| dance, a highly disciplined form of court dance from Central Java, Indonesia, dates back to at least the 10th-11th centuries when the Javanese dance style was inscribed in the walls of the temples at Prambanan. Ever since Choy came back from studying the art form in Java, she has had the opportunity to teach the dance form and this has kept her connected to all that she learned. "When I came home, I was questioning my identity," Choy recalled during an interview with The Capital City Hues. "I was going through changes. And I realized at that point that I wasn't going to be 'Javanese.' I'm just who I am. I've been surprised how it is continually interesting for me to teach it. That helps explain the depth of the form. There's no end to improving, of course. But there must be something in the form that is very deep that someone can continually teach it and find it to be interesting. And, within the form, there is a meditative aspect of disciplining the mind and that is the primary reason why I am probably still interested in it." Javanese dance has a rigidity of movement and facial expressions in which outwardly little changes, but the audience can be left with an intense wave of emotion. "Emotion is something pretty complicated," Choy said. And when I learned the form, my teacher never taught how to express emotion. Never, ever! It was all about the form. Another, older master dancer said "The inside will shine through and come out." "I did research on the dance I performed in April and spent many hours conversing about that dance with different people associated with the Court or teaching Javanese dance," Choy said about Golek Ayun-Ayun, a dance portraying a girl reaching womanhood and preening herself to enhance her beauty. " One thing that came up was that you shouldn't smile. Your face should not smile. But somehow, your smile will come through from the inside to theme out. There's this holding in through the form and I think that is what the audience is feeling." On some levels, according to Choy, Javanese dance and Gamelan music intricately blend together to create a unique emotional experience, a case of the whole being so much greater than the parts. "The music, to me, is highly charged as well," Choy emphasized. "So combining the music with the dance in that certain way creates a lot of expression. The tempo -- this is what I really learned and this totally influences a lot the timing of my dance pieces -- accelerates, decelerates, accelerates again even more than decelerates. That tempo, they associate sometimes it has been said, with the human heart or when things get tense and you're about to go to war, your heart races and then it comes down depending on your mood. That is inherent in the music and the tempo of the music set by the drummer, most often." "But the dance teacher will play the keprak, which is the box that I play with my dancers, sets teh tempo," Choy continued. "The person who plays the keprak is the liaison with the gamelan drummer who sets the tempo with his or her ensemble. I think the tempo thing is very unique to Javanese music. That's why it is quite difficult to learn. The students had a hard time and I as well teaching it this time, the last piece, because there are many tempo changes. There are more than two tempo changes in that whole piece. That makes for very challenging material to learn for the beginning student because musically, they don't know much about gamelan. I had to study it because it was very difficult for me the way the tempo changes and to know where the beat was in those tempo changes. That is the beauty and magic of Javanese dance, the transitions and the musicomentarily, Choy openly wonders if there is a place for Javanese dance, which goes against the grain of our hectic Western culture. "I'm feeling more and more of a disconnect," Choy confided. "A year ago, I said it's still valuable. But now, I'm just kind of wondering. We're living in a culture that pretty much devaluing the performing arts more and more. I used to think it was valuable. But I just feel there's more of a culture clash with that concept. Everything seems to be pulling in another direction in a way. People would rather rent a video, go home and watch the video rather than go out and go to a movie theater let alone a live dance concert." In the end, it may ultimately be about maintaining the culture and tradition no matter what is going on around the teacher and the student. In spite of all that has happened, Javanese dance remains. The student becomes the teacher and the dances are handed down from generation to generation. "I know that I'm still repaying my debt to my teacher although he is now deceased," Choy said. "I know that he would be really happy to know that I am teaching the dance and just performed the dance that is really his signature dance, Golek Ayun-Ayun. I know that he would be really happy to know that." And the traditions weather the test of time. |
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| The Javanese dance of Peggy Choy Precise Expression By Jonathan Gramling Part 2 of 2 |
| Almost like clockwork -- even as the rest of the world seems to spin rapidly out of control -- if it is the last Saturday night in April, there will be a performance of Gamelan music and Javanese dance in Mills Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. While the mass cultures of the world seem to change by the day, these vestiges of Indonesian culture have weathered the test of centuries. For over 10 years, R. Anderson Sutton, professor of Gamelan music, and Peggy Choy, professor of Javanese dance, have collaborated with their classes to present "A Concert of Javanese Dance and Music." Javanese |
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