Ancient 'Gambuh' performance still charms

Mas Ruscitadewi and I Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Denpasar, Bali

It has every potential to be a boring performance. From the way the performers danced their movements, which was excruciatingly slow, the incomprehensible words and sentences of the ancient language they sung, up to the same old story line of princes and princesses with a predictable happy-ending.

It was a Gambuh performance, a dance drama so old that several experts on Balinese arts claimed it to be the primal mother of all Balinese performing dances-dramas.

Yet, the fact that hundreds of people flocked to Gambuh performances recently presented in the ongoing 24th Bali Arts Festival, which will last until July 20, surely proved that this ancient theater still has what it takes to draw in an audience and to glue them to their seats.

The first performance was from the Budakeling, a small village in Karangasem regency. Known as the Brahmin village, since most of its population are of the high-caste Brahmana Boda clan, Budakeling has been known for long for it's rich literary heritage and tradition.

That their performance was both lively and refined, sentences in ancient Jawa Kuna language melodiously flowed from the lips of each dancers, and their movements were true to the age-old rules of Gambuh, were just another example that Budakeling was not just an ordinary Balinese village.

On the other hand, the second performance, which was from the village of Bilatua in Buleleng regency, provided the audience with a good example of how creative the Buleleng people could be.

This northern coastal regency has long been known for its "different" way of tackling and presenting the traditional performances. Its people, and artists of course, who, by nature, were more egalitarian than their siblings in Southern Bali, always have a way to silently revolt against the court-centered traditional dance dramas of Southern Bali and transform them into a more-or-less popular folk theater.

And, Gambuh was no exception to them. The Gambuh of Bilatua abandoned most of the complicated Jawa Kuna sentences and dance movements. Instead, they used contemporary Balinese language, with heavy Buleleng accents, of course, and simple dance movements.

The Bilatua also gave bigger space and longer time to the court's joker characters, who with their hilarious repartee on sex, tourism development, current political issues, and sex again, gave a heavy down-to-the earth nuance to the performance.

"The two performances remind us all on the diverse and rich cultural heritage we have here in Bali. The same dance drama is being understood, presented, and appreciated differently in various places in Bali, and we should be proud of it, instead of trying to suppress these cultural variations and to unify them into one single rigid structure," a cultural observer Sugi B Lanus said.

The origin of Gambuh can be traced back into the East Java's Majapahit Kingdom era, some 600 years ago, in the form of the masked dance-drama Raket, which drew its inspiration from court- centered Panji stories.

"When that great kingdom fell, some of it's leading artists might have escaped to Bali and brought with them the elements of the dance-drama. Another source mentioned that Gambuh had already existed in Bali in the 12th century during the reign of King Anak Wungsu," said Prof. Made Bandem, whose book Ensiklopedi Tari Bali (Balinese Dance Encyclopedia) has became a sort of holy book on Balinese traditional dance.

He said that it was Gambuh that provided the dramatic structure for ancient Balinese dances, and later on gave birth to numerous classical dance-dramas such as Topeng, Arja and Prembon.

"To call Gambuh as the mother of Balinese dance is not an exaggeration," Bandem said. Initially, he added, only adult-male performers could participate in a Gambuh performance.

The dance composition and the dramatic structure are not the only elements that make Gambuh an excellent dance-drama. Since most of the dialog was presented in the form of song, the musical elements, both the composition and the instruments, play a significant role in Gambuh.

Among the instruments, it is the 1.5-meter long bamboo flute that gives the Gambuh it's unique melody. So substantial is the role of this bamboo flute that the dance-drama itself was, in fact, named after the flute's name, Gambuh.

Each Gambuh musical ensemble usually has two to four Gambuh flutes, played by adult males almost continuously during the performance.

The flute produces a low-pitched soft melody, which could best be described as the sound between anguish and melancholy.

"When you get bored in the middle of the real Gambuh performance, which can last from three to six hours, all you have to do is close your eyes and let yourself be immersed by the haunting melody of these flutes," a Gambuh enthusiast said.

A 1973 record stated there were only 11 active Gambuh troupes in Bali. Currently, the best known Gambuh troupes are from Pedungan village (Badung regency), Batuan and Kedisan villages (Gianyar regency), Anturan and Depaa villages (Bulleng regency), and Jungsri village (Karangasem regency).