Guismiati Suid of the Gumarang Sakti dance company and Maxine Heppner were inspired by each others' work from their first meeting in 1990. Ibu Suid was a visionary of Indonesian contemporary dance contemporizing the powerful movement and martial arts of West Sumatra Minangkabau that was the foundation of her own dance expression. Ibu Suid often invited Maxine to her artists' residence in rural Depok, south of Jakarta,  to view and participate in the Gumarang Sakti process. These exchanges deeply influenced Maxine particularly regarding notions of cyclical time and the power of contained energy.  

After a productive exchange in 1998 with Maxine studying the sources of Gumarang Sakti movement with Davit Fitrik and Yassy Aprianti, the Gedung Kesenian Jakarta commissioned  Gusmiati and Maxine to make a full evening work as a co-creation. Two creation periods were set for  1999. The first 3 weeks in Depok yielded exciting music and dance foundations for the work. Just as the two companies were to regroup in Toronto, Gusmiati shockingly passed away. After the mourning period Gumarang Sakti company was temporarily dismantled. A year passed before the project could begin to be re-structured. A deep investigation between 2 creators and their dedicated interpreters became a much broader collaboration. Maxine with interpreters Susan Lee, Jessica Runge, Louis Laberge-Cote, and composer Andrew Timar as music director, came from Canada to continue the creative work with Davit Fitrik and Beny Kusimardi from Gumarang Sakti as well as Eko Supryanto (known from a UCLA project) and Chendra Penatan and Mira Tedja (from past Kreativitet work) in residence at the generous Studio Hanafi to finish the work in honour of Ibu Gusimiati Suid.

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The Jakarta premiere of Sakti (meaning sacred) was in 2002. The Toronto premiere was sytmied by both political and economic crisis in Indonesia barring the Indonesian dance and music collaborators from travelling, So the piece was reworked with a Toronto cast and Maxine renamed the work North of Java (both the name of Timar's musical composition, and a reflection of the work's journey), premiering this iteration in 2003 at the celebration of 50 years of Canada-Indonesia friendship and cooperation the the Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan playing live.