Poco-Poco

by Amalia

 

I had a great day at Pasar Malam Asia last Sunday. We played a total of 9 Indonesian songs with angklung. The last song played was called "Poco-Poco" and for the fun of it, I took part in dancing poco-poco with other mostly middle-aged dancers and audience. Yes, you can see me with the red kebaya and red headscarf struggling to do the right steps there in the video LOL. It was fun though! 🙂

Poco-poco dance is a line dance which is very popular in Indonesia and other SE Asian countries. The dance is usually accompanied by the song of the same name, which was written by an Ambonese, Arie Sapulette, and was popularized by an Indonesian singer, Yopie Latul. There are much speculations of where the dance came from. Some say it was originated from Moluccas and some say it was from Northern Sulawesi.

The dance became even more popular when it was recently declared as haram (forbidden) by the mufti in Perak, Malaysia. What can I say? If you want to declare poco-poco dance as haram, then you should declare all sorts of dances as haram too. It’s so inconsistent. Anyway…

People here are crazy about poco-poco! I’ve seen them (read: Indo-Dutch people) dancing in every Pasar Malam (*) events in the country. They’d dance poco-poco no matter what sort of songs is currently played.

* Pasar Malam means night market (literally) and is directly associated with Asian or Indonesian event. The “night market” itself doesn’t necessarily open only at night. Most Pasar Malam(s) in the Netherlands have Asian food stalls and music performances. The event is organized in many cities in the Netherlands.

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