Introduction

In October 2007, some friends invited me to attend a‘Javanese dance show’ in the evening. Naturally, Iagreed. The show was in a village near Mount Merapioutside the city of Yogyakarta where I was spendinga semester abroad. Long after sunset, we set out onour motorbikes. A few kilometres outside the city,the fog became so thick that we had to focus on thewhite road markings just in front of us to avoidcrashing.

Turning off the main road, we rode through a series ofsleepy villages, finally arriving at a lively,brightly lit centre, where people from thesurrounding area had congregated. Some 100 peoplehad gathered here. Some were selling tea and fruits.It was relatively cold and silent; a number ofpeople tested the loudspeakers. After buying sometea, we walked to the well-lit centre of the smallvillage.

A small stage, surrounded by a wooden fence, had beenerected in front of one of the houses. Pairs ofpainted horse puppets, made of intricately wovenbamboo, were placed on the middle of the stage. Nextto the stage was a small gamelan orchestra withmetallophones, drums, gongs and other typicalinstruments. The dancers – male and female – were ina house dressing and putting on their make-up forthe performance. They were wearing costumes inspiredfrom classical Javanese theatre with small whips andwooden swords. Heavy make-up covered their faces.When I came in, the first group was just ready andthey waited inside the house to appear on stage.

When the musicians started to play, the crowd pushed tothe front and my friends and I found us huddledagainst the wooden fence in front of the stage. Aman in dark clothing appeared, walked to the middleof the stage, threw flowers on the stage and closedhis eyes. He bowed his head, seemingly in prayer,and stood silent for a moment before leaving.Another darkly clad man appeared on stage, this onewith a huge whip. With fierce intensity andconcentration, he cracked the whip in differentdirections and left the stage. Eight young maledancers then came on, smoothly dancing in pairs in aslow style, their emotionless faces revealing theirconcentration on the music and the choreography.