'Bedhaya Prabu Wibawa', a tribute to Yogyakarta king

'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.