Beauty Unlimited

12. Beauty, Youth, and the Balinese Legong Dance

259 12. Beauty, Youth, and the Balinese Legong Dance stephen davies Prologue At about the age of twenty, the renowned legong1 dancer of the village of Peliatan, Cokorda Istri Ratih Iryani (born 1963, and known less formally as Cok Ratih; plate 8), anticipated the imminent end of her performing career. She said, When I get older and weaker people will not want to see me. Later when I look older and people do not like to see my face I may dance the dances where you wear masks. Here everyone is an expert and everyone can criticise , and a poor dancer is openly criticised and told to leave. Dancers can be criticised also just for not being beautiful, though it’s not their fault and they can dance very well.2 In this chapter I discuss beauty and youth in Balinese dance, with special reference to legong. Legong is the “classic” Balinese dance genre for females and is represented by Balinese to the world as the quintessence of grace, charm, and beauty in their performing arts. The core of the genre comprises about fourteen dances, a third of which are now lost, though new dances are occasionally created. Traditionally, the dances were from thirty to sixty minutes in length, though they are typically cut much shorter for tourist performances. Despite the fact that some dances relate stories, the dancers are always dressed the same, the narrative elements are stylized, and the focus falls on the beauty of form and movement rather than on the dramatic 260 STEPHEN DAVIES content. In the dances of the basic repertoire, two identically clothed dancers , called legong, are elaborately costumed in gold and green or silver and purple. An abstract introduction (which can be dropped) is provided by a third dancer, the condong, usually dressed in red and gold. The gamelan orchestra that is most appropriate for the accompaniment of legong is of the kind known as semar pegulingan or pelegongan, though the more common gong kebyar ensemble, with its different tuning and weightier tone, is often substituted nowadays. About thirty musicians are involved. Formerly, both the choreographies and the accompaniments differed from region to region, but such distinctions are being eroded and legong, like other traditional dance and dramatic forms, is in decline overall.3 I take Cok Ratih’s remarks, quoted above, as my text. The views she presents might not seem surprising, given that patriarchal societies generally equate female beauty with youth. Before jumping too quickly to conclusions about how Bali conforms to a wider pattern, however, we should note that a prominent legong dancer in the early 1980s viewed an age of merely twenty years as the twilight of a legong dancer’s public career. Apparently, the notion of beauty that is invoked here is not straightforwardly equivalent to heterosexual male norms for female sexual attractiveness, which may favor younger women but don’t require them to be under twenty. What then is the connection between beauty and youth in Balinese legong? Youth Girls usually begin to learn legong at about six years of age and, if they are good enough, begin performing publicly at about nine. Balinese experts identify ten as the ideal age for a dancer in this genre.4 In an earlier period, Cok Ratih would have retired from public dancing well before the age of twenty. In the 1930s and ’40s, the age of retirement was twelve to fourteen, though one “superannuated” seventeen-year-old dancer was noted.5 In 1948, Colin McPhee wrote, At the age of ten, with the approach of adolescence, [legong dancers] have become “too heavy.” Their haunting, sexless charm, their swift, miniature virtuosity suddenly vanishes. The club looks about for new dancers, and as these become expert, the older ones retire. They never appear again, unless as members of the operetta company. But no girl dances after marriage, except perhaps as one of the group of ritual dancers in the temple.6 261 Beauty, Youth, and the Balinese Legong Dance In a similar vein, John Coast, on a visit to the village of Saba in about 1950, records, Suddenly a bunch of neatly dressed girls, hand in hand, brushed past us, one of them turning toward us and smiling, for we saw the flash of white teeth. Raka laughed when we asked him who the girl was. “It was Soli, the Legong dancer,” he said. “She is nearly a woman...