Yogyakarta's court dance goes public

By Y. Bintang Prakarsa

JAKARTA (JP): Do you consider Javanese dancing to be long, uneventful and boring enough to fall asleep over? Seeing the lively Lawung or blunt lance dance from the court of Yogyakarta might change your mind.

Compared to the Surakarta court, its past rival, the Yogyakarta style is often described as less delicate, less polished, more straightforward, strong and masculine. This apparently has much to do with the heritage of its first ruler, Hamengkubuwono I, who reigned from 1755 to 1792. Independent as well as frugal, the astute military commander was once described as "the most able ruler from the Mataram royal family since Sultan Agung" by historian M. C. Ricklefs.

While he was Prince Mangkubumi of the Mataram court of Surakarta, he was asked by the king, Susuhunan Pakubuwono II, to subdue rebellions in the kingdom. After he succeeded, however, he was denied his reward of a promised land grant. Having decided to take arms, he conducted campaigns against the joint forces of the weak Pakubuwono II and later his son Pakubuwono III, who were backed by the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). After 11 years of protracted warfare, Mangkubumi made the VOC sign a treaty that seceded half of the Mataram kingdom to him without consulting Pakubuwono III, and became the first ruler of Yogyakarta as Hamengkubuwono I.

Ever since the breakup, the two courts cultivated distinctive, often conflicting, cultural styles, a strategy to present each court as the one and only legitimate power whose regalia, sacred heirlooms, army, ceremonies and arts could not be duplicated.

The Lawung cycle, particularly the part called Lawung Gagah (the masculine Lawung), is interesting in this respect. In this subdivision, 16 male dancers move energetically with their spread limbs, depicting the field exercise of two groups of mounted lancers.

Using a three-meter-long blunt lawung (lance), each group tries to overpower its opponent, first by elaborate muscle- flexing and shouting and then by mock-fighting. Choreographed by Hamengkubuwono I, the warrior spirit is incarnated into a vigorous dance which is accompanied by perhaps the most glorious gamelan music ever composed.

Created by the kingdom's founder, Lawung has an honorable status, which is rather anomalous from the accepted Javanese preference for civility, restraint, understatement and serenity, represented by the word alus. Still performed during royal weddings accompanying the sacred Bedhaya, in the past it is performed outside the court as a symbolic presence of the Sultan.

The dance is opened by a fast and heavily accented chant by a male chorus, followed by piercing instrumental music with the loud instruments of the gamelan, brass, snare drums and bedhug (a large low-pitched drum hung lengthwise on a wooden frame), which introduces the dancers. They appear in two groups that occupy the right and the left side of the stage, and each has two lance carriers, two soldiers, two officers and a baton-waving general accompanied by a page dressed like a clown.

The main characters are the jajars (soldiers) and lurahs (officers), appearing in turn in the foreground to practice with the lances, while the generals bark orders from the background and bet with one another over the results of the mock fighting.

The more expressive jajars fight first. Long-haired with faces painted red, they move ferociously and extravagantly, using kasar (coarse) gestures identified with demonic giants (butas). The lurahs move with more dignified gestures of the alus (smooth, composed, refined, fine-tuned) and satriya (righteous noble warriors).

When the fight culminates in the frontal clash of lances of the lurahs, the music becomes even louder and the tempo brisker, reaching an overwhelming peak of expression unknown in other gamelan repertoires.

Intensifying the drama is the chest-pounding bass of the low- pitched bedhug. Its occasional off-beat booms now thunder relentlessly in three beats against the two-beat pulse of the whole orchestra, suggesting the disorder and fierceness of the mock battle. Shortly after, the exercise ends and the gamelan recedes almost suddenly, switching to soft singing and music to accompany the peaceful exit of the dancers.

Another intriguing cultural aspect is the dance's multicultural elements. The most ancient is the Islamic bedhug, introduced to central Javanese courts possibly in the sixteenth century. Then there is the language used by the dancers. It is not Javanese but it can be understood in fragments with probably Buginese, Madurese, Malay, or the Javanese dialect of Banyumas composing it.

They are traces of the polyglot mercenaries that once were employed by the court and were given living quarters in the capital, which were named after their place of origin. The neighborhood of Bugisan still exists in Yogyakarta today.

Last come the western snare drums and brass, introduced to the region during the reign of Hamengkubuwono VIII from 1921 to 1939. Lawung is not only an art worth seeing more than once. It is an historical document that provides a clue for past cultural processes that develop and enrich the Yogyakarta court tradition.