DANCE AND MUSIC REVIEWS : Puppets Fascinate at Occidental

Access to the wonders of the great Indian epic “Mahabharata” gained a boost through the graceful efforts of the locally based Shadow Art Ensemble on Friday in the patio of Thorne Hall at Occidental College in Eagle Rock.

“Putra Sorga” (the Heavenly Princes) is one of the less familiar episodes in the epic, relating how two heavenly sons of Arjuna come to Earth to find their missing father, one of the five virtuous Pandavas whose tribulations form the central plot of the epic.

Great warrior that he is, Arjuna nevertheless has somehow managed to get his head cut off, and it has been transported to a kingdom in the north for the delectation of its love-sick princess.

The sons’ efforts to regain the head and resurrect their father provided material for the play on Friday. The subsequent events were scheduled for Saturday night.

Lit by a flickering oil flame, the leather puppets exerted, as usual, a bewitching fascination in the projected shadows that pulsated with energy, hovered teasingly between substantial and indefinite form and moved with a briskness and freedom that defied gravity.

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As dalang, or puppeteer, troupe co-founder Maria Bodmann manipulated all the figures and provided them with suitably different voices and characterizations, with impressive ease and virtuosity.

Insofar as a non-native speaker could judge, she credibly rendered the speech of the heavenly and court characters in the traditional archaic Kawi language, which reportedly even most of the people of Bali and Java do not know.

For the everyday characters, however, she spoke a delightfully colloquial English, keeping the plot clear and allowing many topical, frequently droll observations.

The local references included jokes about freeways, NEA controversies and workout videos (with strongman Bhima, one of the other Pandava brothers, pitching his exercise video and demonstrating amazing pushups and handstands), and a more serious longing for heavenly education, as befit the academic setting.

The troupe received basic training in the tradition of the Balinese Wayang Kulit, or shadow puppet theater, at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. But their accomplishment goes far beyond student status.

The delicate, insistent, irresistible gamelan accompaniment was expertly provided by Michael Pievac, Barry Newton and company co-founder Cliff DeArment.