'Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa', a tribute to Yogyakarta king

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Many people would find a traditional dance performance as classic and sacred as the royal dance Bedhaya hard to appreciate, much less understand.

But Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa, which was performed on July 27 to celebrate the golden anniversary of Siswa Among Beksa Javanese traditional dance school and dedicated to the late king Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX -- the dance school's patron, was more entertaining and innovative.

The dance portrayed the king during the first years of Indonesian independence, from his role in the historic public attack in Yogyakarta on March 1, 1959 until the time he was awarded the title of national hero by the government in 1990.

The Yogyakarta Palace's senior Javanese classic dance choreographer Bray Yudanagara, who is also Hamengkubuwono IX's sister-in-law, created the dance mostly based on her own experience while she was staying in the palace and her observations of the many things that happened while Hamengkubuwono IX was still the king of Yogyakarta Palace.

That explains why, for example, she was able to tell through the dance how Hamengkubuwono IX got really very angry when two Dutch generals visiting the palace insisted on entering the Kaputren, part of the palace where only female members of the noble family lived.

"Over my dead body," Hamengkubuwono IX was quoted as responding to the two Dutch generals' request, as told by the macakandha, or the male narrator of the dance, who alternately told the story to the audience with pesinden or female singers accompanying the gamelan orchestra.

The way this particular Bedhaya told the story, with the macakandha and the pesinden telling the story alternately, was something that made Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa unique compared to other Bedhaya dances.

In other Bedhaya, the macakandha only narrates the story at the beginning of the dance and the audience later follows the story through dance movements or the pesinden's songs. So it is usually the pesinden who tells the rest of the story through her songs.

Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa was also different in the way the accompanying gamelan music was played. In other Bedhaya dances, the accompanying music is usually played at the same volume throughout the performance -- right from the beginning to the end. In Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa, however, it was not the case.

Although the accompanying music also consisted of two main pieces of the great gendhing ladrang and gendhing ketawang -- just like those used in other Bedhaya dance performances, the music was played differently in Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa performance.

At times, the music was loud, while at other times, it was very soft, or even completely stopped for a little while as if to allow the audience to hear the narration of the macakandha's or the pesinden more clearly.

"That will help the audience understand the dance more easily especially with the help of the macakandha's narration or the pesinden's songs," said Yudanagara, who started choreographing the dance some five years back.

"I actually wanted to start the story from the time when Hamengkubuwowo IX was crowned Sultan of Yogyakarta Palace. But I was only given some three-fourths of the 60-minute performance to tell the story," Yudanagara told a press conference held ahead of the performance, explaining why she started the story with the scene when Yogyakarta was capital of the newly independent Republic of Indonesia.

In a Bedhaya dance, only three-fourths of the whole performance is used to tell stories the dance wants to tell. The first quarter of the dance is usually used to introduce the dance's philosophy.

The interesting thing about Bedhaya dances are they are performed by nine female dancers -- all wearing the same costumes. It would not be easy for an inexperienced audience to recognize the roles of each dancer, thus making it difficult for them to follow the story simply by watching the dance movements. In fact, a Bedhaya dancer can shift from one character to another during the performance, depending on the scene.

Bedhaya fans say that watching the dance is meditative, while ordinary people would find the dance exhausting.

Yudanagara -- who has also choreographed a number of Bedhaya dances including Bedhaya Manten (performed at the great wedding of Hamengkubuwono X's first daughter recently) and Bedhaya Arjuna Wiwaha (performed at the crowning ceremony) -- seems to have succeeded in making the sacred dance more entertaining to watch.

For example, she offered more varied floor formations for the 60-minute dance staged in front of an audience of one thousand.

The much older Bedhaya dances were usually dominated mostly by rakit gelar and rakit tiga-tiga floor formations, Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa was presented in various floor formations by the nine dancers wearing white batik cloth of barong parikesit gurdo motif, dark purple sleeveless blouses with golden thread embroidery and plumes on their heads.

At times, the dancers moved in one big circle formation with a dancer or two dancing inside the circle and then quickly shifted into a formation resembling a double pointed arrow. At another time, some of them danced in a smaller circle while another danced in a line on either side of the circle.