I come from Terengganu, a state where nature embraces heritage. I’m proud to be there but, I neglect about something precious about this state – its traditional dances.
Terengganu is not the only state which owns traditional dances, the other states too. I did ask my late grandmother, what traditional dance is and how it was formed in our country. She explained a little bit about it and I became more aware of our heritage. I hope that one day I could encourage the next generation to preserve our heritage.
Traditional dance does not belong to one society in fact. It becomes an identity for Malaysians in the eyes of the world. My participation in Zapin dance when I was in IPTI was an amazing experience. It was so fantastic and awesome! Since that, I fell in love with traditional dance and I felt I have become a part of it.
That was true – we will never know something till we try it. Whenever there was a cultural or traditional dance shown on television, I would watch it because I think it is an important element – especially in traditional Malay Theatre.
A unique blend of numerous races, each with it rich culture and heritage, and a strong influence from its neighbours Indonesia and Thailand, has formed the foundation of a very lively dance culture.
For one thing, I felt quite upset that our generations tend to forget our heritage. Some of them do not even know what traditional dance is and what it looks like. Are they become foreigner in their own country? Or it is not necessary to know about it? Who should be blamed? Our folk? Our government? Or ourselves? I can’t answer it but I really hope we should do something to keep it living for next generations.
Mohd Khalis Sumardi (144524) says:
ReplyDeleteRight, we should preserve our culture and heritage. Who else will if we dont try to protect our own culture. I wasnt a cultural activist but we need to assume that we are the warrior of our own culture. There is one idiom says that "what we do today echoes through eternity" so we should by hook or by crook build a foundation to avoid our culture from losing it's uniqueness. We may not able to do it on our own but we could try to raise awareness among society about the importance of preserving our culture. It maybe hard but we play by the rule "kite rise higher against the wind not with it" so work your ass and show it to everybody else to you can do it.