'Wisma Ulah Budaya' is Indonesian and means
'House, where the art forms are being practised', and that is the way it all
started in Romanita Santoso's and Henry Breton van Groll's residence.
In May
1985 Wisma Ulah Budaya was founded by Romanita and Henry to practise both their
ideas about the way to promote Javanese culture and especially Javanese dance in
the Netherlands.
It resulted in the foundation's first aim to give the chance
to young people, who live in the Netherlands and who has Indonesian ancestors,
to learn about their cultural background. Studying the art of the Indonesian
classical dance gives them an excellent opportunity to make cultural traditions
come alive again.
Second aim is to achieve more understanding in Western
society for Indonesian culture and espacially the classical dance
traditions.
The dance rehearsals are adapted to the needs of Western educated
young people to make the dancers again aware of and familiar with Indonesian
traditions.
Western and Indonesian ideas and norms about the performing arts
have set the standard for the way the classical Indonesian art forms are
presented to a Western audience. So the dance performances of Wisma Ulah Budaya
are given under circumstances and conditions of European point of view about
classical dance and culture.
It is to achieve an equal appreciation for the
Indonesian classical art forms in comparison to the Western art forms.
It has
now resulted in the 10 years during cooperation with the Netherlands museum of
education, The Museon, at The Hague.
Every two months Wisma Ulah Budaya gives
a lecture with a demonstration of a Central or West Javanese dance in the
museum's Indonesia hall and every year Wisma Ulah Budaya gives a dance
performance of 2 hours in the great museum's audience
hall.
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