Back to Ritual: Virtual Indonesian Dance Performance on Social Media During Covid-19 Pandemic

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic that hit Indonesia in early 2020 has become an important history in the life of dance in Indonesia. Restrictions on dance performance activities have become a major challenge for dance artists. Creative choreographers began exploring virtual spaces to find solutions so that they could continue to work. Dance performances have emerged on social media since March 2020. From the works that emerged at the beginning of the Covid-19 period, the dance function for ritual needs was strengthened. The purpose of this research is to examine how the Covid-19 event can restore the function of dance from performing arts and entertainment to rituals, how the pandemic influences the meaning of the dance cycle, and how the virtualization of dance is related to changes in the function and cycle of dance in Indonesia. This study uses a historical method with stages of heuristics, criticism, interpretation, and historiography. Heuristics is carried out by tracking dance works, especially those of famous Indonesian choreographers that are uploaded on social media, literature studies, and interviews. The data are selected, its validity and credibility are criticized, and then interpreted and ended with historiography, namely, writing the research results. The results of this study show that the Covid-19 pandemic has returned the cycle of dance functions from entertainment and performance to rituals. The pandemic has given important meaning to the virtualization of dance and the dance cycle. This is in line with Ibn Kaldun's cycle theory, which views social change as a repetitive, cyclical process. Likewise, Sorokin's opinion (2015) states that sociocultural history is a varied circle