The (Famous) Squatting Dance: Jung Jung-Te Jung was developed as part of an artistic research project titled Squatting & Dance by Wayan Sumahardika with MulawaliInstitute. This project aims to examine the aesthetic and political construction of the squatting gesture on the dance/performance stage, as well as everyday choreography, through the repertoire and archive approach. The presence of squatting is not only a mere human inevitability. It also holds a variety of knowledge, a network of ideas, and various political-aesthetic narratives that exist and continuously grow behind it.

The Squatting & Dance Project began by utilizing the material of Igel Jongkok, a dance by the dancer I Ketut Marya, found in the Bali 1928 archive. As a monumental dance in its time, Igel Jongkok is intended to serve as one of the ways to unfold the conversation about squatting within the frame of colonial gestures, a transitional situation that moves in a circular manner, and the possibilities it offers to be a continuation of local culture.

How was the social construction of the squatting gesture during the colonial period intervened by dances based on squatting behavior? How did the individual innovation of the Igel Jongkok dance grow into a communal tradition in society? How is the relationship between squatting in daily life and squatting in dance? And how is squatting today?