For husband-wife team Alfira O’Sullivan and Murtala, dance is their life.
It’s a passion they’re sharing with the Australian Indonesian community with their dance studio Suara Indonesia Dance.
With an Irish-Australian father and Indonesian mother, Alfira had the benefit of experiencing two cultures, especially in dance.
“I started dancing at the age of five, and was put in ballet, but pulled out because I didn’t like it,” says Alfira.
“My Indonesian family were all dancers, and my aunties loved to teach me how to dance,” she says.
This desire to explore more of her Indonesian culture was what prompted Alfira to travel to her mother’s home region of Aceh in 2006. It was there she met Murtala.
During the tsunami cleanup in 2004, Murtala helped pick up the bodies of the dead – a traumatic yet necessary job.
Suara Indonesia Dance teaches and performs various types of traditional dance. Source: Supplied
Murtala’s job was picking up the bodies of the dead – a traumatic yet necessary job.
“It changed my life a lot, but I feel really happy because I did something, even if it was really small in the bigger relief effort,” he says.
After three months of picking up bodies, he began teaching kids to dance in refugee camps.
Alfira says, “With the tsunami, we not only lost lives but also arts, so Murtala wanted to bring the arts back into the lives of these kids so they couldn’t lose it again.”
Coming back to Australia, the couple wanted to preserve rare and traditional dances to ensure Australian-born Indonesian children wouldn’t miss out either.
To do this, the couple put aside their nomadic lives and opened a studio in Sydney.
Here, they teach traditional and contemporary dances from across various Indonesian cultures and say these dances encourage a sense of community.
“It makes people come together,” says Murtala.
Preservation of Indonesian culture was a huge driving force behind the inception of Suara Indonesia Dance. Source: Supplied
These efforts haven’t gone unrecognised, with the federal government profiling Alfira in a Government White Paper as a case study on cultural diplomacy.
“We not only promote Indonesian culture within Australia but overseas we also perform and teach and conduct workshops,’ Alfira says.“ We’re really promoting multicultural Australia.”
“We always explain that it doesn’t matter how many people - we dance with one soul.”
Watch this story at the top of the page, or catch the full episode on SBS On Demand.
