The development of a new vocal work in Indonesia.

In late 2025, I along with Indonesian collaborators Heliana Sinaga and Faisal Syahreza were invited as inaugural artists in residence at ‘Balik Ka Leuweung’, at Tarekah, a new initiative for sustainable farming, forest wisdom and conservation initiated by a friend called Otong Durahim in Ciamis province, Indonesia. We went there to creatively develop our idea for a new vocal and visual performance work, working title: ‘ilalang’. At the residency we were also joined by actor Rinrin Candraresmi who played Persephone in a previous work together Hades Fading (Hades Memudar), collaborators in production and crafters Osi Presepti and Dasep Sumardjani, and we were joined also for a brief time by emerging artists in technical theatre and sound Cole McKenna and Aaron Carey-Long from Australia who visited us and joined in. There were a number of local people who joined in our process also from Tarekah, including Bambang Yuliana who documented some of our work at Tarekah, physical performer GinGin and emerging musician Tria Syahyana.

The idea for ‘Ilalang’ follows my work What Use Hath IVY? which also started in 2025 in collaboration with composer Gemma Horbury. It is about the Ivy infestations of southern parts of Australia, approaching the Ivy as a displaced plant, who’s takeover of forest areas is driven by it’s sense of loss, confusion and survival in a land it is not meant to be.

My Indonesian theatre collaborators were intrigued by this idea and pitched the idea to our friends who were at the time still building Tarekah, which lead to the invitation. We had a number of zoom calls together, planning for the project.

When I asked what invasive plant is a problem to the area, thinking about what plant we might focus on, my friend Dasep who was arranging the project at Tarekah suggested Imperata Cylindrica, or ilalang, a grass which is native to Indonesia and many parts of the world, but which is a big problem for farmers in Indonesia. After researching I discovered Ilalang dominates where there is deforestation, and it spreads very quickly through it’s rhizomes when stimulated by fire, and it’s seed heads, creating a barrier to other plants establishing. It especially becomes a problem if there are slash and burn styles of farming, such as have been employed in the north of Sumatera with Palm oil plantations. But I also came to realise that the plant acts as a sort of bandage to the cleared land, holding the soil when monsoon rains would otherwise wash it away. There had incidentally just been a serious landslide in North Sumatera caused by deforestation, killing thousands, and another one in West Java near Bandung while I was there, so this opened up a way of thinking about this work.

I drafted a text and sent it to Heliana, who later translated it:

Ilalang: lament of the invasive grasses

Text by Sandra Fiona Long, Translation Heliana Sinaga, 2026

1:

It started with the blissful burning of my crown. 

semua bermula dari pembakaran berkah,  mahkotaku

Aerial biomass incinerated in anthropogenic fire.

biomasa udara terbakar sebab ulah api antropologis

A red god with no memory roaring across my blades 

dewa merah tanpa ingatan meraung melewati pedangku

combusting into ecstasy 

meledak jadi ekstasi

for a moment the blaze silenced me

sesaat kobaran itu membungkamku

Flames consuming senescent leaves 

api melahap daun-daun yang menua

oxidizing cellulose

mengoksidasi selulosa

filling the air with brown smoke

memenuhi udara dengan asap coklat

Volatising plant tissue into carbon, ash, and heat.

menguapkan jaringan tumbuhan jadi karbon, abu dan panas

From the outside it must of seemed my surrender was complete.

dari luar, penyerahan diriku pasti tampak komplit

A dancing blade of silver fire burning bright then disappearing

sebilah pedang perak menari-nari kemudian menghilang

bare soil charred, ready to be propagated

tanah gundul hangus siap disemai

but just below, insulated

namun dibawah, terlapisi

I thrive

aku bertumbuh

vital structures alive

struktur vital tetap hidup

more resilient than you can speak

lebih tangguh dari yang kau bayangkan

I’ve yearned for this whisper of heat.

aku merindu bisikan panas ini

Every day we bathed in the river. We went to bed early, after latihan malam (evening practice) and arose early for latihan pagi (morning practice). Our daily evening and morning practice was rooted in sound meditation, which happened naturally from being imbedded in the incredible sound world there, with vocal practice and movement practice emerging from this incredible soundtrack. We worked together to create our process which was consistent and disciplined, yet felt easy and fun, and slowly we built a palate from our practice.

Dasep, who had originally suggested ilalang as a plant we could explore, told us he didn’t think there was ilalang close by. Then, on our third day, Dasep suddenly discovered a huge field of ilalang just a short hill climb away. He was surprised as he often walked past there. So everyday we went there in the morning for latihan pagi before it got too hot.

First of all we tentatively started exploring it, then as we got more comfortable, we started falling into it and rolling in it, opening up a space for us to work in which we called our ‘kasur’ or mattress. We inadverdantly opened up a training and performance space in the grass field.

Alongside this we were doing vocal practice each day, and were starting to bring the vocal and physical work together in our morning and evening practice, bringing together articulations from the text with our vocal explorations from the environment. In the video below we are doing latihan pagi with Mang Tria, one of the workers at Tarekah who often joined us, playing celempung, which he had just started learning. Of course our latihan pagi is by a river with children playing and crying close by. We were working with the idea of rhizomes spreading, cells splitting, chromosomes replicating and the tension between expansion, ecstasy and violence ever present in nature.

This process lead to us filming and recording a number of sections. We wanted to film some night time sections but we had very restricted light, only 4 lanterns to work with, and a couple of domestics lights which required the generator. We hung trace paper and played with the lanterns constant gentle movement lighting the performers, creating a sense of fire, of roots, while developing the sound track from our voices and sounds Aaron and Cole recorded on site. This started many visual ideas for us, and just scratched the surface for what we can do design wise with this material.

The video below, ‘tebang dan bakar’, we filmed in the morning in the ilalang field. It is about slash and burn farming, which propels the ilalang to grow and grow and grow, desperately holding the land together, to be left all alone. Rinrin is such an incredible performer.

This next piece, Lament of the Mono-Dominant, came out of a natural inclination for us to go into lament when we worked with this material vocally. The idea of a mono-dominant grassland or plantation became a symbol for something much larger, for the human propensity to take over and dominate across all areas. We cried as we recorded this piece, and each time we worked with the sound track our eyes were wet too. In the physical score for the piece, we worked with the idea of connection between the earth and the sky. The text was added later at PSBK, (as were the subtitles for Tebang dan Bakar), which I will talk about more below. Some of the performers here are not normally performers and this experience opened up a lot for everyone in terms of going beyond comfort zones with movement, voice, and performing. But the feeling of being held by nature was so strong during this time, it all felt natural.

It was truly an amazing time, with an amazing team.

Following our residency at Tarekah, a small group of us were hosted by PSBK (Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja) in Jogjakarta for 7 days where we researched and developed our ideas towards the next stage of this work. This evolved from a conversation over a year with Jeannie Park and team from PSBK about starting a botanic based work there. We were greeted so warmly by the team who offered support to us in using their spaces and hosting us, as well as taking us to various exhibitions and introducing us to artists during that week.

They also opened up their archives to us, where were got to explore the work of the founder of PSBK- Pak Bagong Kussudiardja. In the archives we discovered Pak Bagong’s vocal compositional work, much of it still in the process of being digitised. This was very inspirational to me. I had no idea that amongst his work as a director, choreographer and painter, there was also so many vocal compositions!

The theatre spaces and studios at PSBK also inspired us to prepare our videos with subtitles, text and more sound layers, as a part of the process of design drafting, imagining the work within a technically supported theatre space.

Incorporating subtitles and text within the design brought us back to previous multilingual works, such as our work Hades Fading (Hades Memudar) below, as a strong reference point going forward.

We finished the week delivering a presentation about our work, with a big discussion after with the team. This was a great way to finish our residency, with ideas to move forward with about how the work could actually be staged, and opening up discussion with PSBK about this.

lalang: lament of the invasive grasses is the seed of a new project, stemming from a long time of collaboration over many projects across Australia and Indonesia, and in partnership with PSBK, Tarekah and Radius Arts Space, it found great potential to become a broader international collaboration involving regional partners and collaborators in both countries. We are all so grateful for this opportunity, and can’t wait for the next steps forward.

Thank you to our supporters:

Wawan Sofwan who supported us and also hosted me in Bandung, supporters of our project at Tarekah- Otong Durahim, Jeannie Park and the team at PSBK, Hendro Wibowo who was always making sure we were OK, Dera Arahman who became our guide and gave us great coffee, and Irfan Muharam who supported us with transport, Didah, Ratna, Zaskia and Ibu who cooked amazing food for us, Kang Godi and Teh Neng for hosting us in Ciamis on our way to Jogjakarta, Regional Arts Australia, PSBK, Produk Tarekah Alami, Radius Hepburn and many generous people along the way.