OCEAN CAGE starts in Lamalera, also known as “The Land Left Behind”. It’s a fishing village on the island of Lembata in eastern Indonesia. This village is unique in that it is one of the last places in the world where people live off whale fishing. “Baleo! Baleo!” Whether asking the wind to rise, their ancestors to protect them or the whales to surrender, the Lamalerans use rituals to transcend reality and uphold hope.
Rooted in the stories of this village, the duo combines video, dance, performance and music to invite the audience to immerse in this oceanic, animal and spiritual universe. The protagonist of the piece, Siko Setyanto, embodies various divine, human or animist figures. Alongside them, Kadapat and Nova Ruth, both Indonesian musicians. Tradition and ecology, beliefs, spirituality and technology all coexist in symbiosis, for the better.

Tianzhuo Chen was born in Beijing, China in 1985 and has been living in Berlin since August 2022. He graduated in fine arts from Saint Martins and Chelsea College in London. In 2012, he returned to China, where he had a series of exhibitions that grew his reputation. With Chen’s first overseas exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2015, he became known in Europe. In the following years, Chen produced performances and exhibitions around the world and showed several of his works in Germany, including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

Siko Setyanto is a dancer and choreographer from Jakarta, Indonesia. He chose dance as a means of expression, opening up the opportunity to work extensively in multidisciplinary arts. Siko began his training at the age of nine with Wied Sendjayani at the Sanggar Maniratari, Solo. The diversity of Indonesian culture in which Siko grew up and the opportunity to participate in jazz and ballet training as a child provide a strong foundation for Siko’s dance and choreographic vocabulary. Siko founded the DRKR Kolektif as a medium for the exchange of information about contemporary dance, a network of dancers from Aceh to Papua, and as a training center for dancers and to support young choreographers. In mid-2020, he co-founded Dansity Dance Company, which is dedicated to the setup of a professional contemporary dance company in Jakarta. He currently works as a dancer and choreographer with Eun Me Ahn Company in South Korea and regularly with Gabber Modus Operandi. He has worked with Tianzhuo Chen on the productions TRANCE and PHYSIS, where he was responsible for the development of the choreography in addition to his role as a dancer/performer. He has been a member of the Jakarta Arts Council Dance Committee since 2020.