Gender Issue in Asia Performance - Essay Example

? This essay has envisaged investigating how Balinese women, performing theatre in Bali, are at an interface of tradition and eclecticism, while for western women performers of Bali, this barrier is non-existent. It is a proven fact that in Balinese women performers are entering the male bastions of traditional theatre in a big way. Especially their entry into the Balinese masked dance drama, Tepong, has enabled them even to perform masculine roles wearing heavy masks, which demanded great amount of skill and physical strength from them. But at each step in their progress, Balinese women performers are faced with the challenges from binding traditions of the art as well as the society. But the Western women who learned and started performing Balinese theatre already had the advantage of coming from an eclectic dance tradition and they also had not much societal compulsions that could hamper their progress. By being at an advantageous position than Balinese women performers, the Western women could make the path for the Balinese women performers and also prompt them (through their performances) to follow that path. On the other hand, the Balinese women performers, by reversing the gender roles attributed to them in these traditional art forms are now graduating slowly into an eclectic tradition. Introduction The Balinese traditional theatre is a highly ritualistic performance form with all kinds of beliefs, myths, traditions and spiritual experiences associated with it. This is why Artaud (1995) had observed that “our (Westerners’) purely verbal theatre […] could learn a lesson in spirituality from Balinese theatre” (p.301). On the other hand, the Western theatre had largely been evolved out of the rural and folk traditions as early as from the beginning of twentieth century (Turner, 2011, p.68). Turner (2011) has discussed this phenomenon by saying, “developments from the twentieth century onwards in Western theatre practice have often demonstrated an eclecticism that has led to a pick and mix theatrical culture” (p.68). This is manifested in terms of intercultural influences on the Western dance and theatre traditions. Another aspect of Western performances has been the comparative gender-neutrality of it as a whole, when it comes to characterization and casting, which can be attributed to a social structure that has accepted gender equality as its proclaimed ideal. A strong feminist theatre has also been present in the West as early as from 1960s onwards (Code, 2003, p.471). But in an Asian country like Bali, it is the rituals and traditions that rule almost all the classical dance and theatre forms. And it has been as an extension of the patriarchal social tradition that women were not allowed to perform the traditional dance drama, Topeng, which is mostly about the “exploits of male heroes who are usually involved in a struggle for power” (Slattum, Schraub and Geertz, 2003, p.20). Gender-bending in Balinese theatre has been a topic of interest for many researchers and social observers (Palermo, 2009; Ballinger, 2005). Challenging the predominance of female impersonators in Balinese performing arts, women began to enter the traditional theatre realm in the beginning of the twentieth century but the number of women performers were very limited (Diamond, 2008, p.231). But by the end of twentieth century, the situation has changed to such an extent that: There were all-male arja (classical Balinese operetta) troupes and two women’s mask troupes. Today, there are all-women gamelan groups in every regency and a wave of women performers staging ‘unconventional’ theatre and dance (Ballinger, 2005). Even before the large scale entry of Balinese women performers into Balinese traditional theatre, there were many Western women who learned these dance forms like, Tiffany Strawson, Carmencita Palermo and Jane Turner (Theatre firefly, 2010/11; Palermo, 2009, Turner, 2011). Palermo (2009) has narrated her experience of becoming a Topeng performer and has said, “when I first began my journey, women were absent. Until few years ago my study of topeng was based on interaction with male performers only.” Here, the question that inevitably comes to the minds of any observant reader might be that could it have been possible for Palermo to be a student of Topeng in such an ambience if she were a Balinese woman. It was the way in which the Balinese society saw a foreigner (which is another historical and cultural phenomenon that cannot be discussed here owing to the magnitude of that topic), that enabled Palermo to learn Topeng. And it was also the eclectic tradition of a Western dancer which she inherited from her society and culture that helped her to assimilate the aesthetics and ethos of this Asian performing arts form. Eclecticism vs Tradition Even as early as in 2003, what Slattum, Schraub and Geertz (2003) saw in Bali was that “women perform as princesses, servants, angels, and goddesses without wearing masks […] [and] men continue to play the cruder, raspy-voiced witches, which call for the low-pitched tonalities of the male voice” ( p.20). These researchers (Slattum, Schraub and Geertz, 2003) have also observed that there was also social stigma attached to women playing these roles (p.20). When it comes to wearing of masks, a performer needs a well-balanced combination of great physical strength and skill. Many Balinese women performers have admitted to Palermo (2009) that they were find this task quite challenging and many also felt that they would never be able to perform as good as men. But no Westerner masked performer has ever been reported to have expressed this kind of a confidence loss. Palermo (2009) has found a connection of this issue with the ‘etika’ or manners that are expected in a Balinese woman, which demands her to be polite, refined and so on. Palermo (2009) has also suggested that this ‘etika’ could be one reason why women performers have an inhibition to perform like men. When this issue is understood in the context of the success of Western performing women, it can be seen that no Western woman is bound by ‘etika’ or any such tradition. This is one area were traditional and eclectic choices of the feminine can be said to surface. ‘Anak mula keto’, meaning, it has been like that in Balinese is also cited by Palermo (2009) to show the general attitude that leads to gender discrimination on and off stage in performing arts in this region. The domestic and social duties expected of a Balinese woman are another set of choice that a Balinese woman performer has either to accept or deny (Palermo, 2009). In this context also, the Western family structure puts forth more eclectic options for women. Palermo (2009) has quoted one Balinese woman whom she met telling her why she could not learn and perform Topeng: (My energies) are focussed on my children and grandchildren. The environment is not supportive. Because women in Bali are busy with custom and culture in Bali. If men take on another activity there is tolerance, we support them. But if I dance, at my age, it's a shame, who is going to do the work to the banjar? If someone dies we have to be there. And that's in addition to this ceremony, that ceremony, the community and taking care of the grandchildren when the daughter in law works and leaves the grandchildren at home. There is no way. Here, the performing body of a woman is bound with the customs and societal demands made on it while a Westerner can on the contrary feel that “within Western culture, we often assume that the body is objectified and individual, and as a consequence do not acknowledge the possibility of the body being perceived as both individual and part of a collective” (Turner, 2011, p.72). Though Turner (2011) has made this remark in another context (in the context of assimilating the essence of this art form), it is worth noticing that the demands made by the collective on the individual, or rather the individual being shared and even dominated by the collective, can have a negative impact from a gender perspective, though it may determine the very essence of the performing art form mentioned here. The different qualities associated with “Western spoken drama” and Asian “theatre-dance-music” kind of performing theatre are getting blended and molded into hybrid forms in Bali also. This is what Ballinger (2005) pointed to when she mentioned “a wave of women performers staging ‘unconventional’ theatre and dance. For example, Hatley (2008) has described a performance by an all-women performance group: More recently, working with her theatre group Kelompok Tulus Ngayah, Cok has portrayed Dirah/Durga as the embodiment of the female creative principle in performances with a meditative ritual. In a 2004 performance, Cok as narrator described in esoteric old Javanese how the female deity, essence of goodness, used the sacred symbols of the Balinese alphabet to define human beings and their inter-relationships. Three white-clad, white-masked woman dancers, representing the female deity, slowly traced letters in the air, then sank to the floor. The text recounted how power holders refused to allow the story of female creation to be told. This kind of performances can be seen as signs of an eclectic transition. Also, solo performers have been found to experiment adventurously with femininity and masculinity in their modern performances (Diamond, 2008). Art forms like gong Kebyar, where theatre could be performed without any “ritual, religious, sexual or dramatic context” have been the contribution of Western artists who came to live in Bali (Kendra Stepputat, 2004, p.1). Another unique feature of this performance art form is that “gender-switching” in this art form is not connected in any way to tradition or rituals or religion (Kendra Stepputat, 2004, p.1). In this backdrop, this art form also can be viewed as the outcome of the gender discourse that went on for almost a century in Balinese performing art scene. It is also interesting to note that “the style of walking in kebyar bebancihan is the precise combination of the male and female way of walking” and this art form has unisex features in general (Kendra Stepputat, 2004, p.3,5). Conclusion The evolution of Balinese performing arts as a gender- sensitive space was thus greatly supported by Western women performers who actually initiated this revolution. But through modern art forms like gong Kebyar dances, all-women group performances and solo performances, Balinese women have taken the beacon far ahead from there. Through such experimentations, they have also been assimilating the eclecticism of Western women performers. References Artaud, A. (1995) From on the Balinese theatre (1931)’, In R. Drain, Twentieth-century Theatre: A Source Book, London: Routledge. Ballinger, R. (July-September 2005), Woman power, Edition 83, [Available online] http://www.insideindonesia.org/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=151&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=55 Code, L. (2003). Encyclopedia of feminist theories, London: Routledge. Diamond, C. Fall (2008) Fire in the banana's belly: Bali's female performers essay the masculine arts, Asian Theatre Journal Volume 25, Number 2, pp. 231-271 Hatley, B. (2008) Hearing women's voices, contesting women's bodies in post new order Indonesia, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 16. Kendra Stepputat, (2004), Balinese gong kebyar dances: gender-switching normality, Proceedings of 23rd Stmposium 2004 Monghidoro: ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology, Berlin, Germany [Available online] http://ethnomusikologie.kug.ac.at/fileadmin/media/institut-13/Dokumente/Stepputat_Gender_Switching.pdf Palermo, C. (19 February 2009) Anak mula keto 'It was always thus': Women making progress, Encountering Limits in Characterising the Masks in Balinese Masked Dance-Drama’, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 19. Slattum, J., Schraub, P. and Geertz, H. ( 2003) Balinese masks: spirits of an ancient drama, North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing. Theatre firefly (2010/11) People, [Available online] http://www.theatre-firefly.com/people.html Turner, J. (Spring 2011) Embodiment, Balinese dance theatre, and the ethnographer’s predicament, Performance and Spirituality, Vol.2, No.1, pp.60-84. Read More