Empowering Indonesian Dance Performer In Contributing To Creative Economy Program

Abstract

The city of Solo is very well known as the city of culture with various numbers of arts performed and developed in this city. Regarding this, the government attempts to contribute to the creative economy program to increase the standard of living of its citizens and facilitate them to generate their income from their creative skills in art. Therefore, this paper presents the results of the study of empowering dance performers in contributing to creative economy programs and some factors affecting the empowerment process. The descriptive qualitative with grounded research was employed as a research design of this study by utilizing three research instruments, namely observation, interviews with the manager and dance performers, and document analysis to support the results of the interview and observation. The participants of this study are a manager and a group of dance performers from one dance studio in Solo, Indonesia. The data were analysed by referring to the principles of the creative economy and the theory of empowerment art performers. The results of the study reveal that the manager and the dance performers work separately in conducting the dance performance. The manager does not provide sufficient information about the events, goals of the performance, and the number of the salary that they will receive from their performance. The dance performers only dance based on the instruction of the manager and they fulfil their interest in dance art performance and following the entertainment purposes, without considering the economic aspects that they will gain to support their daily lives. Several factors influence the empowerment of dancers, such as the awareness of managers and dancers in generating income from their talents. The dance performers should change their mindset from dancing for entertainment purposes to dancing for commercial purposes. By doing so, the dance performers will be able to support their daily needs and increase the quality of their life.