Queen Elizabeth Hall

‘Ramayana! The Final Battle’

10th June 2005

The Ramayana is an epic Hindu poem, written more than two thousand years ago, telling the story of the good Prince Rama’s crusade to rescue his bride (Sinta) from the evil king (Rahwana). The Sunarno Dance Company from Java has now made three successive annual trips to the South Bank, in June each year, progressively telling the story of the Ramayana. This interpretation of the final battle between good and evil concludes the trilogy.

Needless to say, Rama ultimately defeats the demon king and is joyfully reunited with his bride. Along the way, in two Acts, we have a large dollop of lust; attempted seduction; treachery; several acts of heroism and a few brave deaths; a rather opulently, over-dressed monkey army; a magic arrow, used by Rama to slay his wife’s kidnapper; and a trial by fire, to prove that Sinta’s virtue remained intact during her captivity. It is only after the intervention of Brama (the God of fire) that the self-indulgent Rama believes his wife’s fidelity and allows himself to be reunited with her, thereby suggesting that it was pride rather than love which set him on his course to rescue her in the first place! In any event, Sinta is the poem’s real heroine and its ultimate paragon of goodness.

This enjoyable Javanese dance-drama is underpinned throughout by the gentle, percussive chimes of the gamelan, performed onstage by the South Bank Gamelan Players, a remarkable ensemble-in-residence at the Royal Festival Hall. Both Acts were prefaced by long pieces of gamelan. A gendhing bonang majemuk introduced the performance, appropriately since it is traditionally used to inaugurate official functions and welcome important guests with its gradually accelerating speed and volume; and a longer suite, led by a solo female singer, started the second act. The Sunarno Dance Company appears all over the world but I wonder where else - apart from Java, Bali and Indonesia - it is able to perform with an in-situ gamelan orchestra of this quality. With some perverse indirect logic, it strikes me that this cosmopolitan diversity is exactly why London should stage the Olympic Games!

Classical Javanese dance consists of three generic styles: putri (female dance, here represented by Princess Sinta); alus (a refined, heroic male style, portrayed in the character of Prince Rama); and gagah (a pronounced mechanical, powerful style, vested here in the central anti-hero, Rahwana).

The choreographer, Sunarno Purwolelono, performs as Rahwana: a giant character with a huge golden headdress and winged armour, filling the stage with his solid, wide stance and slow, purposeful, almost clockwork movement. Rahwana’s brother, Kumbakarna (played by Hernowo Sudjendro Budi Kawarno) is another giant figure, but he is essentially an honourable character, who defends Sinta against his brother’s advances and dies heroically on the battlefield. Like Rama (Wahyu Santoso Prabowo) his more refined alus movement is much softer and more flowing than the gagah style.

Ni Madé Pujawati is a London-based dancer who has once again joined her Javanese colleagues for these London performances to play the role of the virtuous Sinta. Putri is a fluid, gentle style with short steps on the balls of the dancer’s feet, sometimes alternating from heel to toe in very small movements, linked by a gentle flick of the foot to move her costume out of the steps’ way. Her skirt is gathered tightly at the knees then flows out into a long train, which is matched by her hair ending at a length just above her ankles.

Sinta’s manner is subservient with her legs almost permanently bent at the knees, accentuated by the tightened line of the costume, but the contrition of this posture is laced with a steely, principled determination. In the two scenes where she successfully defends her honour against the lustful seductions of Rahwana, the humility of her movement disguises a strength which enables her to easily repel him with a gentle flick of her silk sash and graceful, slow body swerves that leave the evil king permanently chasing shadows. I have no point of reference on which to judge the quality of Pujawati’s performance but its fundamental strength masked in servile serenity seemed just right for the dramatic intent.

Having heard some utterly awful electronic dirges in the dance houses of London in recent years, the simple purity and co-ordinated rhythmic predictability of the gamelan melodies is a welcome diversion. The Ramayana dance-drama provided a brief window onto the cultural world of the islands in the Indian Ocean, an area which has been on our minds much more than usual this year. To recognise this, a collection was taken at the end of the evening for Children of Sumatra (www.childrenofsumatra.org) , a charity based on the island of Pulau Weh, off the northern tip of Sumatra, where the tsunami deprived 3,000 people of their homes. I hope that the good people of London raised enough cash to buy at least a fishing boat or two for these brave people of Indonesia.

Graham Watts

It's wonderful to hear that London has its own gamelan ensemble. We
have one in the Bay Area, Gamelan Sekar Jaya, but their style emanantes
from Bali and not from Java. I don't know the difference in musical style, though the traditions are similar, since Bali received its gamelan from Java. However, I think they went their separate ways,
stylistically.

Javanese classical dance was preserved in the Royal Courts of
Surakarta and Jogjakarta. Do you know which style you saw?

Thanks again for the wonderful glimpse you provided.

I forgot to mention that in the Ramayana, Sita decides enough is enough after the trial by fire and asks Bhumi, the Goddess of Earth, to swallow her up; Bhumi obliges.