Voices in Bali: Energies and Perceptions in Vocal Music and Dance Theater

Désa kala patra within performance

Desa kala patra within performance A Balinese character or dancer is said to "come out" from the curtain or gateway to perform, and to "enter the curtain" to exit. This contrasts with Euro-American performance in which a character makes an entrance to perform. The Balinese terms suggest the notion of coming from somewhere , another realm, invisible but no less real. They also reflect the fact that traditionally performers would often come out through a temple gateway and down the steps to begin their dance. Choreography and subtext for dances such as jauk, derived from magical ritual drama, include sequences in which the character comically studies this gateway that demarcates a boundary between his world and ours. Before coming out to dance, he hovers in the liminal, in-between space, gazing from side to side as if trying to decide whether to manifest. Similarly, before bringing his shadow puppets out, the dalang raps on his puppet box to wake up the spirits of the wayang, the ancestors, as the topeng performer recites mantras before opening his mask basket, to invite the ancestors, spirits of the masks referred to as grandparents, to be present and give him a charge of taksu. Characters are often clearly crossing a gap between worlds. Instead of a make-believe world built on suspended disbelief, characters may actually call attention to stylized distancing. A sense of invisible demarcations of spatial factors is occasionally expressed in stylized utterances by characters. A character appearing from behind the curtain or stone gate may sing out, Mijiiiiil ... 'I'm coming out!' Or iwasin, iwasin! 'look out, look out!' creating a mood ofexpectancy that something is about to arrive out ofether. It should be mentioned at the same time that, in another more obvious sense, the physical realm ofbackstage is occupied by everyday behavior, casual conversation and joking amongst performers, eating and drinking coffee or soft drinks. Looking at it from this vantage point, as they step Desa kala patra within performance I 87 Children sleeping by curtain as I Nyoman Kakul dances toping's Orang Tua in Batuan Kakul (1972). Photo by Beth Skinner. through the langse 'curtain' or gateway, they are moving from the everyday world into a dramatized historic realm. Within a topeng performance, different characters embody different aspects of desa kala patra. Fully masked characters such as king Dalem relate to kala 'time' in the sense that they are coming from, and create a feeling of, another realm ofhistorical and spiritual time. The speaking and singing panasar and kartala intermediate between this realm ofancestral time and that of the present. They interact within Dalem's world, speaking for and with him, translating the poetic dialogue of Kawi and refined Balinese into everyday language.1 In this way they tie the story to the desa 'place' ofperformance and the contemporary world. Another reflection of kala is the feeling of kalangen, savored by performers and audience alike. This is a state of rapture, in which all aesthetic, kinetic, and spiritual elements have come together to create an atmosphere 1. Discussing Javanese wayang, Alton Becker refers to alternating dramatic uses ofclassical and everyday language as "speaking the past" and "speaking the present" (Becker, 1979). Similarly , in Balinese performance, the language being used at any given moment, whether it be Sanskrit, Old Javanese, Middle Javanese, High Balinese, Low Balinese, or Indonesian, suggests or invokes a realm with its own historical, spiritual, and contextual associations. v 0 I c E s I N B A L I I 88 of timelessness, in which personal place/time orientation is temporarily "lost." The role of the bondres half-mask comic characters extends into the patra 'context' of the performance event, in that they deal with the most mundane issues, often not even related to the dramatic plot. They generally speak in the language and voice of the contemporary community, though of course with an exaggerated comic style. They also are free to enter the "real time" of their audience, joking about members of the audience or even extending the actual performance space by wandering out into the audience .2 In the following chart, the words on the top, going horizontally, refer to aspects oforientation, the middle horizontal line refers to dramatic characters, and the bottom words signify the corresponding conceptual realms. Time Dalem kala Space desa Activity, Context bondres patra Desa kala patra and themes in performance According to Made Sija, a...