Jakarta National Theatre at CalArts

In many ways, Indonesia is a melting pot to rival the United States. Influences from China to the Middle East could be seen and heard in the Sumatran music and dance presented Thursday evening at CalArts by Sangrina Bunda, the Jakarta National Dance Theatre of Indonesia.

Making its first U.S. tour, the company was bedeviled by production problems and the very real limitations of the CalArts Main Gallery as a formal dance venue.

But through sheer individual and collective charisma, radiating friendliness and joy in the doing, the company converted the liabilities of constricted space and a noisy audience into the assets of intimacy and informality, creating against long odds a shared, communal event.

Similarly, lithe and eloquent movement itself ultimately overcame problems with costumes, props, lighting and sound.

In its larger gestures, the traditional dances choreographed by Tom Ibnur were fluid and contained, whether in the ceremonial simplicity of the Tari Pasambahan Welcome Dance or more sharply accented in the Tari Rantak Stamping Dance, with its movements based on the local self-defense art, or expanded gymnastically in the Tari Piring Plate Dance.

But it was in smaller, amazingly liquid hand gestures that the dances became truly magical. Even burdened with fans, plates and candles, the dancers’ hands provided a continuous visual obbligato, reinforcing, accenting and elaborating the slower, supple body movement.

Though the company lists 18 dancers, the bulk of the dancing was done in small groups, whether by wise design or practical concession to the narrow space. The biggest, gaudiest effort was the concluding New Year’s Ceremony, with 10 dancers at one time.

Much of the accompanying music was taped, and revealed the pervasive influence of Western pop music. The company includes its own talempong ensemble, however, a sort of minigamelan. It supported some of the dances, and backed company director Elly Kasim in four folk songs, odd combinations of Western harmonic progressions and distinctly untempered, Sumatran melodic patterns.