, Jaipong.

But first I will tell you a little about the history of Jaipong dance. This dance was created by an artist from Bandung, Gugum Gumbira in 1960's, with the purpose to create a kind of music and social dances excavated from the wealth of folk art traditions of the archipelago, particularly in West Java. Even though Jaipong dance included relatively new, but this dance developed from the previous folk art Ketuk Tilu, Kliningan, and also Ronggeng.

In 1961, Indonesian President Soearno prohibited rock and roll and other western genres of music, and challenged Indonesian musicians to revive indigenous arts. The name jaipongan came from people mimicking of the sounds created by some of the drums in the ensemble. audiences were often heard shouting jaipong after specific sections of rhytmic music were played. Jaipongan debuted in 1974 when Gugum Gumbira and his gamelan and dancers first performed in public.

In the Matswapati, the dancer of the Jaipong dance was from jugala orchestra. Jugala orchestra is one of the famous dance troupe. They were 3 of them who dances on the stage. The Maybe you wondering why I choose Jaipong for this topic. This is because I think Jaipong is the most beautiful dance that I've ever seen cause I love the combination of the dance and some of the martial ats.

For their costumes, They are wearing kebaya. Usually, they are wearing the colorful kebaya because it is suitable with the jaipong's dance that is dinamic and energic. For the under outfit, they are wearing the legging pants combined with jarit. This costume is affected by the sundanese culture for the batik's motive, the Betawi's culture for the kebaya, and the last Tionghoa's culture in the bun's pattern. I think this is the end of this topic. Thanks for reading and see you in the next posting!!