Otniel Tasman

Otniel Tasman is a young choreographer, performing artist, and dance festival producer from the Banyumas region of Central Java, Indonesia.

For 13 years, they have immersed themselves in the exploration of gender conflict through the traditional Banyumas Lengger dance — a ritual performed by male dancers in female attire, embodying indigenous symbols of fertility, spirituality, and cosmology.

While Western anthropologists label Lengger as a “queer performance” due to its male practitioners expressing femininity, they firmly resist this categorization. They emphasize that their culture possesses its own native history and perception of gender, distinct from contemporary socio-political identities. Through Lengger, they draw on the traditional cosmological understanding of the dance to deconstruct ideologies, challenge norms, and explore messages of bodily freedom and justice.

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