Page 2 | Central Javanese Dance - an introduction

Dance types

Contents

Central Javanese Dance - an introduction (1)

Dance types (2)

Character types (3)

Tradition and today (4)

Glossary

The following are the literal translations of some of the terms used in this article

alus refined

gagah coarse/more aggressive

beksan dance (Javanese)

tari dance (Indonesian)

putri female

putra male

wayang narrative performance

Seleh Notes Volume 6 Number 1 November 1998

© Jo Shaw

The 'Serat Wedhataya' (1924), a manuscript on dance, goes even further and likens dance to yoga.

The essence of living is to achieve harmony, progress and improve one’s character, and the four dance styles are likened to the four Hindi levels of existence:
alus (refined) brahmana (priest)
branyak (dashing) satriya (prince)
bergas (spirited) wissa (merchant)
sereng-regu (severe) sudra (servant)

An alternative interpretation might be to equate sereng-regu with the wissa (merchant class) and bergas with the sudra, since servants were often looked upon as lively, comic characters.

Therefore studying dance is a means of improving oneself, like a yogic exercise, although this symbolism is no longer at a conscious level among most dancers.

Most commentators would divide Central Javanese dance into three groups; beksan putri, beksan putra and beksan wayang.

Beksan putri

Beksan putri are basically non-narrative dances for female dancers. They cover a wide range including the ritualistic bedhaya for nine women which was the exclusive property of the courts; the choreographies were kept secret and performed on important occasions such as the Sultan’s birthday.

Srimpi is another court form, performed by four women, and which often has a militaristic aspect. In both these genres the layout and spatial relationship of the dancers is crucial and often symbolic.

The beautiful srimpi dance

Srimpi ‘Jayaningsih’ is unusual in that it has the addition of a male alus dancer and is about a romance.

Golek and gambyong dances were not originally court dances but adapted to court styles, and are more abstract, concerned with aspects of female charm. They are less stylised and more lively in character, but retain the basic elements of posture and hand and arm positions common to tari putri.

Beksan putra
Beksan putra are categorised as warrior dances for men, intended both as an opportunity to practise technical moves and to show off combative skills.

Now they are often recast as solo dances and used as an introduction for students to the technical movement vocabulary of fight scenes.

An example is ‘Eka Prawira’, which is a solo derivation of ‘Beksan Bandabaya', a group or pair dance in the gagah style.

 

Beksan wayang

Beksan wayang, the third category, are dances with a narrative element. They are often fight dances named after the protaganists, for example 'Bambangan-Cakil', or 'Sancaya-Kusumawicitra', who are 'Mahabharata' characters.

Both these dances feature alus heros of the classical type faced with a gagahan enemy.

You will also see characters from the indigenous 'Menak' cycle of stories; for example the 'Langendriyan' dance drama features Damarwulan, a Majapahit farmer with alus pretensions, fighting Menakjingga, a gagahan king (and of course winning).

Menakkoncar, the younger brother of the latter, features in his own solo dance in the alus style, this time a gandrung or longing dance. Menakkoncar is an alus character, but not of the most refined, and he shares with his gagah relative an identifying limping gait.

This genre of dance is very popular as the movement vocabulary and accompanying music are lively and enjoyable, depicting the character at some point in the narrative when they are thinking about their beloved.

Many sections are common to all dances of this type. The central kiprahan, which includes gestures of preparation and dressing up, re-occurs in many dances, along with the drumming patterns that accompany the movements.

'Topeng Klana' and 'Gunung Sari' fall into this group, although they come from the Panji cycle of stories. This is another ancient set of tales from East Java, with a partly historical but mainly legendary content.

These mask dances have been popular since the 18th century, and the iconography of the masks is similar to wayang kulit puppets (see ‘Topeng - Masks of Central Java’ - Jo Shaw:) which helps to express the mood of the character.

As brother-in-law of the hero Panji, Gunung Sari is an alus character of the most refined, while Klana is a particularly exciting and wicked king who is very popular!

These dances, like all dances, become associated with particular gamelan pieces which accompany them, for example Klana dances to lancaran ‘Bendrong’ and Menakkoncar to ladrang ‘Asmarandana’.

A further category of beksan wayang is wayang wong, which is basically the dance equivalent of wayang kulit in that the texts are branch plays from the Mahabharata, and the movements and positions in space of the characters are like those of the puppets.

The role of the dhalang is somewhat smaller as the dancers narrate their own dialogue, otherwise the musical structure is very similar.

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