FAIRY TALE DANCES

Taranaki Daily News, 7 September 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

FAIRY TALE DANCES

REAL PRINCE’S PERFORMANCE. SICK CHILDREN DELIGHTED. The new health centre at Peckham is a place to be glad in. The children who were playing there in the garden found it out when the secretary asked if they would like to go inside to see some fairy tales danced. Raden Mas Jodjana, Prince of the Court of the Sultan of Jocjakarta, and his pupil Roemahlaisan had come all tire way from the South Seas to dance for the children of Peckham. There they stood, dark-skinned and friendly, arrayed in strange garments as colourful as the plumage of tropical birds. Madame Jodjana explained the meaning of the stories the two men danced. There was the tale of the farmer who sows his rice and then keeps the birds from eating the grains, so that he may harvest a good crop and thresh it;. the tale of the fisher-boy who meets friends by the shore, casts his net, takes a good haul, and rows home content; the tale of the mystical bird that learns to sing the song of fire until, singing, fire springs alight in its heart and the bird is consumed in the flames. The story that the children liked best was the tale of the fight between the knfght-in-armour and the demon with the gold teeth and black beard, a ferocious creature. The knight, knowing he had Right on his side, had only to parry the thrusts of the demon, while the demon destroyed itself with its own activity. Afterwards the eager children flocked around examining the costumes, the winged ornaments Prince Jodjana wore over his ears in the Dance of the Mystical Bird, and the small knife the Javanese farmer used to harvest his rice. Prince Jodjana says the Peckham Health Centre’s children are the best audience he has ever known. The visit of the Oriental prince must have been the favourite tea-table topic of Peckham that afternoon, for in the evening the children's parents turned out in full force to see a real prince from the other side of the world, and to try to understand this dancing of old tales, which is like beautiful illustrations of beautiful stories come to life. Raden Mas Jodjana and his pupil also gave a performance in a Kensington studio. But they came to England for the express purpose of dancing for the children of Peckham in order to make the old stories and art of their happy people known to those who cannot go to far-off lands. It was a wonderfully gracious act of human brotherhood.