Helly Minarti

After completing a phd in dance studies at University of Roehampton (London, UK), I returned to my hometown Jakarta and took up a position as the Head of Programme for the Jakarta Arts Council, for the period of 2013-2015 (reelected for the period of 2016-2018). It is a peer-selected position comprising of artists, arts managers, curators and activists. At the Council, I oversaw the programming and curatorial strategy across six art forms, ranging from research-based activities to organising various events. I resigned from the Council one year earlier, effective from 1 October 2017.

Outside the Council, I conduct research - both independently or commission-based, the latter usually from various cultural organisations. My dance practice now moves between research, writing and curating. I refrain from producing since late 2015 and has been focusing more on supporting young choreographers' artistic process through various platforms.

Dance-wise, I co-curated three consecutive editions of Indonesian Dance Festival (2014, 2016, 2018). In 2014,  I engaged in a joint-research and curation with a network of Asian curators/producers for Asian Arts Theatre (now renamed the Asia Culture Theatre), a new theatre in Gwangju (South Korea), which finally opened in September 2015. With this collaboration, I curated the first season of the Asia Windows series in October 2015 titled Gaze. Project. Myth, comprising three commissioned choreographies (two long, one short) and an archive-based exhibition. The exhibition-performance  was re-mounted in Jakarta in February 2017 at Salihara Arts Centre. My latest curatorial project is a 3-year traveling festival called Jejak-旅 Tabi Exchange: Wandering Asian Contemporary Performance, which I am co-curating with Akane Nakamura and Lim Howngean (2018). For its next series (ongoing, 2020), I am now doing it with Akane Nakamura, working towards presenting two linked chapters in Visayas archipelago in the Philippines (Roxas City, 22-25 January 2020) and in Naha in Okinawa, scheduled from 28 August to 5 September 2020 (in preparation). 

Academic-wise, I have just submitted my contribution to Readers on Theatre and Politics and an article to Religion Journal - both by Routledge and all due in 2019 and 2020 consecutively. I took a 4-month research fellowship at City University of New York (CUNY), as US-ASEAN Fulbright Visiting Scholar from January to May 2018 during which I conducted a research that has updated some of the last chapters of my dissertation. I'm now working on a monograph of it which hopefully I will publish it by mid/late 2020. I co-taught a class of Postcolonial Studies at Universitas Sanata Darma for its new postgraduate programme (Arts and Society Studies), Yogyakarta in first semester 2019/20. I will co-teach a new class on Artistic Research in second semester 2019/20. In the mean time, I am also working on a syllabus on curating the arts and performance. I have relocated to Yogyakarta since August 2018, and am preparing a collaborative research platform on choreography called LINGKARAN | koreografi. I wish it to focus on unpacking the term and its various practices (of 'choreography') through a set of critical means. I started sharing my own dance library to limited public since last year through smallish discussion such as reading club, and hope to expand it with more critical programmes soon.
Supervisors: Dr Alessandra Lopez y Royo and Dr Avanthi Meduri
Address: LINGKARAN | koreografi
Brontokusuman, Mergangsang
Yogyakarta 55153
(for complete address, email me)