A DANCE IN JAVA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4232, 17 January 1940, Page 5

A DANCE IN JAVA

STORIES TOLD IN STATELY RITUAL. (By S. L.) “The older the better,” we say for wine, cheese and heirlooms. The Chinese say it for eggs. But, in Java, they say it for a dancing girl! That may sound startling. But to these dainty little sarong-ed people, dancing is no light amusement. It is the fables and legends of old Java, expressed seriously in rhythmical movements—the most fascinating, subtle movements the mind could imagine. Such dancing takes years of training, and by that time the dancer has a very good chance of looking a positive hag. For youth (and beauty) does not last long among native peoples, and the brown girl may have become an unlovely matured woman before a white girl would have entered her second “season.” But thees fastidious little brown people would rather sit steadily and watch her than some young thing with hardly any experience at all. It is a case of matured skill winning over youthful and lovely incompetence. In Java (the principal island of the Netherlands East Indies, and .centre of government), as elsewhere, the culture of the people is bound up with the dancing and music that is also their literature. Both form an integral part of all celebrations, even Dutch ones, for the Javanese celebrate, among themselves, Dutch national events as loyally and wholeheartedly as their own. But it is not often that white people can see or join them in their own ceremonies “from the inside.” So I felt especially privileged when I was one of the three white people to be present at one, not so much as guests of honour, but as sharers in it. The coolies had been working for a week to turn a plantation shed into a pavilion gay with thin bamboo and coloured paper streamers, palm branches and painted banners. While the shed was being decorated, one could hear intermittently for hours the ding-dong of the gamelan (orchestra) as it practised in the kampong (village). HONOURED GUESTS. At 5 o’clock on the eve of the great day, the fun and noise began. Gabbling and excited, and in their best sarongs and jackets, the coolies poured into the transformed shed. But the dancing could not begin until we arrived. We were just finishing coffee and cigarettes when the head mandoer (foreman) came to the house to ask for our honoured presence, and to escort us to the pavilion.

I could not take my eyes from the orchestra, not even to study the absorbed little people in front of me. There was a thing like the xylophone, but played by two little natives sitting opposite each other, each hammering away energetically. There were small drums and one big one hanging from an ornate frame. There were snake charmer flutes, and an enchanting row of little metal pots that rang as sweetly as bells. The music ended. There was a pause. Then the chief dancing girl rose from among the orchestra, picked up a long rose coloured scarf, draped it round her shoulders, and walked slowly to the centre of the dancing space. She streached out her arms, placed -one foot forward, and stood motionless. Her face was set and still, and absolutely devoid of expression. (One must not look animated and smiling, if one is a Javanese. That is vulgar and not beautiful. To be beautiful, one’s face must be as grave and calm and reposed as though one were dead. That is the Javanese ideal—to look as though one were dead.) The dancer stood as though she were sculptured in stone for maybe a minute or so. Then the third finger of her left hand curled and flicked. Of all her body only that one finger moved. Then, joint by joint, other fingers came into play, then her toes, her feet, her arms, until her whole body was one graceful, flowing rhythm. And all the while the music grew more and more throbbing. Slowly the other dancers rose, and, one by one, joined in, and then the chief dancer sang! THIS WAS MUSIC! To the enraptured Javanese it was as the voice of Melba. But to us, well, no matter how politely we tried to regard it, it still sounded like one long thin wailing monotone followed by a jarring discord. However, we of the Occident can seldom hope to hear with Oriental ears. Neither is it easy for us to understand how the Javanese “read” the dancing. There is nothing obvious about it; no contorting of the body, no imitative limb movements, as with the dancing of other coloured peoples. Instead, by a mere flicker of a finger tip or an arching of a wonderfully flexible foot, little people read how Soewartah stabbed Idi or that a ghost demanded two chickens or a child for a sacrifice, for their belief in ghosts, good and bad, and in holy and unholy objects, is still as vigorous as ever, in spite « of some few centuries of Mahometanism. When the dance of welcome ended, the chief dancer let fall the long scarf from her shouldets, and as it

settled on the earthen floor, dropped back on her ankles.

A LITTLE RECOGNITION.' The master fit ceremonies allowed a few seconds to pass, then picked it up again, carefully folded it and placed it on a tray. Balancing: the tray and with mincing steps and much advancing and receding and mock hesitancy he finally reached the table and placed it in front of "Toean Besar.” This was an invitation for the planter to dance with the chief dancer. And once upon a time planters really did get up and dance. I couldn’t help feeling sorry that they have now abandoned the custom. I should have relished seeing our “Toean Besar” wiggle his toes and fingers a la Javanese. However, these are prosaic times, and though the planters receive the invitation they are permitted to appoint a proxy to do the partnering of the chief dancer —but not until they have first slid an unobtrusive, but nevertheless anticipated and looked for, three or four guilders under the scarf. As our guilders changed hands the audience clapped, and the master of ceremonies backed away and dropped the coins into the chief dancer’s lap. She then rose and faced thfe waiting proxy. SOLEMN PARTNERS. When this dance ended the general dancing began. A man rose from one side and a dancing girl from the other. They advanced to within a yard or so of each other, then without so much as a glance at each other began to dance. Their heads were tilted back, their faces frozen, with not an eyelid flickering. They went through their careful movements as remote from each other as though they were at the opposite poles. But what puzzled us was how the partnership first came into being. Try as we might, we could not detect one fleeting interchange of glances, one signal. Yet each man had asked for and been granted the privilege, and, what is more, had to pay a fee for it as well. Except for the dancing girls, the women do not dance. But it seems that most men can, in a more or less skilled fashion, and what is more, that they are anxious to prove It. The poor dancing girls had about twenty times their own number of waiting partners. One would think they would never come through such a Marathon. But no, long after we had returned to the house there came drifting down to us. In wakeful moments, that strange music that seemed to have no melody. The hours that passed did nothing to abate its vigour. These little brown people could have danced and sat and watched until the dawn, not of. the next day. but of several days later, had there been holidays enough. So do these delightful little neighbours of ours keep alive their ancient national culture; a culture which, by the way, is as old as that of the Chinese—a fact that is not generally known or realised.