Sacred dance 'Bedhaya' to be recreated

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

The smell of burning incense fills the room. It is illuminated by a dozen or so torches. The ambience is perfect for the sacred pre-Bedhaya ritual.

With various kinds of delectable dishes including a whole cooked chicken ingkung, cone-shaped rice tumpeng with a variety of side dishes, a set of jajan pasar (traditional snacks) and fresh fruit in the middle of it all, the setting is perfect.

Sitting crossed-legged in a line behind the scrumptious spread are nine young female dancers and two middle-aged female dance instructors. Sitting in the same position just in front of them is an elderly man dressed to the nines in classic Javanese traditional accoutrements: a surjan shirt, batik cloth, traditional headdress blangkon and a kris on his back.

The man finally breaks the silence with a Javanese song macapatan followed by a prayer in the refined royal Javanese language -- a mix of ancient Javanese and Sanskrit. It is completed with prayers, and he then invites the dance instructors to begin training the dancers in the sacred dance Bedhaya, or the Bedhaya Jendral Sri Kanawa.

That is how the Yogyakarta-based Siswo Among Beksa Javanese classic dance school held a special ritual recently to ask for God's blessings, or sugengan, to mark the official start of the process of re-creating the sacred dance.

"Sugengan is required before creating or performing a dance as sacred as the Bedhaya. "Otherwise, something unpleasant might happen during the exercise or the dance performance," Wibatsu Harianto, the man who led the sugengan ritual, said.

According to Wibastu, who is also the school headmaster, there were examples of unpleasant things occurring due to an incomplete ritual or offering related to the sacred Bedhaya.

A gamelan player, he remembers, once fainted while playing a sacred song used to accompany Bedhaya Semang dance of Yogyakarta Palace because he did not present an offering before playing.

"At that time, he didn't present any offerings because he thought he would just try the song as part of some research on the sacred dance," said Wibatsu, adding that the gamelan player he referred to was very healthy at the time.

The ritual to ask God's blessings, according to Wibatsu, was even required not only when a Bedhaya dance was about to be performed but also every time it was rehearsed, especially if it regarded a dance as sacred as the Bedhaya Semang.

"Among the existing Bedhaya dances, Bedhaya Semang is the most sacred, especially as it is the one created by Sultan Hamengkubuwono II," he said. He added that the more sacred the dance was, the more complicated the ritual needed to be.

So sacred was Hamengkubuwono II's Bedhaya Semang that this particular dance, according to Wibatsu, was rarely performed. The latest performance of the dance was held only in Hamengkubuwono VII's time in 1917, or about 85 years before the Yogyakarta Palace planned to perform it again this year.

"Even at present, the palace needs time to perform the very sacred dance in the palace," said Wibatsu, adding that for the planned performance of Bedhaya Semang, the palace had prepared for about 18 months.

The Bedhaya Semang dance was first created by Sultan Agung Hanyokrokusumo, the great grand father of the founder of Yogyakarta Palace Prince Mangkubumi. The dance tells of the meeting between two lovers, Panembahan Senopati and Ratu Kidul.

Panembahan Senopati was Sultan Agung's great grandfather who established Mataram Kingdom that later on was divided into Yogyakarta and Surakarta Kingdom. This accounts for the similar sacred dances which also exist in the Surakarta Palace. In fact, Bedhaya Ketawang that is periodically performed by the Surakarta Palace is taken from the last half of the piece in the Bedhaya Semang created by Sultan Agung.

In a further development, Hamengkubuwono I and II refined Sultan Agung's Bedhaya Semang, creating their own version of Bedhaya Semang. The one created by Hamengkubuwono II's, for example, no longer portrays the meeting between Ratu Kidul and Panembahan Senopati but between Ratu Kidul and Hamengkubuwono II himself.

"The special thing about Hamengkubuwono II's Bedhaya Semang is that the lyrics of the accompanying gending (Javanese traditional music) does not, in a straightforward way, tell about the meeting between the two lovers. Instead, it tells the story of how human beings were created, how they should live their lives and how they finally die," Wibatsu said.

"It is very religious, indeed, and rich of religious guidance. Watching such a dance while listening to the lyrics of the accompanying gending, for particular persons, is just like meditating."

In a much further development, Bedhaya dances do not always require nine dancers. There are a number of modified Bedhaya dances that require only seven or even six dances -- they are then named as Bedhaya Pitu (seven) and Bedhaya Nem (six). Bedhaya Wiwaha Sangaskara or Bedhaya Manten created by Hamengkubuwono IX that was performed at the recent royal wedding of Hamengkubuwono X's daughter GKR Pembayun is an example of a Bedhaya Nem.

The palace, too, is no longer the only party allowed to perform the sacred dances. Even Bedhaya Sanga (that requires nine female dancers), which had to be performed inside the palace's compound and by the palace's dancers up to the Hamengkubuwono VIII's time, presently can be performed outside the palace.

Bedhaya Jendral Sri Kanawa, which was created by Bray Yudonegoro, who is the sister-in-law of the late Hamengkubuwono IX and one of only a few Javanese classic dance choreographers left, is an example. The dance, which tells about the role of Hamengkubuwono IX as a national hero during the early years of the country's independence, is scheduled for a great performance in July 2002, held to commemorate the return of Yogyakarta into the country's arms.