Penciptaan Karya Tari melalui Adaptasi Narasi Cerita Rakyat Zimbo

The background of this dance work stems from the importance of preserving Simalungun culture by featuring legends that form the identity of the Simalungun ethnic group. Although many Simalungun legends are rich in meaning and cultural values, the main challenge is how to adapt these stories into dance works that contemporary society can accept without losing their essence and meaning. This study aims to produce a dance work through movement techniques based on the principles of Jacqueline Smith-Autard’s theory, which uses a structural or constructive approach to dance creation and likens it to building a sentence in a language, in which the choreographer must start from the smallest unit until it becomes a complete dance work. This theory is then combined with Alma M. Hawkins’s choreographic method , which divides the creative process into three essential phases: exploration, improvisation, and forming (construction). The research was carried out in three stages: (1) a literature study and analysis of the Zimbo legend, (2) development of the dance concept by applying construction methods I–V, and (3) creation and testing of the dance work through collaboration with dancers to evaluate how effectively the story is conveyed. The resulting output is the Zimbo dance work, which is creative, innovative, and relevant to the development of dance, thereby contributing to the preservation of Simalungun culture.