It’s annoying how easily time slips by- it has already been over a month since I’ve last posted. We have a lot to catch up on, so let’s get right to business, starting with February.
About a month ago, there was a large ceremony for the closing of Sekaten at Kraton. I think I mentioned before that there has been a carnival set up outside of Kraton called Pasar Malam. This fair has been going on for about the last month, and the final week is called Sekaten. The whole celebration is to commemorate the spread of Islam to Indonesia. There is a gamelan set that is kept in Kraton and brought out only during Sekaten- so it's only played during one week each year. Last Saturday afternoon I watched the last performance using the special gamelan set, then on Sunday watched the closing ceremony. This consisted of five large 'mountains' of fruit (like the the one at Bekakak, but much bigger) that were carried through the street that circles Pasar Malam then taken into the palace at Kraton. I was waiting outside the gates of Kraton, so by the time the mountains of fruit passed by, one was already completely finished (the pieces all given out to spectators). The majority of people that come to watch the closing of Sekaten are Javanese villagers who come with hope that they'll catch a piece fruit- not to eat, but to plant in their fields at home, to make the soil rich and fruitful.
About a month ago, there was a large ceremony for the closing of Sekaten at Kraton. I think I mentioned before that there has been a carnival set up outside of Kraton called Pasar Malam. This fair has been going on for about the last month, and the final week is called Sekaten. The whole celebration is to commemorate the spread of Islam to Indonesia. There is a gamelan set that is kept in Kraton and brought out only during Sekaten- so it's only played during one week each year. Last Saturday afternoon I watched the last performance using the special gamelan set, then on Sunday watched the closing ceremony. This consisted of five large 'mountains' of fruit (like the the one at Bekakak, but much bigger) that were carried through the street that circles Pasar Malam then taken into the palace at Kraton. I was waiting outside the gates of Kraton, so by the time the mountains of fruit passed by, one was already completely finished (the pieces all given out to spectators). The majority of people that come to watch the closing of Sekaten are Javanese villagers who come with hope that they'll catch a piece fruit- not to eat, but to plant in their fields at home, to make the soil rich and fruitful.
As for the Chinese New Year, my performance for Imlek fell through but I did get to see a little bit of the celebration. There were several big paper dragons waved around by a crew of men in Chinese costumes, as well as furry dragon suits filled by two men each (these were more lifelike- flapping ears, eyes that blink, a working mouth) that you 'fed' a small envelope of money to give you good fortune for the coming year.
Also at the end of February, the Rotary Club Yogyakarta Malioboro (I am hosted by Yogya Tugu) held an arisan with Tahun Naga as the theme, and all the Yogya inbounds performed a dance together. An arisan is like a small lottery where a group of people gets together and everyone contributes a set amount of money to make the ‘pot’. Then one of the group member’s names is randomly selected (pulled out of a hat or whatnot) and that person wins all the money. Arisans are quite common here, usually held once a month and attended by mostly old ladies as I’ve been told, but I have seen classes at SMKI hold arisans as well. The Yogya Malioboro club’s arisan is a bit out of the ordinary because it’s held once a year, has over 400 participants, and there is a raffle for gifts as well as the grand money prize. The raffle was preceded by an assortment of dancing and singing performances (including the inbounds) and a seven course dinner (definitely not your average arisan).
For a recap of ordinary events here, in school we have finished the super slow tempo dances and moved onto ragam routines. Ragam means "style" and in dance is used to describe a combination of moves that are always done in the same order (same as a time step in tap or a do-si-do in square dancing). Usually one ragam consists of eight or sixteen counts. For example, one of the most basic combinations in Yogya style dance is called sabetan, or ngabet in Javanese, and it’s used in male dances (so tari gagah and tari alus) but there are different versions for each style of dance. The first count you bend your knees then shift your weight to your right leg. (This is why it is so much harder to learn Indonesian dance while counting in your head in English, because each count is often split into two parts: sa-tu, du-a, ti-ga, em-pat, etc and you can’t split up one, two, three…) The second count you shift weight to your left leg then lift your right foot (always lifting the leg straight out, then bending the knee once your foot is in the air), for the third count put your right foot down and lift the left leg (straight, then bend the knee) and this goes on for eight total counts, with specific hand and arm movements, too. Most of the time a ragam will end with both feet back on the ground, but not always.
Now that was the first part of sabetan described in English, but in all my dance classes at school the combinations are explained using Javanese. Mendet= bend at the knees/squat; gedruk= tap the ball of your foot on the ground directly behind your other foot; ngoyok kiri/kanan= shift weight to left/right; tekuk= bend your elbow; njimpit= pick up sampur; seblak= flick sampur; catok=wrap sampur around your hand; kipat= unwrap sampur (comes after catok); cul= let go of sampur… So there’s an expansive vocabulary for dance moves that I’ve been trying to learn. Generally the teachers yell out these terms as we’re dancing to remind the students of what to do. It’s taken awhile for me to connect the words with the right movements (since you’ve got hands and feet going at the same time) and I still have lots more to learn.
The hardest by far, though, is memorizing the ragam names. If you write down the first part of the tari srimpi pandelori routine, it looks like this:
Sembahan sila
Ndodok
Panggel ngregemudet
Janokung miling
Nduduh wuluh
Lampah sekar tawing
Pendapan cangkel
…
So each of these names represents a set of eight or more counts (one ragam), but I admittedly don’t know where each ragam starts or ends in the dance. I’ve just memorized the series of individual movements. For tari putri, this method works well for me, but in my freshman tari alus class Pak Toro likes to yell out a progression of ragams (“sembahan sila jengkeng, impur jugag dua kali, gidrag, sabetan, kambeng dewa, tayungan tiga langkah, ombak banyu…) then put on the music and the class dances according to what he just said. This, I have trouble with. A week or two ago we had a tayungan test (which means you do a lot of ‘walking’ around, but the style of walking changes depending on what ragam the routine is based on) and each student drew the ragam they’d be tested on out of a hat. This was before I had started memorizing ragams- the piece of paper I drew had ‘kambeng’ written on it, but it might as well have been written in Arabic for how much meaning it had to me. I had absolutely no clue. So I used the first ragam I could think of (which was impur, not kambeng) and failed miserably (though I had a get out of jail free card since I’m the foreign kid). After that I decided I should start paying attention to the ragam names, at least for Pak Toro’s class.
Now that we’ve moved on to a routine designed specifically for teaching a bunch of different ragams (there’s got to be over a million, I swear) we’re learning about two or three new ragams a day. I have about three quarters of each freshman routine memorized so far (complete with the ragam names J) but it gets tough for me towards the end when certain ragams combine the foot movements of one ragam with the arm/hand movements of another. I think my muscle memory works with all my limbs paired together because the mix-and-match ragams are hard for me to master. Hopefully I’ll have a mental breakthrough by the time we have our mid test.
As for sophomore dance classes, I think I’ll be having a final test in tari srimpi pandelori in the next week or two (all 35 minutes finished!) and I just had a sophomore tari alus test where we used fake bow and arrows as props. In gagah we’ve started learning a 25 minute routine (which is a total killer for tari gagah) where we use a shield and club, and there are four dancers depicting a fight, just like the previous tari putri and alus routines. Needless to say, I’m tired at the end of each day, but I’m really enjoying my lessons.
As is routine, my most recent interesting food find is sate keyong or snail kabobs. Delicious. Sate keyong can only be found in angkringans (tent-like food stalls set up at night on the side of the road, they usually have a wide variety of dishes, gorengan, and snacks to choose from) meaning you can’t order it in an actual restaurant. It’s made with a spicy sauce, and the texture reminds me of cooked oysters. I’d like to see what color it is (I imagine a swampy green), but there’s never good lighting at an angkringan so I have yet to find out. Quite the opposite of my odd food ventures, I had my first bowl of milk and cereal last week since coming to Indonesia. I may be trying my very best to become Javanese, but there’s still some American left in me- a nice bowl of corn flakes and milk sure does hit the spot.
Since I’ve last blogged, I’ve gotten the chance to see Borobodur temple and a closer look at Merapi. (If you remember, I visited Kaliurang, the Merapi area, with Rotex one of my first weeks in Yogya, but that was at night and we didn’t get to see the volcano). This Kaliurang visit was especially memorable because we got to go with the Bali inbounds, who came to tour Yogya for a few days.
Inbounds and some Rotarians at Kaliurang
Merapi
Speaking of guests from Bali- one of the last weeks in February students from SMKI Bali came to visit their sister school in Yogya (there are eight SMKI’s throughout Indonesia I believe). There was a performance at pendopo with dance and karawitan in both Yogya and Bali style, and everyone got out of class to watch. It’s incredible how different the styles are. In general, I find that the gamelan music we dance to in class is muted and repetitive, the different sounds and instruments easily melt together (I actually nod off sometimes in class when I’m watching other kids testing- biar ngantuk, it makes me sleepy) but Balinese gamelan has just the opposite effect. There’s lots of Clang-Clang and Cheng-Cheng sounds of metal mallets pounding on sarongs and the drum beat is so fast I don’t know how on Earth the dancers can make sense of it (assuming they follow the drum like Yogya style, but perhaps not). And it is Loud.
When I first got here I was told Javanese dance is the most difficult of all Indonesian traditional dances, and once you learn this style everything else is easy. This came from an SMKI Yogya teacher so it could very well be biased, and after watching the Balinese dancers I’m not so sure I’d agree with that opinion. Balinese dance is much faster and uses eye movements as well as facial expressions which generally aren’t choreographed in Javanese dance. If I think adding head movements is hard, I’m sure eye movements and facial expressions would be a challenge to memorize as well. I’ve also never gotten the chance to study Balinese dance, so I suppose I’m not an accurate judge of which style is harder anyways.
Either way, I am Pumped to go to Bali and see more of the traditional arts there. I’ve heard it’s like another world in Bali- the culture and atmosphere is completely different than the rest of Indonesia, mostly due to the prevalence of Hinduism and large population of foreigners. But until then, I’ll try to keep you better updated on the happenings here in Yogya. I sure do wish time would slow down; I hope to savor these next few months like I’ll savor my first bowl of milk and cereal back in the States.
Sampai jumpa!
