Dance : ‘Night in the Kraton’ Delights and Disconcerts

To pat itself on the back for founding campus gamelan studies 40 years ago, UCLA staged an alternately fascinating and frustrating quasi-Javanese event on Friday titled “A Night in the Kraton,” enlisting its own performing ensembles and artists from CalArts and San Diego State, plus guests courtesy of the Indonesian consulate.

The program began at 7 in the Sunset Village Northwest Auditorium with speeches and a slide show summarizing the history and influence of UCLA gamelan studies. It ended well past 12:30 in the Grand Horizon Room of Griffin Commons with a traditional Javanese shadow-puppet drama embellished for the occasion with jokes (in English) about ethnomusicology.

With the audience seated at tables on two sides of a central playing area, the Griffin Commons ballroom resembled a Stateside supper club more than an antique Javanese palace pavilion. Moreover, this layout gave the only ideal view of the dancing to a pseudo-sultan and his court on a dais at the end of the room.

Ironically, the opening night of the 1990 L.A. Festival at the County Arboretum had a genuine Javanese sultan in attendance but offered everyone good sight-lines for Javanese court dance.

Indeed, the sole advantage of the UCLA venue proved to be acoustics (the big drawback at the 1990 festival): No matter what you could--or couldn’t--see, the shimmering richness and distinctively smoky tone of the Gamelan Kyai Mendung filled the space with glory.

After a procession depicting Central Javanese court protocol, a seven-woman group from CalArts offered a tense, uneven attempt at the sublime unisons of the Bedhaya (Bedoyo) ritual. Much better: The fierce, formal sword-and-spear manipulations of the Lawung, as performed by Bandoro Raden Mas Bambang Irawan, Sunarno Purwolelono and I Nyoman Wenten.

Best of all, perhaps: Irawan’s wondrously supple, expressive dancing in a masked solo, “Klana Topeng.” With his spectacular balances, gestural intensity and intricate shoulder bravura, this distinguished visitor from the court of Surakarta embodied the physical range and brilliance of a great tradition.

Unfortunately, to view the shadow-puppet drama (an episode from “The Mahabharata”), you had to go out on the terrace, where Sunset Boulevard traffic noise blanketed the music and dialogue. Inside the room, you missed the shadow effects but could hear the music fully--and appreciate the skill and wit of Oemartopo, the fine narrator/puppeteer.

The evening also offered traditional Javanese food--excellent, according to those who braved the endless buffet lines. Some of us found the campus fast-food emporium across the street easier and more pleasant, rushing there the same way we might have dashed from the Kraton in Yogyakarta to the stalls and stands just outside.