Suprapto Suryodarmo and my quest for Ke-Jawa-an

During my interaction with Suprapto Suryodarmo between 2013 and 2019, as a researcher and as a student of Amerta Movement, I became curious about what it is to be ‘Javanese’. The term ‘Ke-Jawa-an’ in Bahasa Indonesia is a translation of the term ‘Javaneseness’ in English. Ke-Jawa-an (‘Javaneseness’) is closely related to ‘kejawen’ the Indigenous religious practices and beliefs of the Javanese people. In my quest, I learned about the Javanese as conceived through the studies by foreign scholars, such as Thomas Raffles, Denys Lombard and Clifford Geertz. Searching for my own understanding, I approach Suryodarmo as my Javanese interlocutor. Through Amerta Movement, his meditative movement art, his work opens a dialogue between Java and the rest of the world, with Javaneseness no longer confined within a particular time and space. This article is my personal reflection as a Javanese social researcher in dialogue with Suprapto Suryodarmo and his movement approach.