Cenik, the last classic Balinese dancer

By Intan Petersen

DENPASAR, Bali (JP): As the music started, Ni Ketut Cenik moved lightly and fluently to the center of the stage. The eerie tones of the gamelan sounded and echoed. As if by magic, Cenik was transformed.

It was as if her old self had vanished, replaced by a completely new, entranced one. Her hands took on a dance of their own as her body twisted and turned in the highly stylized movements that characterize Balinese dance.

Her command of the stage held the audience spellbound. The movements of the fans in her hands electrified, a feeling that prevailed through the rest of her performance.

The performance lasted 55 minutes. The applause seemed endless. The 75-year-old dancer cupped her head in her hands, apparently in disbelief the response was meant for her. She bent down and said goodbye to her audience. Awash in tears she wandered round to the back of the stage, driven by her emotions.

To date, many people still remember Cenik's great performance of Joged Pingitan during the Legong Festival at the Denpasar Institute of Indonesian Arts. It often pops up in daily conversations.

"To be honest, I felt embarrassed," she said, almost a year later, "because I am too old. There are so many young dancers but none of them are able to perform this classic dance from the heart," she said. "That's why they still need an old dancer like me on stage."

Along with the declining number of young Balinese who can perform the classical dance of Bali, the old dancers have gone one by one. In their absence, Bali's classical dance suffers from a lack of good, devoted dancers. Many died before they could hand down their values and craft to younger dancers. Take for example the Legong Keraton dancer, Ni Ketut Reneng, who passed away in 1990, or Made Geruh who is very ill. Today a lot of young Balinese are more interested in creating new, modern dances which are becoming detached from tradition.

What remains beyond doubt is that Cenik's heart will always be with dancing.

"People always ask me, how much longer I will dance," she said. "I dance for the sake of rituals and art, and not money. Some artists say they dance for themselves, but I always do it first for the gods and then for the public. I still feel the magic."

The celebrated dances, such as Legong Keraton and Baris, which have contributed so much to the fame of Bali are not merely a spectacle to be watched, but also a ritual to be enacted. Indeed, dance in Bali is not intended solely for human audiences, for the visible world (sekala). Among a huge crowd of spectators one may feel the presence, no less attentive, of the beings of the invisible world (niskala), who share with the Balinese a keen taste for lively festivals and fine performances. In this respect, Balinese dance is at once an offering to the gods and entertainment for the people.

Cenik, whose late husband I Nyoman Rener was also a dancer, has not performed seriously since last year's performance. She is undergoing a difficult transition. "Nothing really prepares you for being a former dancer," she said.

To be old is hard in general, she continued. "You can't move like when you were young. There are aches and pains. When I was young, people would ask me about death and I would shrug. It was too abstract. Now it is real. I can feel it pushing me from behind," she said. "But I'm ready."

Cenik was sitting in a Bale Dauh small village hall, watching her students rehearsing in her hometown of Batuan, 10 kilometers from Denpasar. Here, at home, she was giving a free dancing lesson to students, including some foreigners, who came from all over the island.

"So many changes have happened here," she commented on Batuan, the village where she was born and in which she still lives. Batuan is today one of the principal centers of the arts in Bali. It was in the 1930s when it started specializing in the tourist craft. It now produces miniature paintings, wooden reliefs and foremost, dancers, with as many as five to 10 troupes taking to the road every day to perform in front of international audiences. From Ubud to Sanur and Nusa Dua, the Batuan dance troupes are well known, but few individuals can boast the fame and notoriety of Cenik and her multi-talented son, Made Djimat, to date the most famous Baris dancer on the island.

"But just like many other dancers today, these dancers from Batuan are dancing for the tourists, they have to comply with what the hotels and tourists want," she said. "They always shorten the dances," she continued.

"If they carry on cutting short the dances for tourists, soon there will be nothing left," she said.

She told the story of what happened when the Pendet dance was performed for U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1986, when he was visiting the island.

"It went from 10 to seven minutes, but the White House said that even that was too long. The President saw a two-minute Pendet!" she complained.

It is obvious that she is always well informed about the dance world on the island.

"Those dancers are scared of making the tourists feel bored and also they think that those tourists do not understand anything about Balinese dances and don't want to see a long dance," she said.

Cenik has also observed another interesting phenomenon in Bali's cultural climate. As the tourist industry prevails in Balinese life, it is now called "cultural tourism". Art, which is part of the culture, is now packaged for commercial purposes. In fact, many artists exploit culture to meet commercial demands.

She has never completely tired of debating the slashing of the dances, especially at hotels. It is a fact that the dance companies of Bali are expert at understanding just what it is that the tourist wants, and at hotels all over the island performances are tailor-made to satisfy the market.

Cenik devotes her life to dancing and this has taken her to many countries, including Germany, Holland and France. But fame has not changed her life much. People often see her wearing only a sarong, leaving her breasts bare like many old Balinese women in remote villages.

She lives simply, even though she has also collected many awards, including the Wijaya Kusuma Award from the regent of Gianyar in 1982 and the Dharma Kusuma Madya Award in 1987 and the Dharma Kusuma Award in 1988 from the governor of Bali.

"I want to get an award from President Soeharto like the others, but I don't know how to get it," she confessed.

She enjoys telling everyone she meets the story of her early years.

"When my first son, Made Djimat, was born, that was the only thing we had in the family, him and my talent. Those years after independence were very difficult years in Bali. Rice was scarce. At that time I was already famous in the Bali world of temple festivals, and taught dance around the island from Karang Asem to Ubud. At that time there was no transportation like today and I had to walk to those villages," she recalled.

"I danced and taught for a week, eating only local vegetables and fruits, and after I finished teaching, the village host would give me 10 or 20 kilos of rice to bring home, just enough to last for a few days," she said. "I walked and carried Djimat on my back."

People who know her always notice how her eyes become starry when she talks about Made Djimat, the only one of her three sons who has inherited her talent.

"My other two sons can dance, but cannot perform. Even Nyoman Batuan is working as a guide now, he does not care about dancing," she hissed.

Dance in Bali has been one of the premier attractions for visitors to the island since the 1930s and remains so. And the aging Cenik, more than any other dancer on the island, has done much to draw attention to Bali's ancient and varied art form.

She is adored by audiences, praised by critics, admired by choreographers. But what people do not comprehend is that she is the best at what she does because she performs from the depth of her soul.