Hurly Burly Bali Gamelan
In writing my dissertation some time ago I argued that it was inappropriate in my study of wayang performers improvisation in Java to try and understand a performing art by becoming a practitioner. In any learning environment, I argued, the accommodation and innovation alters the original and distorts one’s perceptions of the original tradition. Furthermore, I wrote, “I no longer feel certain that a “co-aesthetic” participation is a genuine possibility in ethnographic research because it assumes there is a mutual aesthetic that is the basis for the intercultural understanding” (30). By which I meant any attempt to understand a performing tradition by learning how its done assumed that it was possible to share some common artistic objective. At that time I did not see how it was feasible to accomplish some understanding when any performance that I made would be for different reasons and objectives than one made by a traditional performer.
I mention this all now because I was wrong and I was forcibly made aware of how very wrong I was when I watched I Ketut Gede Asnawa’s Balinese gamelan recital with students from his various classes at UIUC last Saturday. Watching the UIUC students approximate Balinese dance and music it was possible to see the flaws and the omissions or to simply say it’s done better in Bali, but these comments would miss the point because they miss what counts most to qualify as an authentic expression of Balinese art. My experience in the gamelan concert was like the Grinch looking down on Whoville, my small heart grew three sizes that day as I came to realize it is not the form of the dance, the look of the costume, or the sound of the gamelan that made the show Balinese, though there were penty of flashy costumes and dazzling sounds. Nor was it Bali gamelan because of where it happened, why it was done, or even who did it. It is Balinese gamelan when it expresses a certain hurly burly, exiting, dazzling fun, which is summed up in the word ramai in Bali. To Asnawa’s credit performers were certainly accomplished enough to put on a great show, not because they were comparable to a Balinese performer in skill, rather they were skilled enough to make it look fun. They were not quoting or approximating some more genuine performance elsewhere, they were doing it for themselves and each other and enjoying themselves while doing it. There was not a sense the group was struggling or straining to keep up, they were having a good time and it made you want to join in and dance and make music.
I was thinking these thoughts during the Joged dance as they brought audience members down to the stage to dance, and I was feeling very sorry that no one had invited me. It was easy to be envious of the dancers and musicians on stage and it was this feeling of wanting to belong I recognized from my brief time in Bali and when I remember seeing Balinese performances in the past. I recalled then that Balinese art has that effect on people. We just want to belong there, be accepted in the dance, be allowed to make music just like they do.
Getting Twisted
The kabuki were originally rōnin samurai who lost their feudal lord who had some education and instruction in courtly manners, but were now destitute and rebelious, living in the city, and looking for some fun and trouble. The word kabuki litterally means “twisted” and these rōnin went about with a swaggering gait and a contorted posture to demonstrate their disdain for military custom and stiff courtly manners. Wih their outlandish dress and wild ways they were no doubt the most extravagant and outrageous characters in the new city of Edo. They were certainly the subject of great fascination, because they became the subject of Izumo no Okuni’s play acting, which became the basis for the new kabuki theatre. These early skits by Okuni were object lessons on how to get twisted. She would dress up as one of these city ronin and swagger about with a sword at her side and flirt with a courtesan on stage. Their courtly love dialogues were interupted by a rustic bumpkin who would interject crude humor and contrast the fashionable ways of the lovers. In an important way the performance was a way to teach the common merchants who were flocking to the cities how to behave, how to talk to a courtesan, how to swagger like a kabuki. This pattern of dramatic action has appeared elswere and at other times on the world stage: commedia dell’arte, ludruk, burlesque, and MTV, to name only a few. In each instance the audience was invited to abandon bounded rural and domestic values and for a while learn to twist a new way.
Foot Binding Unbound
At the AsiaNetwork conference this morning there was an illuminating talk on Chinese foot binding by Dorothy Ko from Barnard College. Now that footbinding is entirely a thing of the past she argues that a more balanced look is due to this now universally dispised practice of crushing women’s feet into a three inch shoe. Ko’s analysis is based on the material culture surrounding the shoes themselves as most of historic commentary that has survived is from the perspective of the male anti-foot binding crusaders who were wholly indifferent to the cultural meanings these shoes had for the women. Ko very quickly established the complexity of the topic by pointing out the variety of styles and functions that these miniscule shoes had as expressions of personal handiwork, regional ethnic identity, social gift exchanges, and religious offerings. Furthermore, there were styles and forms of shoes that seemed especially designed for outdoor wear. So, contrary to the common description of shackled and subserviant women unable to anything outside the domestic sphere, foot binding became a vehicle for self expression and status that women attempted to negotiate in order to exert some modicum of self control in their very bounded lives. The highlight of the talk was when a white male conference attendee agreed to have his foot bound. The shoe was very generously proportioned compared to the miniscule examples she passed about, but the effect seemed evedent as our curageuos volunteer wobbled in the painful constricting position. It was very heroic of him to make the effort for our edification, it must have taken supreme self-control to and self-sacrifice to be on bound feet for life.
Zeami on Appearances
We often say appearances can be deceptive, and that is in part why Zeami once said, “The truth and what it looks like are two different things.” This idea is based on the Buddhist notion that appearances, what we see everyday, are reflections not of the truth, but rather illusions clouded by our own desires, fears, and ambitions. This is why some Buddhists meditate on a mandala, so they can envision what the world would look like if they were able to strip away those deceptive illusions. Zeami is reminding us that truth has an appearance; it looks a certain way, but that we should not confuse it with everyday appearances. Instead, the truth we should look for is beyond the appearances of the objects on stage and the actors portraying the characters. This is why the props in the noh theatre are wrapped in white cloth, suspended in simple box frames, or reveal the simplest outline of their form; it is because these things do not represent the truth. We should not be satisfied with these flimsy apparitions, but look deeper to what they say about the true nature of our human condition. The objects are deliberately made to look fabricated so that we do not take them at face value. Its as if they had quotation marks about them. It allows the object to stand in for a while for some more permanent and enduring truth.
