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.