Life as in a dance
SUSAN PHILIP analyses poems in the SPM English Literature syllabus to help students taking the paper appreciate them.
| DANCE By FADZILAH AMIN We are like partners in the ronggeng, And like the ronggeng too, my life seems now, I am tired of going through these ronggeng motions,
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This poem describes a relationship which has broken down in some way; the two people involved are not separated, but they do not seem to be communicating with each other. They come almost to the point of confronting each other and speaking, touching each other emotionally, but then at the last moment turn away from each other.
The poet uses simile to describe this relationship. Like a metaphor, a simile compares two things which seem dissimilar, but have something in common. The difference is that a simile makes a comparison, while a metaphor states that the two things are the same. Robert Burns uses simile to describe his lover by comparing her to a freshly blooming red rose (“My love is like a red, red rose/ That’s newly sprung in June”).
Here, the relationship between the two people is compared to the steps of a dance, the ronggeng. The first stanza describes the movements of the dance: the two partners approach, and just as it would seem that they are going to meet, they turn and move away from each other.
The poet says that the two partners come “nearer, nearer and nearer”; the repetition of the words builds up suspense, with the readers expecting that they will come together “at last”. However, this expectation is not met. The poet describes the physical movement of turning away and reversing.
The use of the word “withdraw” suggests that the two ‘dancers’ are pulling away from each other emotionally. The poet has thus moved from the idea of purely physical withdrawal, to emotional withdrawal.
The poet expands on this idea in stanza two, comparing her life to the “mechanical” and “meaningless” steps of the ronggeng. The female persona seems to be quite active – her “Arms swinging back and forth”, “Feet pacing up and down”. This suggests that in her life, she is kept very busy.
However, all this activity is fundamentally meaningless to her, “expressing nothing”, “going nowhere” despite all the movement. She is literally ‘going through the motions’, doing what she is meant to do, but emotionally and spiritually she feels empty.
Stanza three tells us why she feels this emptiness and lack of meaning. It is because she and her partner do not communicate. They are trapped in a mechanical routine, tracing the same old steps and doing the same old things. Like the ronggeng, in which the partners do not touch, she and her partner do not touch each other emotionally. They are divided by an “impasse of reserve”.
The female persona wishes that their “hands would clasp”, that is, that they could break out from the uncommunicative, mechanical dance steps in which they are trapped. If that were to happen, their lives would be filled with a “rich variety of movement and gesture” which would be exciting rather than mechanical and meaningless.
Compared to the repetitive movement of “Arms swinging back and forth” and “Feet pacing up and down”, they would be able to move differently, breaking down the distance between them.
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