Modern reconstruction of Balinese dances

Modern reconstruction of Balinese dances

By Benito Lopulalan

DENPASAR (JP): Dancers come and go, but its tradition that
feeds and bonds the movement. This cliche is half-true in Bali.
While several dances have laid dormant, others have been lost in
the rush of time.

The mortality of dance is a reality anywhere. In Bali, dance
has played a major role in developing the island's image as an
anthropological and tourist paradise.

"In the sixties there were only three versions of the Legong
dance left," comments Dr. Made Bandem, currently director of the
Indonesian Academy of Arts in Denpasar. "With at least 15
versions of Legong, this figure was not impressive."

The impending threat to the dance raised concern, both for
cultural and tourism reasons. "It was therefore decided to
reconstruct some of the dormant versions of the dance. We have
been doing this in recent years with the help of the Walter Spies
Foundation," says Bandem, who is a managing member of the
foundation.

The Walter Spies Foundation is organizing a Legong festival
for April this year.

Legong is a dance of birds and of escaping princes or
princesses. Lasem, Kebyar, Smaradhana, Koetir, Prabangsa are a
few names of the many classical versions, some of which have been
forgotten. The evolution of the dance owes as much to the
dancers' interpretative creativity as to the reference stories.
Most are derived from old Kawi literature. In the past, after
learning a version of the dance from a local master, talented
dancers were expected to develop their own interpretation of the
dance.

"They sometimes did it to prove their own creativity, but at
other times simply because they had been visited by a dream,"
says Mrs. Arini Alit, a famous dancer from Denpasar.

This leads to the risk that a dancer's eagerness to add their
own touch to a dance could completely modify it. The old version
might disappear unnoticed. Old versions survive if they have a
specific function in the community. The fate of the dance depends
on the creativity of its dancers and on its sacredness in the
eyes of the community.

According to Dr. Jean Counteau, a prominent cultural observer
in Bali, what is now fashionably called reconstruction is not new
to Bali. The Balinese have long had a tradition of "sleeping
deities." The dance is, in such instances, the "waking up" of the
God, who performs as part of "its being there". Upon completion
of the ceremony, the Batara (God) is put back to sleep, normally
until the next festival, but sometimes for years. The deity
usually wakes up after giving a "sign", such as a dream by a
medium priest of an epidemic in the community.

The dormancy may last tens of years. In Sabha, a village in
Gianyar regency, some versions of local Legong are said to have
been dormant for 40 years. In Tista, a village in the district of
Kerabitan, it has been extended to 60 years. In the surviving
versions, the movements evolved -- or some say deteriorated --
considerably, probably due to changes in the social function of
the dance.

"In my village no dancer, once they had been made a dancer by
the community, would dare refuse to dance at its request. They
were village dancers rather than individual talents," asserts
Arini Alit, who produced a teaching program of Balinese dance at
Denpasar's TVRI station between 1977 to 1987. "But in recent
years, this has changed. Dancers now perform as individuals,"
Alit says. "Dancers, especially the young ones, dare to say no to
a request from the community. That was impossible in my day."

Anak Agung Ketut, son of the famous Agung Raka of Shaba, has a
political interpretation for the change. According to him, many
dances lost their appeal because colonialism switched the
priorities of the Balinese.

"Dances were considered unimportant, especially during the
Japanese occupation," he assures. He added that many dances were
lost during the years of war for independence. Dance is
irrelevant to fighting people. "As a consequence, there are now
dances which are only alive in the minds of their old and long
inactive masters."

Reconstruction

Masters of dance have undoubtedly played a key role in the
reconstruction of the dances. The late master Reneng devoted the
last part of her life to revive the old spirit of Legong,
especially in the village of Binoh on the outskirts of Denpasar.
Others, like Agung Raka in Sabha and Kakul in Batuan, have
followed her lead.

"Reconstruction would be impossible without the skill and
memory of the old masters," explains Rucina Ballinger, an
anthropologist and Balinese dancer.

"In my village, Sabha, the reconstruction program was started
in 1977," said Anak Agung Ketut, recalling the time when the
dancers of the village were deliberately reviving the old Legong
of their village. The only person who remembered the movements
was his father, Agung Raka, a teacher master of the dance in
Sabha. "Some girls were called to start practicing. After several
weeks, some were still eager to learn but others had dropped
out."

Everyone thought it would be easy, but it wasn't. Even the
masters couldn't reconstruct the dance movements at first. Their
memory slowly came back until the whole sequence of movements was
recreated in its supposed original form.

"Fortunately, the music repertoire had been preserved, so my
father would use the melody to recreate the original movements.

"The music is very important. To pull any dance back from its
dormancy, the sekehe must still exist with their original
repertoire," explains Rucina Ballinger.

Sekehe is a club which regulates every activity in a Balinese
village. All castes are admitted to it on equal footing with
respect to the works to be performed and to the rights to be
enjoyed. The clubs for dancers and musicians are necessarily
related, and sometimes even merge into one. The sekehe gamelan
consists not only of musicians and anyone involved in its
activities, such as instrument repairers, but also donors. They
can have a dozen to hundreds of members.

In Binoh, both the old masters and the sekehe took part in the
reconstruction of the dance.

"We worked on it from 1973 to 1974, soon after Pak Sinti
returned home from America," says Alit, referring to one of the
master dancers who was one of the main supporters of the Legong
in the village. In 1973, after several years of studying in
America, Sinti returned home. He had learned new methods to
reconstruct dance while he was away. Luckily, the music
repertoire had been kept alive by the sekehe of the village. This
was due to the fact that the gamelan orchestra in Binoh is
slightly different from that of other villages.

"In the old days, this kind of gamelan was very ordinary. But
later, it became unpopular and now only Binoh has the complete
set."

Like in many other villages, the Binoh reconstruction effort
was helped with foreign funding. The Asia Society, the Ford
Foundation and others have supported the reemergence of the
Balinese heritage with billions of rupiah.

Preservation

What will happen to the reconstruction of dance in the rapidly
changing Balinese society? Some dances are communally owned and
are therefore performed only on social or religious occasions. If
a dance disappears, does it mean that the community no longer
needs it?

"All traditions are faced with the problem of preservation,"
says Christina Formaggio, an anthropologist and dancer, referring
to the Gambuh dance preservation project. Gambuh is said to be
the source of the Legong corpus of movements.

"I think the disappearance of traditions in many countries
should be a lesson on the need to preserve what remains in Bali."

She emphasized that the change is due mainly to the flood of B
movies and the development of tourism, which turns tradition into
a commodity. She considers that "putting tradition under the
umbrella of tourism" is particularly dangerous because it changes
the rules of social interaction. "It is not only dance which is
deteriorating," she maintains.

Some observers are keen to accuse the Academy of Arts in
Denpasar of standardizing Balinese dances down to the village
level. "The patterns of dances taught by the academy reverberate
throughout the island," says Aryantha Soetama, a writer and arts
observer in Denpasar, "It could make the styles of individual
villages disappear." He refers in particular to the dance
instruction programs that have reached many villages and have
influenced dancers. Many village dancers now dance in the
academy's style.

Made Bandem, director of the academy, doesn't contest the
fact. "There is nothing wrong with new creators. All societies
have their own forms of change and continuity," he comments. He
mentions that reconstruction is the continuity he is referring
to. "It is impossible to stop creativity. Besides, in many
Balinese villages, some of the new creations are also performed
in temples and are well accepted. The Balinese as a whole have a
very good understanding of what they regard as dance." It isn't
the new creators' fault if their dances are accepted.

With or without any modern institutions, change is unavoidable
and remains "center stage". As Jean Couteau insists, "The center
of education in Balinese dance, and the arts in general, are the
urban artists and tourism marketers. They are completely
revamping what we consider Balinese art."

The reconstructions themselves are never without change. Some
revived dances, supposedly reshaped alongside their original
form, are actually simplified versions of the dance of reference.
"In their original forms, they took about 45 minutes. The
reconstruction cuts out some repetitious movements," explains
Bandem. "The most important thing is that we don't change the
meaning and the significance of the original dance."

Sudibya, a dancer and lecturer at the academy in Denpasar,
comments, "Some hoteliers reduce it even more. Many dances are
often performed in half the time or even a quarter of the time."

The reconstruction of dances has two faces, the first is
traditional continuity, the other is embedded in marketing. Any
dance, reconstructed or newly-created, is a tourism commodity.