Yamba’s Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal, who was shortlisted for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance’ at the 2013 Australian Dance Awards, has just finished a national tour of her self-choreographed dance, Opal Vapour. Dancing has always been a part of her life and has taken her all over the world.

Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal’s mother, Helen, is Australian, and her father, Sunarto, is Javanese. This cultural juxtaposition has proved to be an intrinsic ingredient in the dance art she creates – particularly her current project, the critically acclaimed Opal Vapour, which has played at premiere venues around the country.
Tyas Tunggal collaborated with lighting designer Paula van Beek and musician Ria Soemardjo (who is also of Australian/Indonesian descent) to create the work, which the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jill Sykes described as “a gem of a dance work, elusive in style and influences, one dissolving into the next”, in her four out of five star review.
“My Mum and Dad met in Yogyakarta during Mum’s university years in the ’70s. Dad’s family is from the Keraton and Borobudur,” Tyas Tunggal says. “At that time surf-seeking travellers would often pass through Yogyakarta on their way to Bali.” Born in Gosford in 1978, Tyas Tunggal grew up on the Central Coast, but often visited Indonesia. She says her travels, even before her first memories, probably played a role in establishing her worldliness. “When I was a baby my parents travelled through southeast Asia. We lived in Sumatra and Phuket for several months at a time. When my parents trekked up into the mountains of Nias, there were baby photos of me at a big ceremony with hundreds of warriors dressed in feathers, ochre, large shields and long spears.”
By the age of five, Tyas Tunggal says she was “feeling really familiar with Indonesia”, Yogyakarta, Legian and Nusa Dua, and had developed friendships with her cousins, “exploring the villages, rice fields, rivers and beaches in bare feet”.
“Mum encouraged me to do some Javanese dance lessons. I remember really vividly the whole experience of walking through the village in Yogyakarta to go to my dance teacher’s house. A crowd of kids was following us, perhaps because Mum is tall and blonde – closely followed by two little Indonesian kids, Sahnti [her younger sister] and I.
“During my dance lesson there were so many little eyes peering through the windows into the house. It had a dirt floor and I was learning the peacock dance. They dressed me up in traditional costume … wonderful carved leather belts, head dresses and ear pieces, which were painted in gold and adorned with beads and peacock feathers. I was completely transformed into a beautiful magical bird.”
Tyas Tunggal’s family was invited to a wedding ceremony and reception at the Yogyakarta Keraton (palace), where “I remember there was this huge feast and many people dressed up in their extraordinary finery”. Her dance teachers performed “a beautiful duet accompanied by gamelan orchestra and singers”. Through the eyes of a five-year-old, the humble people she’d come to know were now gods and goddesses. “I was really struck by how their performance shifted the atmosphere and drew everyone into this peaceful, life enhancing state.
“In Bedugul, high in the mountains of Bali, we went to a full moon ceremony where participants would go into trance. At midnight people with knives would come out and dance. I was affected by how powerful the dancers were; their presence created change and attention in the audience.”
Meanwhile, in Australia, she was taking classical ballet lessons, and Tyas Tunggal began combining what she had learnt in Indonesia with traditional disciplines. “I enjoyed performing in a lot of eisteddfods. When I was eight I danced a demi-character called Ayu and the Perfect Moon. It was about an Indonesian girl waiting for the full moon so she can pay her respects to her family. Then the perfect moon came up and she changed into her temple dress and did a temple dance. The first section of that three minutes dance was ballet technique and classical music, characterisation and gesturing. After I changed into my Indonesian style costume, the dance was accompanied by gamelan and showed more Indonesian style movements. There is different body alignment and posturing, distinctive articulations with the hands, and there is more emphasis on the use of the eyes and the movements of the head.”
One of Tyas Tunggal’s other talents, cello, was recognised in 1986, when then premier Barry Unsworth presented her with a scholarship to study the instrument. Then, in 1990, at the age of 11, she was accepted as a student at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts – the school’s inaugural year. Her mother, Helen, who was the principal of Harwood Public School and her teacher in years 5 and 6, encouraged Tyas Tunggal to take up the offer.
“She said try it out and if you like it you can stay there. There was no, ‘you have to keep going if it’s not suited to you’. I think it was one of my strategies in that first year to do everything. I was in the dance company, the orchestra, the choir and I was also doing extra ballet classes. In a way, it was just to keep busy, because I was really missing home. By the end of the year I was performing at the Sydney Opera House and the entertainment centre.
“That was great but I really wanted to come home by the end of that first year, but some of the teachers, and one of the directors from the Sydney Schools Dance Company, really encouraged me to stay on.”

As she continued working towards excelling at whatever she put her mind to, Tyas Tunggal says there were times when she felt like her childhood was passing her by. “I think it was about in year-9 that I realised that there was no chance of going back to being young and carefree. By then, I was really committed to being a dancer. I was already touring to America; I had my 14th birthday in New York. At that point, the sort-of no-responsibility kind of joy of being a child was not there for me anymore.”
However, Tyas Tunggal says she was driven by the heartening feedback she was receiving and the invitations that were presented to her. “I would achieve success with a particular performance and then another casting would happen. It was sort of a natural flow… it felt quiet organic and compelling.
“I felt really blessed; I had really wholesome and grounded teachers, it felt like a family, I had good friends and my mum was always checking in.”
After graduating as the dux of Newtown High School of the Performing Arts with a TER (tertiary entrance rank) of 99.55, which earned her an Australian student prize for excellence and two Premier’s certificates for excellence in the HSC after placing first in the dance and classical ballet courses, Tyas Tunggal took up a scholarship to study at Miami’s New World School of the Arts. She graduated from Florida University with a Bachelor of Dance Honours in 2000.
Freelance work throughout Australia and New Zealand from 2001 to 2003, included a dance project for NORPA (Northern Rivers Performing Arts) called The Seed, which was performed in Lismore, Sydney and regional NSW. Researching her Javanese heritage led to a stint at the Yogyakarta University of the Arts, where Tyas Tunggal took up an Indonesian Embassy scholarship to study Indonesian dance and music in 2004.
In 2006, she fulfilled a competitive European Union DanceWeb scholarship engagement at ImpulsTanz in Vienna and returned to Australia to work with artists from DasArts Amsterdam on the Navigators project, which included cultural research at Cape York Peninsula. That show premiered at the 2006 Melbourne International Arts Festival. Tyas Tunggal attained a High Distinction for her Masters of Choreography at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in 2008.
In 2010, her choreographic works were commissioned by the VCA’s School of Dance, Kath Papas, Newport Substation, Melbourne Arts Centre and Multicultural Arts Victoria. Her work with Amelia McQueen on Soft Targets was awarded Best Choreography at Canberra’s inaugural Short and Sweet Festival.
Her solo performance residency at Victorian University supported a European tour, including a show titled Kaosmosis at the Kling & Bang Gallery in Iceland, a residency at the Performing Artists Forum in France and an Instant Composition workshop with Julyen Hamilton in Spain.
Recently she performed in the traditional Yolngu story of Morning Star, told through a new Australian contemporary dance work at the National Gallery of Art. And the list goes on.
Driven is an accurate descriptor of Tyas Tunggal. “I definitely have a competitive spirit. I remember at one of my kindergarten assemblies, one girl won a book because she did really well, and I thought, ‘oh, you can win things if you put more effort in’. Throughout the rest of my school career I wanted to be at the top, even at sport. I did lots of team sports, hockey, netball, swimming – I especially loved the swim squad, because you’re out there going for yourself and in the relays you’re working hard for yourself and the team. That [competitiveness] definitely transferred to dance eisteddfods and dance exams.
“I loved having fun being in dance classes with passionate dancers, performing and competing but, by the time I was about 14, that competitive spirit really started to get the better of me emotionally, and I think I realised that the dreams and fantasies you have as a child are not all realistic … there are certain things you can’t change.
“I got shingles [from stress] because I was working so hard. I was a perfectionist, succeeding but not enjoying myself. And there was a bit of suspicion … perhaps I was realising my limitations and being sensitive to a bit of tall poppy talk.”
At the age of 15, Tyas Tunggal started yoga classes. “That was really healthy for me because it was about shifting the trajectory of my competitive spirit … to working on what I can control, what’s unique about me, and being a little bit more self-nurturing.”
What’s the concept behind Opal Vapour and how did the project come to fruition?
“I was preparing for the 6/7 Empty [solo dance work] tour and I was invited to perform a 20-minute section at an Australian/Indonesian event at the Arts Centre Melbourne.
“I was working with the idea of transformation and water and different states and aptitudes – making choreography and movement about ideas like filling up and emptying out, and emotional qualities like anger, melancholy and sadness.”

Tyas Tunggal called on lighting designer Paula van Beek, with whom she had worked with on 6/7 Empty. “The Arts Centre Melbourne was interested to support me to work with collaborators, and I could use any of the resources at the theatre. I thought it was a great opportunity to collaborate with Paula. We were already talking about shifting the idea from her working with the overhead projector and me responding to the effect she was making, to me dancing on the overhead projector.”
Meanwhile, Tyas Tunggal had met musician Ria Soemardjo at an Asian Link forum. “Her story is really similar to mine, her father’s Javanese and her mother’s Australian-born. Ria’s singing practice is influenced by Javanese gamelan and the sindhenan style of singing [the traditional singing of Javanese gamelan music]. I really wanted to collaborate with her hauntingly pure voice, mesmerising music and fantastic textile talents. It seemed perfect, because it was an Indonesian commission.”
Over the three weeks leading up to the performance, Tyas Tunggal developed the performance and story, collaborating individually with each of her fellow artists. “The three of us didn’t rehearse together until the day before the show. That initial performance was really about working out how the choreography and dance performance relates to light, projection, music and voice.
“I’m really interested in experiencing balance in contradiction and opposite forces, like yin and yang. For me, the opal is an inspiring, colourful and distinctly Australian stone. It survives as the last essence of water. At the time, Australia was at the end of a 12-year drought and I was contemplating how precious water is to life. I also think the history of the sedimentary layers of earth is important and how we trace our history through our ancestors; how we honour them using our bodies to connect the ground with the sky, which ties in with my interest in ritual, ceremony and performance.
“Opal Vapour is a story of transition though different phases of life. It’s almost like a woman reflecting back on her life’s journey, from her funeral, through old age to youth and back into the womb, back through the waves and out into the deep ocean. As well as that, she traverses from an emotional state, representing characteristics of animal creatures, different rhythmic tones and lighting and landscapes – say from a mountain top or a valley to the mouth of a harbour to the ocean.
“It’s the story of achieving harmony in the power nature. Noticing our vulnerable fragility and realising that it’s a miracle we survive the unrelenting chaos of life.”
And it’s surviving that chaos that emboldens Tyas Tunggal, as the creative process unravels, the story seemingly telling itself. “Developing courage and confidence in myself, my collaborators and my audience is a huge focus for me. When I’m performing the dance, I’m concentrating on my personal will to move with dignity, being elegant in relationship to the musical sounds and being adventurous with making shadows and surprising movements with the sand – I’m like a powerful warrior spirit embracing the gentle strength of a tender heart and inviting everybody to feel a shared vitality.”
Tyas Tunggal reads her reviews. And she says the praise is gratifying, but it’s not just about whether or not the critics or the audiences approve of her work. Like with most artworks, the meaning is often different in each viewer’s mind. “I think what I’m interested in as a performer, is what other people will perceive of the work and how they interpret their personal experience.”
Looking towards the future, Tyas Tunggal has spent several weeks putting a written submission to the Australian Performing Arts Market, which will be held in Brisbane in February 2014. “I’ve got my fingers and toes crossed that we will be invited to perform for a group of selected arts producers and presenters and hopefully get some meetings for future international touring.
“I’d love to tour Opal Vapour to Indonesia, Japan, Netherlands, USA and the UK.”
To see an excerpt of Opal Vapour, go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-0qnihu2LM
To learn more about Opal Vapour, go to www.opalvapour.com.au.