DANCE REVIEW : L.A. FESTIVAL : ‘Court Art of Java’ Delivers Promised Mastery

“B eautifully accomplished, the Bedhaya dancers; cultivated in the art of dance, they are ready. . . .”

The opening chorus in the “Court Art of Java” program, at the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum last Friday, told you exactly what to expect. Here, in an American premiere, came the embodiment of a Central Javanese palace tradition renowned for its accomplished, cultivated artistry.

Before an opening night L.A. Festival audience that included the Sultan of Jogjakarta himself, a group of nine women in sleeveless crimson jackets over brown and white batik sarongs appeared “slowly walking . . . their clothes glittering with jewels” (in the words of the text) “. . . every movement perfectly timed.”

Ever since the 17th Century, Bedhaya dancers have walked this way into the presence of their Sultans--their left hands holding their sarongs out from their bodies, their empty right hands identically placed and, with each step, their feet swiveling outward as their toes curled up.

Even before any actual dancing began on Friday, this regal procession onto an outdoor platform stage (the musicians seated at the rear) suggested something of Jogjakarta court decorum as well as defining the concentration on unison activity--nine women moving as one--that Bedhaya ritualizes into a metaphysical quest.

Shifting formations and patterns of synchrony traced the path toward oneness and as the women swayed, or sank into their weight, or flicked the ends of their long, red sashes into the air, their flow of motion generated something as elusive yet tangible as a gentle undersea current.

Every delicate tilt of head and other small displacement continually seemed the result of a surge generated by the dancers’ larger actions. Impulses traveled through empty air as easily as bodies, binding the nine together--fusing them in space.

Midway through came evocations of “Arjuna Wiwaha” (Arjuna’s Wedding), an episode from the Hindu epic “Mahabharata” with its own statement about self-denial. Such gestural elements as daggers stabbed in the air provided signposts identifying moments in the narrative, but the dancers never really enacted the roles they briefly assumed. Instead, they functioned as ritual implements: tracing the pattern, but detached from the emotion--far away from us in meditation.

More conventional dance drama took the stage after intermission: Golek Menak, a 20th-Century genre linked to Bedhaya by their relationship with the Sultanate. (Bedhaya originally belonged exclusively to the court and Golek Menak came into being from a commission by the late Hamengku Buwono IX).

Based on Javanese rod puppetry, Golek Menak tried to persuade you that its two dozen dancers were carved from wood. Hands flexed no further than hinges might allow. Heads rotated as if on dowels, feet teetered or slightly bounced on the floor like inanimate objects being placed there.

Seeing the Bedhaya dancers turn up in this cast, forsaking that sublimely modulated style for this deliberately limited range of motion, brought an extra dimension to the play “Kelaswara Palakrama” (Kelaswara’s Wedding). Drama denied in Bedhaya turned to fluidity denied in Golek Menak.

Full of battles, “Kelaswara Palakrama” contained an extended fight scene between the title character (danced by Dyah Kustiyanti) and a Chinese princess (Retno Nooryastuti) that managed to superbly balance refined female lyricism and martial arts bravado. In addition, Nooryastuti’s swooping exit after collapsing in death (looking back twice at the man she’d loved) demonstrated that intense emotion need not always be distilled in Javanese dance theater.

Unfortunately, the Arboretum’s wide open spaces severely compromised a potential glory of the “Court Art of Java” experience: the deep, sweet tone of the sacred gamelan (percussion orchestra), “Kyai Madukusuma” (Nectar of the Flower) and “Kyai Madumurti” (Nectar Incarnate). Music formed a constant collaborative presence throughout the performance, but even non-experts could sense something missing.

Not only did the amplified singing become unduly prominent on Friday, but some of the instruments vanished entirely from hearing and others made a dry, distant or tinny sound.

Surely a sound engineer somewhere in Southern California can rescue the distinguished Jogjakarta musicians and their audiences from this calamity.