Professor Dr. Mohd Anis Md Nor

Biography

Professor Dr. Mohd Anis Md Nor is a retired Professor of Ethnochoreology and Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Sunway University. He is the Managing Director of Nusantara Performing Arts Research Centre in Kuala Lumpur, a non-profit organization, which awards grants to individual scholars and focuses on research, documentation, and publication of traditional and contemporary performing arts of Southeast Asia. He earned his B.A. Honors from the University of Malaya, M.A. (Dance Ethnology) from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and PhD. (Southeast Asia Studies and Musicology) from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Professor Dr. Mohd Anis Md Nor has pioneered the study of Zapin dance and music in Southeast Asia and has published widely on the said topic. Although his foremost research area deals with Malay dance and music in Southeast Asia, his current studies are on the interfacing of dance traditions among the Malayo-Polynesian societies in Southeast Asia and Polynesia and the making of new traditions through contemporary performances. He has published more than 20 books, 93 chapters/articles, and 151 keynotes/conference papers on the performing arts of Malaysia and Southeast Asia focusing on music, dance and theater. Professor Dr. Mohd Anis Md Nor is the former Secretary General of World Dance Alliance (WDA Americas, WDA Asia Pacific and WDA Europe); Past Chair of the ICTM Study group on Performing Arts of Southeast Asia (ICTM PASEA) (as a non -governmental organization in formal consultative relations with UNESCO); Past President of World Dance Alliance – Asia Pacific (WDA-AP); National Advisor to MyDance (World Dance Alliance- Asia Pacific Malaysia Chapter); and Artist-in-Residence/Consultant to the Johor Heritage Foundation. He was appointed as the Advisory Committee of the Islamic World Arts Initiative (IWAI) supported by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art for the period of2004-2005. He was the 2007-2008 William Allan Neilson Distinguish Professor of Music, Dance and Theatre at Smith College, Northampton, Mass. USA; and the 2011 Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan sponsored by the School of Music, Dance and Theatre, Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Center for World Performance Studies. He was awarded a European Union Erasmus Mundus Fellowship in 2012 by the European Union to take up the position of a Visiting Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology at Trondheim, Norway, for the 2012-2013 Winter Semester; and was the Program Committee Co-Chair for the 70 th ICTM Anniversary and 44 th ICTM World Conference (2017) in University of Limerick, Ireland.

 

 

 

Keynote is scheduled for DAY 1, 10:00am

Engaging Ronggeng Community: Reviving Malay Social Dance and Music Practices in the 21st Century

 

 

Ronggeng Melayu is a genre of music and social dance popular in the twentieth century. Between the 1930s and 1940s, Ronggeng was performed extensively on the dance floor (Ronggeng stage) at amusement parks in Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore, as well as at various social events in urban and rural areas. By the 1950s, Ronggeng music and social dance gave way to newer repertoires and choreographies in Malay films.  Ronggeng began to experience a serious decline in the 1960s and 1970s, when new popular music repertoires and Malay art dances were re-arranged and created from the original Ronggeng Melayu repertoires for cultural performances, distancing participants from the music halls and dance floors to proscenium theaters, almost banishing Ronggeng Melayu from being an extent tradition. As a result, this highly dynamic form of popular music and social dance have dwindled to smaller groups of Ronggeng practitioners in Kedah, Penang, and Melaka to be seen and performed at weddings and closed social events. However, all is not lost. Ronggeng began to see its revival in the 21st century through a Ronggeng investigative research by a group of scholars from University of Malaya in 2013-2015 and through the efforts of Nusantara Performing Arts Research Center to revive Ronggeng, supported by CENDANA (Cultural Economy Development Agency) in 2019-2021. The rationale for engaging Ronggeng communitas in the 21st Century is that the social dance and music of Ronggeng Melayu embodies a praxis of indigenous knowledge with the significant potential to contribute to understanding economic, social, and political issues affecting the region at present and in the future.