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The Last Day of Classical Dance and Drama Performance

Published 7 months, 1 week ago in Dance, Drama & Music by Sidarta Wijaya | 684 Views

The third day of Classical Dance and Drama Performance (9/29/2007) presented three classic performances – another Leko performance from Badung regency, Gandrung from Denpasar municipality, and Cakepung from Karangasem regency. These three performances were staged indoor with better sitting place for the audience but lack of fresh air and dreary stage background and surrounding (performances in the first and second day were staged outdoor).

The first performance was Leko dance. Another Leko dance (the very same dance with the first performance in the first day of this show) but presented in different way, of course by another troupe. This time, the Leko dance was preceded by three preliminary dances. All these three preliminary dances were danced by very young dancers, their nervousness could clearly be seen in their face but they danced elegantly and manage to overcome their nervousness at the end.

The show began when a Leko dancer entered the stage. She danced at ease, clearly enjoyed the music and her own dance. She invited some of the audiences to dance with her on the stage one after another. She flirted with the invited audience on the stage, but only one or two audiences could match her flirting dance. In short it was a merry performance, especially for Balinese audience.

The second performance was Gandrung dance. The Gandrung which means ‘infatuation’ is another very important form of social dance that is now almost extinct in its traditional, established form. In a Gandrung dance, a young boy would take the role of the dancer (which is danced by a girls in other social dance) and would dance with man or woman from the audience who has a courage to step forward onto the stage.

The performance began with a preliminary dance in legong style, a solo dancer danced a dance which was quite similar with the dance of the Condong (lady in waiting) which always serves as preliminary dance in legong performance. after the preliminary was over the Gandrung dance entered the stage, at first he danced in sitting position on a chair, then stood up and showed his real talent, he did not dance for long before a girl step up (obviously arranged before hand) and danced with him (ngibing) then a volunteer from audiences step up and gave her best performance to match the Gandrung after five ngibing (dance with the audience) sessions another dancer came out and danced with the previous one, after dancing for some time the first one left the stage and the new one resumed his duty to dance with volunteer from the audiences. After four ngibing (dance with audience) sessions the dancers left the stage. The infatuation was over.

The last performance was Cakepung. Cakepung is a male social performance, combination of singing and dancing, done strictly for recreation and amusement, and is found today only in Karangasem Regency and on Lombok, its former vassal state. This folk-performance derives its name onomatopoeically from the sound of its accompaniment, a rhythmic vocal sound similar to that produced by the cak chorus. In the accompaniment, two dozen vocalists chant ‘pung-cakapung’ in unison.

The show began after the Karangasem’s Cakepung troupe sit. One of the performers picked up a palm leaf manuscript (lontar), containing texts of macapat songs, classical love songs or laments, written in Balinese, derives from Arja, the Balinese opera. The reader sang a sentence from the manuscript to the accompaniment of a suling, small flute, and rebab, or spiked fiddle. After each line of the song, another member of the group spoke for a minute or so, elaborating on the sentence from the song and clarifying it for the audience by using everyday Balinese language, who might have trouble understanding the song that usually in ancient Kawi language or high Balinese.

After the reading and translating session was over one of the performers shouted “pung!” and the rest of the group shouted “pung”, “cak”, “ces” or other monosyllabic sound repeatedly, creating a intricate interlocking pattern of voices. As the tempo of the shouting increased a member of the troupe stood up and danced, another member stood up and they danced together, enacting the story which was read by the readers, some stories need more than two dancers. they danced merrily with comic facial expression and sometimes their dance depicted everyday activities such as rowing, conversing, quarrelling and other daily activities based on the song.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Dance, Drama & Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Tags: arja, cakepung, dance, drama & music, Gandrung, kawi, Leko, lontar, macapat, palm leaf, rebab, suling.