Balinese artist Ni Ketut Cenik dances from her heart

Balinese artist Ni Ketut Cenik dances from her heart

By I Wayan Juniartha

TIRTAGANGGA, Bali (JP): Without any doubt, Ni Ketut Cenik is
one of the most loved dancers in Bali.

When it was announced she would close the Milleniart Cultural
Festival and the Nusantara Cultural Festival's opening ceremony
at Tirtagangga water palace last Thursday with the Joged Pingitan
dance from the Calonarang story, the majority of the audience sat
agape with anxiety. The festival will be held until Oct. 19 in
different places. In Jakarta, it will start on Oct. 12.

It was already 10.15 p.m. and the one-hour dance would require
extraordinary stamina, certainly for a 79-year-old dancer.

Some spectators approached the open-air stage to watch closely
or to get ready should something happen. "If Meme (mother)
collapses we are ready," said a young man who had known the
dancer for many years.

An hour later Cenik showed that the spirit could overcome
anything. She enthralled the audience with her movements, stage
mastery and interpretation, typical of a maestro.

She switched from character to character, ranging from Walu
Nateng Dirah, Raja, Patih, or Rangda and Barong. "It is
extraordinary. She dances for herself. The dance is herself,"
said Miranda, a spectator.

Tirtagangga, the water palace used by the Karangasem nobility
as a recreation place in former times, burst into loud applause
in praise of Cenik, who stood erect at the end of the performance
bringing her hands to her chest to respect the audience before
leaving the stage.

Scores of spectators approached her, trying to shake her
hands, including the Karangasem regent I Ketut Mertha, who
jokingly referred to Cenik's age. "Are you really 79? From your
hip movements I would say you were 27," he said while swaying his
own hips.

Cenik greeted admiration toward her with smile. But she shed
tears in her dressing room. While taking off her gelungan (head
gear made of flowers) she blurted out, "I am very happy, many
people love me, so many like my dances, do they not?"

Born into a very poor family, she had no time to learn dancing
because she had to tend her neighbors' cows.

Cenik said she was so poor as a child that she rarely ate
rice. "I often only ate sentul or belimbing (star fruit)," she
said. The sentul fruit is a kind of kecapi fruit with the inside
like the mangosteen.

Nevertheless, she could not deny the call to dance. Every time
she heard the gamelan musical instruments played by young men
training at the banjar (neighborhood organization), Cenik felt
the urge to dance. Sometimes, she danced with movements she
fancied in a plantation or beside rice fields. She danced by
herself, without a teacher or an audience.

"The neighbors were often angry because their cows and ducks
in my care went everywhere while I was dancing by myself," Cenik
said.

In the evening she used to watch dance and gamelan exercises.
Sometimes she fell asleep near the gamelan. She had only one
wish, to become a dancer of joged pingitan, a sacred dance often
presented in religious rituals in her village Batuan, Gianyar.

"But I did not dare to speak up because I was thin, poor and
very dirty. Who wants such a dancer?"

Besides, the village had already selected a girl, Cenik's
friend, to become a joged pingitan dancer.

But her opportunity opened up when the selected girl got sick
and did not come to rehearsals. It was then the gamelan players
offered her to become the dancer. "They had not finished talking
when I already said 'yes'...," she recalled.

A problem occurred later when Ni Cenik was considered impudent
toward her dance instructor, I Kuwir, making him get angry and
refuse to teach anymore.

Cenik was left to herself crying because all the gamelan
players vented their anger on her. Luckily at that time a
pemangku, religious dignitary, came and asked the players to stop
their anger.

"At the time, Kak Mangku wanted to give a sesajen kepelan
(offering made of a fistful of rice). When the offering was
presented I ate the kepelan while I was crying," she said.

The pemangku challenged the gamelan players to test if it was
possible to make a dancer out of the small Cenik. A composition
was played and Cenik was asked to name its title. Trembling as
she was, Cenik did not know the names of the compositions
although she had often heard them.

"Suddenly a voice, I had no idea where it came from, whispered
in my ears and told me about the titles," she said.

The gamelan players were astounded to hear her naming the
titled precisely. It was then they realized Cenik was not just an
ordinary child.

Since then, the small Cenik, selected as a joged pingitan
dancer, was left to herself without a dance instructor to dance
as she wished.

And she showed she was capable of becoming a metaksu dancer, a
dancer with a magic aura.

She has not only performed at Batuan village, but, although
Cenik does not recall when and on what occasion, she also
appeared in Germany, France and Holland a few years ago.

Ni Cenik herself cannot explain about the "voices" who have
counseled her until today. She only said that the voices came
from Sang Hyang Embang. Embang in Balinese can mean empty, silent
or spacious.

It is also not clear whether Ni Cenik dared to dance the
Calonarang dance at Tirtagangga because of the help of the
"voices".

The Balinese strongly believe that the dancer presenting the
Calonarang will be tested for his or her ilmu (knowledge).

Stories about the Calonarang dancer in trance, falling ill,
and even dying when dancing the part, abound in Bali, especially
in Karangasem, which has been known a long time as the center of
leak, Balinese black magic.

"Why should we be afraid to do the dance if we are right. Many
people believe I have supernatural powers or a jimat (amulet),
but I only adhere loyally to three things: honesty, propriety
and lemet (softness). What is soft will not break," she said.

Cenik has danced the Calonarang in Karangasem four times and
is still willing to dance if asked.

She admitted the "voices" always informed her every time there
was something suspicious. For example, when she danced at
Ketewel, Gianyar, the "voices" told her that four people among
the audience were going to test her.

"I knew I was going to be tested. Before dancing I saluted
toward them saying in my heart that I knew their intention," she
said.

As soon as Cenik started dancing, the four men, who were
sitting at different places, fainted.

At Tirtagangga, Cenik also knew that somebody would disturb
her dance. Some 10 minutes after she started the dance, a young
man crossed the stage leisurely before shouting mockingly toward
her, "Durga, Durga." Durga is the god of death with supernatural
powers and who gives it to Calonarang.

After the dance, when Cenik headed for the dressing room, the
young man passed her again, this time telling her to look for
leak at the cemetery.

Nothing happened to Cenik. She was not in a trance, did not
collapse, fall ill or die.

However, Cenik admitted her strength and stamina were not as
they used to be. But for her, dance is not a matter of strength
or stamina but rather a matter of feeling and the heart,
comprehension and seriousness. And, of course intelligence.

She used the Legong Festival at the Indonesian Arts Institute
in Denpasar as an example four years back.

At that time, Cenik, who had a solo performance, refused to
use the whole stage, which could accommodate tens of dancers, and
made her own stage marked by a circle measuring two arm lengths
and using chalk. She then danced inside the circle only but
succeeded in attracting the audience's whole attention. Her dance
practically "submerged" dances performed by other groups.

"I have no strength to cover the whole stage, so I emphasized
more on my movements and good concentration," she said.

Her declining strength and old age do not prevent the
grandmother of 11 and the great-grandmother of three from
continuing dancing. She now spends her days teaching dancing to
employees of the Tugu hotels in Bali, Surabaya and Malang, or
watching Sekar, the only grandchild who has inherited her magic
aura. Sekar give's dance instructions to Japanese students.

"If grandmother does not dance she will have a headache and
become ill. If she dances, even as far as in Surabaya or Malang,
she immediately feels healthy," said Nyoman Mustika, one of her
grandchildren.

Cenik, who traveled from Batuan to Tirtagangga, 80 kms away,
for the show, returned to her home in Batuan right after the show
at midnight. With the two hours trip, she arrived home before
sunrise. But she did not look tired, she keeps smiling. It was
because she danced with her heart.