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Desiring The Stage: The Interplay of Mobility and Resistance

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Desiring The Stage: The Interplay of Mobility and Resistance

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riiuhuy
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© © All Rights Reserved
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16

Desiring the Stage: The Interplay


of Mobility and Resistance
Rachmi Diyah Larasati

It is late July in East Java. I am sitting on a bamboo bench in my grandmother’s


yard, waiting for dance practice to begin.
Women gather near by: mostly wives, mothers of childhood friends. They have
just finished their weekly PKK gathering, “Pendidikan Kesejahteraan Keluarga”
(“Women’s Education on Issues of Family Life”). The PKK facilitates women’s par-
ticipation in state regulation of women’s health and conduct, such as birth control,
breastfeeding, traditional dress for Islamic wedding ceremonies, as well as the local
dissemination of state policies like elections, environmental awareness, and state-
approved dance practices. I listen attentively. Surrounding me are embodiments of
the state’s idealized woman: the PKK.
In my grandmother’s yard the women whisper and mingle. Intently whispering
voices focus on the issue of who is going to perform at the Independence Day cel-
ebration, and the task of preparing a special kenduri, or offering, for Ngatini, a
dancer who went missing and never returned. Ngatini could not read or write, but
her participation in traditional dance, which has freer movements than the state-
approved court dances, caused the regime to suspect her of being a Communist, and
Gerwani, the women’s movement.
Many of the missing dancers were not members of the Communist Party, but
during the Suharto regime, political strategy, and cultural appropriation played
powerful roles in alienating certain groups and excusing state violence. Ngatini
was one of many dancers who disappeared during Suharto’s regime (1965–1999),
during which time the dancing body became suspect—dancers, along with other
artists, were accused of Communist affiliations.
In the corner of the yard Poniti, the daughter of the disappeared Ngatini, prac-
tices a new dancing technique. Following a state official’s instructions, Poniti has
been practicing the “new” Gandrung, under the supervision of a dance teacher, my
grandmother. She invites me to dance closer so she can tell me the worrisome news
of her sibling’s rejection from a job as a guard at the local school office. Her rel-
atives all blame the misfortune of her mother’s disappearance; a missing family
member reads as a sure sign of punishment by the state: a contagious curse.

253
L. D. Nielsen et al. (eds.), Neoliberalism and Global Theatres
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2012
254 Desiring the Stage

The legacy of Ngatini’s dance has been transmitted through our community,
both “disappearing” and continuing to exist in Poniti’s embodied dance practices.
The official never acknowledges her mother’s disappearance, yet her mother’s miss-
ing body, and the knowledge it represents, are tacitly recognized as containing the
potential to powerfully renegotiate the suppression of memory.
Therefore, Poniti, as the daughter and former student of the “mysteriously” dis-
appeared Gandrung dancer, is watched closely and handled with great suspicion by
the agents of the state and those under their influence. Gerwani are suspect.
In this article, I am arguing for dance technique as an embodied practice
that carries with it the possibility of transmission that is twofold in charac-
ter: first, as an act of remembering differently from the state mandates, thus
creating a space of mobility and state resistance through the enactment of
gestures and narratives outside of the state’s agenda; second, as a tradition
that is inherited through the family genealogy of dancers but subsequently
hijacked and re-appropriated by the state through the techniques of magang
and pembinaan, the dance preserved by the state as an aesthetic form decon-
textualized from history. In the Indonesian context, it becomes evident how
the genre of dance was recast with new cultural meaning—reconfigured from
a dance that was learned from family members in one’s own backyard to a
nationally owned performance that was taught in the school dance curricu-
lum, exhibited at the private parties of state representatives and performed
for tourists.
Although Gerwani, and their assumed relationship to the Indonesian
Communist Party, have been discussed in several English publications as
a women’s political movement, in Indonesia they have nevertheless been
associated with the radical identity of sexualized female activism, and
their narrative has been largely forbidden until recently (Wierenga 70–91).
In this essay, I focus on the politics of this narrative, and more specifi-
cally on Gerwani as posing new and threatening female alliances, as their
dancing bodies became collective signifiers of a threat to the established
patriarchy.
Indonesia’s people were subjected to mass killings during the Cold War
era, in part due to internal political turmoil, as groups competed for power
in the newly independent country, and in part due to the USA’s Cold War
policy. The military coup of October 1965 was the prelude to one of the
largest mass killings of the twentieth century (Robinson 225). Subsequently,
Indonesia was the scene of political unrest and established the “New Order”
under the leadership of Suharto, who became the country’s second presi-
dent. Suharto’s regime believed that it was socially and politically justified
in murdering and imprisoning individuals without due process, stigmatizing
them and their families by categorizing them as Communist Party members
or sympathizers and denying them their rights, such as access to education,
an identity card, or official employment. In many cases the government
also forbade them from taking part in traditional cultural practices,

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