Yogyakarta's court dance goes public

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.