Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905–1952 (review)

Matthew Isaac Cohen’s lucid and diligently researched monograph reminds us that intercultural performances of the Indonesian performing arts are not a recent phenomenon. In the twenty-first century, these art forms (especially the gamelan traditions of Java and Bali) are thriving in countless universities, cities, and towns throughout the world. Such groups are freely exploring and developing syncretic music and dance forms which blend Indonesian traditions with an eclectic laundry list of other performing arts styles and genres. Cohen’s work seeks to describe how we have arrived at this present state of bustling artistic pluralism by exploring a time when such performances were rare and exotic curiosities. Thus while his work remains one of detailed historical inquiry, it operates with a consistent eye on the present state of global, intercultural performance. Cohen aims to “recollect an earlier generation of itinerant performers to provide perspective on ethical and professional conundrums faced in today’s global acumen” (3). Inspired by the work of critical theorists Rustom Bharucha and Edward Said, Cohen describes the development of these performances from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries as a shift from the spectacle of “detached appropriations” to “ethnographically sensitive” representations which seek to engage the Other (4).

Even casual admirers of Balinese and Javanese gamelan traditions are familiar with the well-documented encounters of European and North American artists and scholars with Indonesian music during this time. The work of Debussy, Spies, Margaret Mead, Miguel Covarrubias, Colin McPhee, and many others has helped establish a kind of Indonesian cultural dream world within the global imagination. However, Cohen eschews these more frequently read figures in favor of lesser-known artists and performers. In doing so, he carves a space for an assortment of esoteric and idiosyncratic examples of Indonesian exotica. These eccentric works illustrate the diverse means by which artists came to represent Indonesian culture to European and North American audiences. His work also covers a broad range of performance genres including dance, jazz, and puppetry. In many early cases, these performances were heavily influenced by the aesthetics of European theosophy, thus blending Javanese imagery and mythology with Indian Hinduism as well as Buddhism (83). For Cohen, the Orientalist impressionism of such performances addressed a desire for an authentic premodern experience, which would allow observers to live both “in modernity and beyond” (4).

In Cohen’s work, “intercultural performance” encompasses the gamut from western artists performing in an ostensibly “Asian” milieu to the world’s first touring Indonesian masters. As such, his goal is not to legitimize, or otherwise canonize works as either “successful” or “unsuccessful” attempts at intercultural interaction. Rather, he describes how each artist relates to the concept of “Otherness” (21). Thus he is able to describe a diverse assortment of artists and works through their negotiation with the inscrutable specter of “the Other.”

These negotiations proceed from a variety of perspectives. He describes late-nineteenth-century artists as largely Orientalist in terms of attitude and performance aesthetics. This critical lens is applied with lucidity to the work of earlier performers such as Cléo de Mérode and Mata Hari. According to Cohen’s reading, these Orientalist performances offer a “mediated” portrait of Javanese performing art forms, which do not truly “engage” with the Other. Instead they merely “help the mind intensify its own sense of self ” (4). He traces a shift away from such representations in chronological fashion. In contrast to earlier artists, those working during the early twentieth century, such as Eva Gauthier and Stella Bloch, strove for more ethnographically detailed performance aesthetics. Cohen also documents the ways in which their efforts were in constant negotiation with the commercial interests of the time.

Cohen also describes some of the first Indonesian groups touring the West “on their own terms” during the early years of Indonesian independence. These performers were faced with the dilemma...